Making pickups :)

[I M Evil]

So ...

I've already ... kinda' ... built my own guitar :)
Now on to the next step ... building my own pickup.
A humbucker more precisely ;)

You see, I have this POS strat-copy laying around.
It was my very first guitar so I don't really wanna part
with it, but since I learnt playing on it, I might as well learn
to make pickups with it :D

I'm buying parts from a Swedish guitar/music parts retailer
and the wire to be used is AWG42 :) Bare in mind that this
is just a project of mine, I don't tend to compete with
BKP or any other more proffessional pickupmaker, I just
want the damn thing to work ;)

I'll be using the magnet that was in my Dean-humbucker
(which I replaced with a BL L500-L ;)).

So my question really is ...

* How do I attach the wire before I start winding?
* Which direction is the wires going ?
* How should I place the magnet ?
* Is it necessary to wax it? What wax would work? Beeswax? :)

Maybe Tim would share his secrets  8)

Thanks.

[38thBeatle]

erm...why post on this forum? Great project and all that but is it appropriate do you think?

[WezV]

This might help:

http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-5961.html

Take my advice though.  Do some single coils, they are a lot simpler and you may get lucky and produce some that sound OK.  For humbuckers you need to be a lot better at making pickups and cant rely on luck as much.

I have done a few for my guitars, its fun to learn how these things are put together and it feels good when they work, really good if they sound OK.  It also gives you a lot of respect for people like Tim who can do it so perfectly and beautifully.  Thats why i occasionally wind myself a pickup if i have a quick/cheap beater guitar to throw together for fun, but i buy things like BKP's when i want to produce a guitar that means business (and i can sell for a decent profit )

[ToneMonkey]

There's a forum and supplies from this place:

http://www.ampge.com/ Jason Lollar also pops in occassionally.

I think that pickups aren't too hard to build, the magin comes in knowing what you're building, how it's going to react, type of magnet etc.  They do have a Finite Element Magnetics Anaysis tool over there somewhere, I down loaded it but couldn't be arsed to learn how to use it.

There's a million different designs for pick up winders, I bought Jason Lollars book showing you how to build a pick up winder out of sewing machine parts and it also has a lot of templates in.  I used it to get the general idea, then built mine out of Mecharno, a remote controlled car and a toy plane (or the winder counter).  I operate it with my foot on the car remote.

I was going to put my own pups on the project that I've shelved for the upcomming months, but for my posh guitar, I've come for the expert ones.

Good luck mate.