Introduction: Brand a Guitar Pickup

How to brand a single coil guitar pickup!
This volition testify yous how to make your ain guitar pickup. It won't look or sound exactly like a regular pickup, but its a fun and interesting project.

What You lot'll Need:

Stuff:
-Newspaper
- 42 or 43 gauge copper wire (very thin)
- Six steel machine screws and nuts
- Neodymium (super strong) magnets or one long bar magnet
- Thin plastic (like that on a cd example) or Thin pieces of wood
- Wax
- Wire
- Solder
- Superglue

Tools/equipment:
-Dremel and dremel accessories
-Screwdriver
-Sewing machine (optional)

You can go out and purchase all these things, but yous can probably find virtually of them within old crap yous already possess. For example, I found the copper wire in a pair of cleaved dog clippers. And if you don't have some of the equipment you can e'er improvise.

Here are some links I found useful while learning how to make my pickups:

Stew Mac--Pickup Edifice (especially "Single Coil Pickup Kits")

A guy who made a humbucker.

GuitarAttack Look at Winding pickups "Guerilla Way" to come across more about the sewing machine pickup winder idea.

Step 1: Make Your Pattern

In that location are just a few parts to a pickup, and the bobbin(the thing that holds the coil) is the showtime thing y'all demand put together.

To practice this, yous'll need to do is make upwards some kind of blueprint for your bobbin. Yous need ane piece for the top and ane for the lesser. Look at the pictures and factory made single coils to get the general idea. You can brand it in the traditional shape, with rounded ends, or you tin be lazy like me and use a more squarish design. Either way will work.

Then you'll demand to transfer this pattern onto the material you lot're using for your bobbin. You can use plastic (from a cd case, for example) or sparse pieces of wood. Wood works well because it'south easy to work with and has a unique look, merely I decided to use plastic for this pickup.

Last of all, cut out your bobbin pieces.

Step 2: Drill Holes

Now you need to drill the holes for your post pieces. Before you drill mark where the holes will exist, as this isn't exactly something you want to do freehand. Usually the strings on a guitar are about 1cm autonomously, but cheque the spacing of the strings to be sure. Also, you'll need to mark 2 holes on the bottom piece of the bobbin (see last pic). These are for wrapping the showtime and ends of your copper wire around when winding.

MMkay, since I'm not exactly the Dremel whiz, I drilled some holes in a piece of wood and used this as a guide. It also helped me to sort of shallowly drill the holes a little flake then the dremel didn't get all crizazy on me.

Step 3: Assemble the Bobbin

After your bobbin pieces are drilled, you're ready to get together. First, screw the screws part of the way into the top piece of the bobbin. So sandwich a spacer of some kind between the peak and bottom pieces, as shown in the picture below. I prefer to get the two outside screws and a middle ane in first, just to be actress sure they're all even.

If you used screws that were besides long, like I did, you'll need to cutting off the excess. Just be sure to get out plenty so that y'all can put the basics on subsequently and they'll exist secure.

Pace 4: Riggin' Up a Pickup Winder

At that place are a lot of things y'all tin apply as a pickup winder. Y'all could employ your hands, evidently, but that can be kind of slow and inaccurate. You could also use a drill or electric screwdriver.

I chose to utilize a sewing machine, mainly because it'southward really easy to rig up and use. On the side of all sewing machines in that location is a bike type thing that spins around. This is where you want to secure your bobbin. I'm non sure about other sewing machines, but on the 1 I used at that place was a modest, brusque screw on this cycle. I removed this and stuck a longer spiral through one of the holes on the bottom piece of my bobbin and secured it in the cycle.

Step 5: Winding

Pickups are made using very sparse copper wire, 42 or 43 gauge. I would recommend buying your wire in a spool to make the winding easier, but you tin can discover this kind of wire in other objects if yous want. For instance, I found mine in a pair of old canis familiaris clippers. Nevertheless, just a slight warning, the winding will become more slowly if you don't have a nice round spool.

To starting time winding, wrap a few inches of the copper wire effectually and through the left paw hole on the bottom piece of the bobbin (the other hole is used to secure the bobbin to the sewing machine in step four).

Wrap the wire effectually the bobbin at least 10 times by hand. Then, starting slowly, printing down the sewing machine pedal every bit yous allow out wire from the spool. Information technology'south very important to recollect that if the wire breaks, yous'll have to outset your winding over. That's why you need to go the tension just right. Yous don't want to concur the wire too tight or it will pause, and if you hold it to loose it will tangle.

I've read many different opinions on how many winds a pickup should take. I normally put on as many winds as the bobbin will concord and information technology seems to work. My opinion is that if it looks right, information technology'due south probably close.

Step half dozen: Soldering

In one case you're done winding your coil, you demand to solder the lead wires.

Earlier yous can solder though, you need to scrape the cherry coating off of the wire that is wrapped around the two holes on the bottom piece of the bobbin. You can use very fine sandpaper, your fingernail, or the end of a trivial screwdriver (run across moving-picture show) to do this.

Usually the beginning of the gyre is soldered to black wire and the end is soldered to white wire. I couldn't find any white wire so I used red instead.

Step 7: Potting the Pickup

Potting or saturating a pickup with wax is washed to assistance keep the wires in the roll in place and prevent the pickup from condign microphonic.

I used Gulf Wax (candle wax) to saturate my pickup because it was bachelor, but you could likewise use a mixture of 80% candle wax and 20% beeswax.

Melting the wax directly on top of a heat source, in a saucepan on the stove, for example, can overheat the wax and cause it to become highly flammable. And nosotros do not desire to lose our eyebrows while making guitar pickups practise we? NO! So, to melt the wax, I filled a big container about one-half full of almost boiling h2o and placed a smaller container inside. A tin can works transfers the heat from the h2o to the wax more effectively, so utilise one if you have 1 handy. Gulf wax comes in blocks, which don't melt very quickly, so I used a pocketknife to pause the wax into smaller pieces. And so I put this wax in the smaller container.

When the wax is completely melted, hold your pickup by the pb wires and submerse it in the wax. You will see bubbling coming out of the ringlet and y'all need to leave the pickup in the wax until the bubbles stop. For me this seemed to be about v-x minutes, but for y'all it could exist longer.

Take the pickup out of the wax and wipe of the excess while it's still in a liquid form.

Step 8: Finishing Touches

There are just a couple more things left to do!

After your pickup has totally cooled from the potting process, you can put the magnets on your pickup. The magnets you demand are called neodymium magnets(they are also known as power magnets, or super strong magnets).

When y'all put them on you have to make sure their poles are all facing the same direction. Yous can cheque their direction using another magnet, of class. Super glue them in place when y'all're set up. This is easier said than done, though. Super strong magnets seem to go everywhere except the place you desire them.

When you end doing this, it's a good idea to wrap something around the ringlet to protect the fine wires. I like to use thread seal tape/ teflon tape considering information technology'due south easy to remove if you lot demand to set up your pickup.

And that's it! Y'all're done!

Pace 9: It Is Time!

This is the crude rig I use to test my pickups since I don't accept a spare guitar to ruin.

Also on this page is a flick of some other pickup I made.

two People Made This Project!

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