pickups

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Pickup_(music_technology)

Cryogenic Pickups

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Cryogenic freezing

Some audiophiles believe that cryogenic freezing of their audio equipment somehow improves the sound.  New-age audio inventor and pseudo-scientist Peter Belt (of PWB Electronics) claimed that cryogenic freezing of CDs provides 'friendly', 'relaxing' energy patterns, making them sound better. However it is well known that cryogenic freezing of metal affects its crystalline structure and can improve its durability (as used in Dean Markley Blue Steel Strings and banjo tone rings).

Lollar Pickup Winding Books for sale

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Jason Lollar asic Pickup Winding and Complete Guide to Making Your Own Winder

Jason Lollar has reissued his book, Basic Pickup Winding and Complete Guide to Making Your Own Pickup Winder. You can order it directly from his website. It is on sale for $60 plus shipping. The 3rd edition is mostly the same as the original but has a new preface, and the materials source list and references have been updated.

Jason says:

Be one of the hordes and minions managing your own pickup making sweat shop right here in the USA!

Ted Crocker

Ted Crocker builds guitars and other musician gear, with a rustic design ethic Ted Crocker gear has instant mojo.  Crocker made the Honey-Dripper guitar featured in the blues movie Honeydripper.  The design brief was a handmade guitar neck nailed to a plank with strange wires. Crocker hand made the odd pickups, guitar and hardware, keeping in mind that it had to be an instrument up to the task of recording a movie soundtrack in a 21st century studio and surviving a movie set and location shoot. 

Ted Crocker is also part of the growing Cigar Box Guitar Revolution.  His designs run the gamut from CBGs with modern hardware and electronics to those that could have been made over a hundred years ago. Other Crocker products include Stonehenge pickups, Woodshed wooden picks and a range of harp microphones

EMG factory tour

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Premier Guitar's Brett Petrusek is on Location in Santa Rosa, CA, where he visits the EMG Inc. pickup factory factory. In the first clip, we get to check out where the molds, housing and electrical boards are constructed for EMG pickups. The second clip shows some coils wound, the finished casing products for the pups and the extensive quality care control that EMG uses for every pickup produced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSZy5oWl9hw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cdt9WIIu00

Record player pickup winder and unwinder

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Record player pickup winder

This is a home made pickup unwinder made by Bill Crozier, after he was unsatisfied with the sound of his Tex Mex pickup. He designed a pickup unwinder to unwind the pickup wire onto a reel, and then used the same setup to scatter rewind the pickup. He mounted the pickup on a rotating Lazy Susan, and the wire take-up spool on a record player.

How to replace your guitar pickups

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Squier telecaster bridge raised showing the underneath of the pickup

Guitarists sometimes replace their stock pickups in the hope of improving their guitar's tone. This step by step guide shows you how to swap your existing guitar-pickups for new ones. 
The instructable is written by John Smith who changed the bridge pickup on his Squier Telecaster  to a Seymour Duncan Little '59 in the hope of a more Les Paul type of sound. But the same technique should be equally useful for other guitars.

Lollar foils the Pickup Pirates

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Basic Pickup Winding and Complete Guide to Making Your Own Pickup Winder, front cover image

Jason Lollar is the  author of the DIY pickup maker's bible "Basic Pickup Winding and Complete Guide to Making Your Own Pickup Winder". This book helped kickstart the custom pickup industry. It has been out of print for a number of years, assuming a mythical status. Secondhand copies have been selling for close to $300.

Ubertar Hexaphonic Pickups

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Ubertar passive hexaphonic pickup

Paul Rubenstein has suceeded in making a passive hexaphonic pickup that fits into a single coil space. Paul is a guitar player and teacher as well as an inventor (of the alumitar for example). These pickups have a separate coil for each string, allowing you to process each one indidivually. For example you could pan strings to the left or right, or have different effects on each string.

Make a LEGO pickup winder

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lego-pickup-winder.jpg

These are two examples of pickup winders made out of LEGO. They use the motorised Mindstorms , NXT type components to spin the pickup bobbin. I haven't seen any LEGO winders with an automatic travese mechanism yet, but it won't be long before someone builds one.

The first is a pickup unwinder, for despooling a broken pickup, by Scorpion097 .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYbgnVp15U

Rish developed the lego pickup winder further, making a more conventional design with LEGO NXT components for winding pickups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcvlm6mNgjM

Experimental Musical Instruments

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Experimental Musical Instruments is an online resource for people who want to make unusual musical instruments. They have how-tos on instrument making, as well as books and CDs featuring the work of experimental instrument makers. Also they have back issues of the Experimental Musical Instruments quarterly journal.

They sell supplies for the experimental instrument builder:  pickups, tuning keys, zither pins, fretwire, and other specialized hardware for makers. They sell piezo transducers, and piezo film if you want to make your own.

Make a pickup using GeoMag parts

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geomagbits.JPG

GeoMag is a magnetic toy construction system. It connects together using short magnetic rods and little steel balls. Niels Kaagaard noticed the resemblance of the GeoMag rods to the pole pieces in a single coil pickup and proceeded to make a pickup out of them.  When you remove the plastic coating from the GeoMag rod you can see it is a steel bar with neodymium magnets at either end. To work as a pickup pole you need to remove one of these magnets. Niels then made some bobbins from fibreboard and wound the pickup coil around the GeoMag rods using his own hand winder.

Some design considerations

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Project: 

Make a CNC pickup winder

Instructions: 

WINDING MECHANISM

Transferring wire from the reel to the bobbins requires the coordination of rotational and translational motions, The layer winding movements are performed through either coil rotation (spindle winding) or wire rotation (fly winding).

Spindle winding
In spindle winding, the bobbin is rotated as the wire passes over or through a wire guide that traverses back and forth in the direction of the axis of rotation.

Make a hand powered pickup winder

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Kagaard-winder.jpg

This is a clever DIY pickup winder design by Niels Kaagaard. It uses a fishing reel to spin the bobbin. It is hand powered, so carbon emissions are limited to your exhaled breath as you wind it furiously.

It's missing a traverse mechanism at the moment, however, you can see that the wire is not layed down evenly. I would run a belt from the reel to power a cam traversing mechanism.

Link: Fishing reel pickup winder

Make a pickup with neodymium magnets

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neodymiumpickup.jpg

Traditional guitar pickups used alnico magnets or ceramic magnets. Neodymium magnets, a form of rare-earth magnet, have not often been used in guitar pickups. These extra strong magnets are becoming more and more available, and this instructable shows how to use them in a single coil pickup. The design uses screws as pole-pieces with small circular neodymium magnets underneath the pickups. Also contains a bit on how to pot the pickup in wax.

Guitar pickup clock

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nixiePickupClock.jpg

Joe Hoffman made this clock in the shape of a single coil stratocaster pickup . Six nixie vacuum tubes display the time, where the pickup's magnets would be.
The top and bottom of the pickup-clock were cut out of stainless steel by the Big Blue Saw Company. You send them a design and they will cut it out using their CNC waterjet and send it back to you.

Anti-backlash nuts and leadscrew

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Project: 

Build a home made CNC machine (JGRO router)

Instructions: 

The anti-backlash nuts are an adjustable pair of nuts that transfer the rotation of the leadscrew into the linear motion of the axes. The two screws allow you to adjust the tension between the two nuts to eliminate backlash (the wobble that results from wear in the nut or leadscrew).

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