ghendrickson04

Thanks WezV! I didn't know that. I'm pretty bummed that I have to sell them because they do sound so good. On the plus side, if nobody buys them, I will have to hang onto them to use in the future, which wouldn't be a horrible thing at all.

I would like to amend the price quote, they do retail starting at 210 GBP. The engraved covers increase the price to 230 GBP, which is approximately 330 USD. Sorry if any of you did a quick price conversion and found my number to be wrong. I would also like to clarify that I bought a matched set. I inferred it, but never actually said it. -G

Hey all, I bought a couple Bare Knuckle Nailbombs about a year ago for a project guitar that I never ended up putting together, so they are essentially NEW. Specifically, I bought the covered, 50 mm spaced, 4 conductor, long legged, potted, engraved pickups. The pickups are the same ones seen here: http://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/shop/i...;products_id=63 Since graduating college, money it tight, so I have to sell these. I quick soldered the bridge pup into another project guitar to make sure they work, and it sounds beautiful. The neck pup has never been soldered. Unfortunately, though, the guitar has to go. If you checked the link, you would see that they retail for 210 GBP, or about 330 USD. Since they are essentially brand new, I would like to get somewhere near the full retail, if possible, so I can meet rent this month. Anyway, I hope they find a great new home. Reply here if you're interested and we'll see what we can do. I'll be listing more parts the rest of the week, but message if you're interested in other assorted guitar parts. -G

It might just be me, but, in my experiments, you should always have a buffer after piezo pickups. It might just be the elements I was using, but they were always really quiet and compressed unless they were buffered. I have a couple schematics of good buffers (or so I thought) if you need one. Pete might know more about this as I seem to recall him working of some stuff with piezo a while back. Anyway, a nice thing is that, if you find a buffer/preamp that runs off a 9v battery, you can use it for the pickups and the sustainer to save physical space in the guitar. Lastly, and I may be oversimplifying things here, but I can't imagine that wiring the piezo pickup to the sustainer would be any different from running it off a magnetic bridge pickup. Maybe a little more complex if you wanted the option of running your sustainer off the piezo or the magnetic (...or both?), but nothing terribly difficult to map out. If you want help figuring out any wiring on this stuff, shoot me a message and we'll brainstorm. I should have a nice block of time free over Thanksgiving weekend before finals come and kick my butt.

Sorry I've been out so long. I really meant to make a more meaningful contribution to this thread, but grad school just keeps getting me down. In other news, this weekend I hope to make some progress on my sustainer and piezo pickup system (Pete, if you're still interested, I'll send some more info your way (it's been a good while since we talked about that (I really need to email you back (life's been horribly busy)))). My sustainer build has been plagued with problems and lack of time to investigate and fix them, so if you get some units up for sale, I'm definitely interested. -G That's right, a quadruple-nested sentence!

A Pet Rock, I don't know if you mentioned where you live, but I like in the US and I buy almost all my components from www.smallbearelec.com. Their shipping is really reasonable and their prices are much better than Radioshack. Even after adding in shipping costs, it's still considerably cheaper for most things. Good luck. Your project sounds very ambitious. -Garrett

I'm not very knowledgeable about designing pickups, speakers, etc., but would it work to use two laminated cores in a bilateral design shaped more like: _____ ____ | // | |____//____| That way it would be the cores that would cross the center, not some top piece like the Sustainiac, and it would also fit inside a normal single coil slot. You could wrap each side, wire them in series, and then fit them to the bottom bobbin of a single coil pickup. Just put a single coil cover with the top removed over it and there you go. EDIT: That picture looks much different now that it posted. Hmmm...I'll describe it. The cores are shaped like the top of the Sustainiac driver. They overlap. That's it.

Pete, you were talking about making a bilateral driver that overlapped in the middle to remove the dead spot (looked kinda like a P-bass pickup). I was thinking about my bilateral driver (which I still haven't gotten around to installing), and was considering making metal tabs to put on top like the Sustainiac driver that would overlap on the edges of the middle, possibly eliminating or reducing the dead spot. Do you think that would help eliminate the dead spot with your bilateral driver?

Yeah, I broke the ceramic magnet on accident trying to remove it. I'm going with small magnets on the bottoms of the pole pieces. The first time I wound it I forgot to reverse the winding. I cut it off and rewound and, like I said, ran out of time. Hopefully I'll get around to it early this week. It's my alternative to going the treble booster route to improve treble performance.

Let's see if I can figure out the quote thing... Nope...I'll give it a bit more thought later. To quote the old-fashioned way... PSW asked: @ghendrickson04, why did you need to file the pickups, were you doing a split bobbin bi-lateral thing, or inserting a blade? Pete, the reason I filed the top bobbin between the D and G pole pieces was to make a bi-lateral driver with pole pieces. I figured it would be a worthy experiment to wind half to ~3.2 ohms and the other half to ~3.8 ohms to see if I could drive the treble strings a little better with a driver designed this way. Unfortunately, I haven't actually put it in my guitar yet because I've been writing a couple term papers all this last week. I'll give an update when I get around to installing it. Edit: that was stupid of me. I meant ~4.2 ohms and ~3.8 ohms. Spring break starts and all mathematical skills leave.

Sorry, you're right. The gain pot is only a one-time adjustment. It's not necessary to have it exposed on the surface of the guitar. It's an "adjust and forget" pot. Personally, I have the volume pot set up the same way. I find where it sustains cleanly and then stow it so I don't have to worry about it. That and I have a lot of electronics and stuff wired into my guitar and I didn't want to waste space on another pot.

Curtisa, to make a split-bobbined (is this a valid word?) driver, I just bought cheap Squier single-coils on eBay. They're cheap and you can just take a thin file and remove the plastic between pole-pieces quite easily. Try to leave a little overhang on the top, however, as winding became a bit of a pain for me. Hope this helps! Bonfire: The gain pot works similarly to the gain on any amplifier. I concealed mine because, ideally, you'll set the volume at or close to maximum and then turn the gain up to boost the volume until you begin to get distortion (or fizz or grunge or whatever you want to call it). That way you can find your maximum clean volume which will better sustain the strings from further away.

Col, as an alternative to what your suggesting as far as increasing core density to alter inductance around specific strings, would it be efficacious to split the top bobbin, probably between the pole pieces for the D and G strings (but maybe G and B ), and then wind two coils with different resistances adding to ~8ohms?

Would it be possible/plausible to remove this 'fizz' you all talk about with a simple noise gate (like removing my strat's 60-cycle hum)? It could be a simple addition to a preexisting circuit and I don't think it would add a terrible amount of draw on the battery.

Hey all. After about 6 months of watching from the sidelines (school keeps me busy), I'm finally ready to join the party! Just a quick question: I've already wound a coil, but what pre/amp should I use? I see a lot of talk about starting with a Fetzer-Ruby, but I recall that, not too long after I started following this, col posted a circuit he made with AGC and using a 3p4t rotary switch. What would be a good place to get started? -Garrett