Mr Alex Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 Psw wanted me to talk about my bobbins I've been making, and to post some pics. I can't get hold of a good camera till saturday so that rules out the photos. but heres some info about my pickups: First one is made from 2 cannibilised(sp?) ceramic poo pickups I ripped out of my strat copy. The top and bottom of the bobbin is made from pickup baseplates, my reasoning for this is, they are already threaded for screws and will hopefully help with the mellow(???) sound I'm hopeing for. And the core is some kauri scrap I had lying around. I wound it with 40.5AWG to 6.8kohms, which equates to 20mins going hard with a hand drill(the counter and winder is in progress). I hand spooled it to an assemetric shape coil, wider at the top. The magnet is a ceramic one I pulled from one of the pickups, and was fastened to the side of the coil(following an old(really really old)design I'd seen some patent diagrams of. I will get some pics on my brothes webcam if I can find the driver disks, but otherwise it'll only been the completed shots. The pickup was potted in some fancy pants(uber expensive) PVA variant glue that I use. And wrapped in tape so there isn't much to see but my original design - which I later changed to remove the 2nd magnet and the rails to bring the size down, and the magnet now fits between the top and the bottom plates, magnetising the whole bobbin, so no rails are required - is shown below. This will be a bridge pickup. The next pickup is a work in progress right now so hopefully I can get pics before I pot it and seal it up, it is wooden topped and bottomed with a ceramic bar magnet as the centre core, wrapped in masking tape(hopefully it will stop shorts). It will be wound to 4kohms with the winding reversed at around 2.5k for humbucking, the magnet is reversed polarity from the other pickup to meet my own preferences. I'm having to take this one slowly because I only wanted 5k from the other pickup and went way over, even using 40.5AWG which has a considerably lower resistance per metre(about 2/3 42AWG I believe). This pickup is really a more standard design but I'll be making some pickups for my next project(7 string bass) soon, and I promise to experiment with my own crazy ideas. And believe me they are crazy, I just need to write them down, I once thought up a simple tremolo bridge design which would have worked well, but I was in my physics final so had totally forgotten it by the end. As I remeber it was a springless bigsby style tailpiece, but I dont remember how I was going to counteract the tension(it was gonna work I know that!). Both these pickups are getting kauri wood covers to match my blueshawk/lespaul/prs singelcut guitar that I tried to make in 48 hours, but its turning into 2 weeks, so I'll put the pickups in my lap steel and record some tunes on my computer tonight I hope. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregP Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 What's the purported impact of winding the coil assymetrically that way? More mellowness on the tone? Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psw Posted June 8, 2005 Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 That's Great Mr Alex...and very interesting Common theory advises against metal bobbin plates but I'm not sure that it's necessarily bad. I've been working on some aluminium designs that look like they've been stripped off a harley or something! I've thought of doing the asymetric coils too. You could do a neat humbucker that kind of locks together so one coil is wider on the top than another...might make an interesting and unique humbucker/singlecoil kind of sound...perhaps like a P90 or something really new! The idea is that there is more coil closer to the string...increasing sensitivity on that coil. I'm not sure of the practical effect...that's the beauty of the whole thing...you just don't know! It's great to see someone coming up with new ideas than just rewinding conventional designs...impressive Keep us posted psw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Alex Posted June 8, 2005 Author Report Share Posted June 8, 2005 What's the purported impact of winding the coil assymetrically that way? More mellowness on the tone? Greg ← to tell you the truth, I cant remember, I know I saw it in an interview with seymour duncan though and I remember it sounding like it would be suitable for my preferred tone. As psw said, it's something to do with the coil being more sensitive close to the string. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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