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Questions From A Total N00b


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I'm going to build an electric guitar for my senior project at school. The problem is, I don't really know **** about how the electronics work! Thus have I humbly come here in search of guidance... ::bows head::

So, first off: would gold wire be at all useful in a guitar? I thought at first that it would be good in pickups, as it's supposed to be good for stereo and video game system connectors (because it's a good conductor?), but then I read something about resistance being needed for good output on another forum, and am now confused about the following things:

1) What kind of wire to use in the pickups. (I'm too cheap/poor to buy ready-made ones, and I saw a tutorial that said making them was easy enough, if incredibly tedious.)

2) What kind of wire to connect the components with. (Bad grammar, but eh.)

Would one of you out there please explain this me? (Another question will come once this one is answered, though on a slightly different topic.)

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Gold wire is not necessary and only going to be expensive...shielded wire will prove to improve things the most if you are looking for some kind of mojo to put into your project.... :D

Making your own pickups is more than tedious, the parts are easily as much as a cheap pickup and then there are tools such as winders the will be necessary. The biggest problem is going to be sourcing the wire...this needs to be bought in bulk and is a specialty item.

I would not seek to be making pickups or bridges or tuning pegs for such a project...time will be a problem...

If you wish to show some inventiveness in the project...I'd be aiming for a good design and as far as electronics are concerned, perhaps some fancy wiring tricks. There are many ways of wiring pickups together for interesting results with multiple switches or rotary controls. A simple active preamp and battery in the guitar can turn low powered pickups into quite good high powered monsters too, so that may well be something to explore...

pete

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1) What kind of wire to use in the pickups. (I'm too cheap/poor to buy ready-made ones, and I saw a tutorial that said making them was easy enough, if incredibly tedious.)

2) What kind of wire to connect the components with. (Bad grammar, but eh.)

By the time you source the wire and magnets you will have enough money into it to buy a low cost set of pickups - something like GFS pickups from the clearance section for $35.

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Well... the tutorial I saw was for building a bass pickup, but it said all you really need is a long spool of wire, a few popsicle sticks, some neodymium magnets, and loads of patience, besides the wax with which to pot it and the cover. Of course, it was also for a single-coil bass pickup, so I figure humbuckers are probably much harder... But thank you for your answers.

Now for a (possibly) more tricky question... I saw in the tutorials here that you can make a blend knob out of a pot (I forget whether it was a volume or tone pot), and got to thinking. See, I want to make it so the middle pickup can be switched on and off by itself, while the other pickups are on or off depending upon the setting of said knob. (I would also like to have the middle pickup sort of average out the volume between the bridge and neck pickups, if that's possible, but that would just be a cool little extra that I probably don't really need.) Could I use a push-pull pot for this switch and the blend knob, and if so, how would it have to go? (I'd also like to put one of the DIY sustainers explained in Ansil's tutorial in it, but can scrap it if advised to. [i'm still in the planning stage--good thing my project's not due until next year!])

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I'd also like to put one of the DIY sustainers explained in Ansil's tutorial in it, but can scrap it if advised to

I'd advise not to... It does not do anything like what you might think it does...

I have a strat (with the DIY sustainer on it) and the middle pickup is controled by a volume knob. Basically there is a three way selector and you dial in the mid pickup to the amount you wish. The guitar also has phase switches so that these combined pickup sounds change radically depending on the positions the phase switches are set...kind of neat. Basically, you are just using a volume pot on the mid pickup alone without going to the selector...then on to the master volume control. You could use a push pull to turn it off, but probably not worth the hassle and expense, just turn the volume down to zero!

Building pickups is an art...you will have trouble finding suitable wire and neodyminium magnets are generally too strong for guitar pickups. You really are trying to bite off more than you can chew by pursuing this part of the project...and it will get expensive and time consuming if you do.

Building a guitar itself is hard enough...wiring seems to trouble a lot of people, pickup winding is beyond many who have advanced skills...combining them all really is asking for trouble.

I'm going to build an electric guitar for my senior project at school. The problem is, I don't really know **** about how the electronics work! Thus have I humbly come here in search of guidance... ::bows head::

If I were to be anticipating such a project, I'd be looking at modifying a pre-existing guitar or parts guitar...or perhaps making a minimal guitar to demonstrate wiring features or pickup technology. I gave myself a project once of making a guitar as minimal and cheaply as possible...

lowtechguitar2.jpg

This tiny travel guitar is made of MDF and has tuners made of bolts (allen key tuner stores in back) and recycles strings from my other guitar. The frets are made of coat hanger wire and a centre block holds the strain while still allowing the top to vibrate. The neck, a fer short lengths of jarrah floor board scraps, the finish, shoe polish!... Total cost...nothing!

Now, you may wish not to go in this direction, but you could do something similar with a solid body, if you want to make pickups, low impedance assisted by preamps from a kit may be the way to go...

Try and simplify your ideas and you will have more success...just my 2c... pete

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