Sustainer Humbucker Sized Build

[trad3mark]

Hey all,

Right, so i decided i'd have a go at making a sustainer. I've been making pedals for about 2 years now, so i'm guessing this shouldn't be too difficult..... I remain optimistic.

I've an old humbucker that's going to be victimised for the project. I've dismantled as much of it as i can. Right now, I have two seperated coils, the magnet, the spacer, and things like the bracket etc. I've searched and searched the forums for as many answers to my questions as possible, so big apologies if i've missed the answers elsewhere.

So, onto my questions.

1. Firstly, is it really necessary for me to go make a new bobbin and wind that up etc, or could i manage with what i have?

Where did i get this idea from? well it's nothing major really. If the coils that i have seperated already have pole pieces running through them, could i just seperate them (so they're 2 single coils instead of 1 humbucker) and then attach the magnet back to one of the coils, so the pole pieces become magnetised, or does the magnet HAVE to be inside the coil? My idea behind this was to just have the one coil being used as the driver, and then with the other one, leave it there, but have it grounded so that it'll fit neatly into a humbucker sized route.

2. Has anyone tried this with the coil being perpendicular to the strings?

If my electromag theory is correct (haven't done physics in 4 years, so it could be wrong) but wouldn't that make the flux stronger??

It'd be such a big help if i didn;t have to go out and buy stuff for this. I've all the necessaries for the preamp etc, but the driver is going to be the tricky part i think.

[col]

1. Firstly, is it really necessary for me to go make a new bobbin and wind that up etc, or could i manage with what i have?

Where did i get this idea from? well it's nothing major really. If the coils that i have seperated already have pole pieces running through them, could i just seperate them (so they're 2 single coils instead of 1 humbucker) and then attach the magnet back to one of the coils, so the pole pieces become magnetised, or does the magnet HAVE to be inside the coil? My idea behind this was to just have the one coil being used as the driver, and then with the other one, leave it there, but have it grounded so that it'll fit neatly into a humbucker sized route.

Use one or both coils as driver (I'd go with two). As long as the inductance is around 1.2 mH and the resistance is about 8ohm.

So if you're using two coils, you want either two 16 ohm 2.4mH coils in parallel, or two 4 ohm 0.6 mH coils in series.

2. Has anyone tried this with the coil being perpendicular to the strings?

If my electromag theory is correct (haven't done physics in 4 years, so it could be wrong) but wouldn't that make the flux stronger??

not quite sure what you mean - all the diy sustainers I've made and seen have the driver field perpendicular to the strings.

It'd be such a big help if i didn;t have to go out and buy stuff for this. I've all the necessaries for the preamp etc, but the driver is going to be the tricky part i think.

it's all 'the tricky part'

Col

[trad3mark]

looks like i would have to buy stuff for this then. That sucks, cos it totally delays it by a while. I measured the resistance of each coil. 8.4 and 8.2. not bad. i was hoping to be able to just use the magnet from between the two coils. I'm still a bit hazey on the connection between the driver and the preamp. I'm still trawling through the 300+ pages of that sustainers idea thread. can't seem to find a definitive 100% clear tutorial. grrr!

[psw]

For the tutorials, look at the electronics reference section.

Also, search out primals LP project from years back...he would a driver onto one half of an HB with complete success. The other half could be used as a single coil neck pickup, but he reported the strength and sound was rather low, so didn't bother as I recall. Even made the circuit small enough to fit in an HB selector cavity!

Some things are a little tricky to understand in your posts...the main thread is likely to confuse, it was an ongoing discussion that ranged widely over many years...check out the tutorials, the driver winding one shows the essentials say of potting and winding.

looks like i would have to buy stuff for this then. That sucks, cos it totally delays it by a while. I measured the resistance of each coil. 8.4 and 8.2. not bad.

I'm not sure what you are saying here...have you already wound driver coils? It sounds like you ahve measured the pickup coils, in which case, the wire is all wrong and you are likely reading 8.4K ohms...that's 8,400 ohms...vastly different from 8ohms. Few will have the correct wire on hand...for dual coil designs, I defer to cols specs...

[McSeem]

My suggestion to moderators. It looks like the "Electronics" section is mostly about DIY sustainers. Maybe it makes sense to add a special forum section? -- Guitar sustain systems?

[psw]

Yes...well it has been suggested before...

I recently got an offer from another forum to do exactly that and am considering something of that kind of move after recent events.

There are a whole heap of issues in this regard...the old way as this grew was to simply keep everything in one thread with satellite tutorials and threads on completed projects...hence the driver making, the general tutorial, the sounds thread....and a few scattered threads that took the best of what was happening in the big thread to other places.

Attempts to suggest that people make their own threads about their own problems and questions seem to have fallen largely on deaf ears...though perhaps things are improving. SO, any thread, now that the general discussion thread is closed, becomes a general discussion thread or hijacked into ever growing discussions not related to what the topic was about. This of course makes all of this stuff impossible to search for.

If anyone has been following things or read posts in the last year, they can hardly be unaware that all this has led to the closing, editing and removal of almost every sustainer thread, and a general 'had enough' attitude of PG towards any sustainer topic being mentioned. However, any google search for sustainers, particularly DIY work, always leads back to PG. Over the years many fledgling forums have approached me privately to take the discussion elsewhere due to the overwhelming subscription...I thought PG was it's natural home and community, but after recent times, one has to wonder. The main thread was absent from view completely for a good part of a year, causing a huge amount of people to either wonder why google was sending them to PG or contacting me directly...any comment on the situation risked and indeed closed threads. Some of the misleading material was closed I see and just dumped into the tutorial section as a "solution"...

So, I don't know...separate threads might be a good idea...but since that tends not to be done as a rule with people taking onto existing ones, and the huge thread that was never intended to grow like that is so maligned...it tends to be that people or PG just wish the sustainer things would just go away, is difficult or unmoderated, and the whole thing seems to encourage a lot of aggressively held opinions sometimes deteriorating to personal abuse. As I am seen to have "started all this" I seem to be held up for responsibility. The same impression seems to be that since I started working on things and promote them for others to do the same, I should somehow put the work in to design circuits or acquire the tools and skills to 'prove' my work instead of others 'disproving' or better yet...simply improving things.

Anyway...has been for some time in recent times a difficult subject and environment and I am not sure that anything much has changed there...people who have contributed to that situation, and of course myself, still are here and much I have reason to suspect is transferred between those that were a part of this through PM's.

In the shorter term, I thought that if people started their own threads and presented their work...if there were that many threads of interest a section may well evolve from it. People seem reticent to do that, and the all in one option is now closed. Also, since people seem to have trouble finding the tutorials and attempt to read the sustainer thread (which was never the intention and not a good idea IMHO), a separate section may well get as lost as the reference section where such things live.

I've no objection, but the idea has been rejected for some time byt the power that be and I don't sense any change. It was years before the sustainer thread was 'pinned' itself....coming and going in the general section as things transpired. If people would like to discuss a potential alternative 'home' they are welcome to contact me, perhaps there is a more appropriate place for such things than PG, though it would be regrettable and continuity would be lost...