Pickups From Scratch Vs Upgrading?

[mm66554]

Hi, do you think it's a better idea, as a guitar building noob, to buy and upgrade a pickup such as this:

http://www.ebay.co.u...=item27c8b54cf9

or making one from scratch? Reverse-engineering is intuitive, but I want to concentrate most on the overall sound. From what I understand it's the type of magnet and winding which affects tone of a pickup, so technically it should be OK to use the plastic parts of a cheaper pickup?

Is there any possibility of the pickup in the link actually sounding good? Would is contain weak plastic/bad wires do you think? Thanks.

[SwedishLuthier]

First: is it possible that this pickup sound good as is? For sure! Give it a fancy brand name and some intelligent and heavy marketing and you will have hordes of people swearing by it.

On a more serious note: It might actually sound good. Sound is really such an individual experience and some people like what others dislike. To be more concrete, this is probably a pickup made with steel slugs as pole pieces instead of magnets. It has probably a ceramic magnet beneath the coil, magnetizing the steel poles. No problem there. However if you think that you can effortless go in and "upgrade" it to "true vintage specs" its a no go. The construction is so different from "vintage correct" as possible. It has probably a plastic bobbin that the poles fit in instead of fibre top and bottom hold together by the magnets being pressed into place, thus being part of the structure of the pickup. And why worry about the quality of the wires? Upgrading the pickup (in my ears) means re-wind it. And then all wires need to come out. Or do you just want to change the mangers? That is doable. Pop the ceramic magnet of, push the rods out, push magnets in and hope they fit/stay.

You need to go back to: what do I want? Is is vintage sound, get a pickup kit from Mojotone or Stewmac or similar. 'cause upgrading this puppy will never get you "that" sound. But remember that there is no way that you will produce a cheeper pickup compared to whats readily available at say GFS when you include new magnets or new magnet wire or whatever (remember you need to include shipping and all other bits and pieces). However, if you are passionate about pickup making it is a way to start, although I still think it is better to get a kit and learn the basics from the classic models, ie strats, teles and Gibson style HBs.

In the end it is so much more that is part of the tone shaping than just wire and magnets. Take the extra distance between the magnetic wire and the magnets in a plastic bobbin type strat pickup compared to a traditional were the wire is wound directly against the magnets. It will change the sound. And the winding pattern. Wire tension. Wire insulation. Wire thickness. Magnet alloy. Magnet diameter and length etc. There is a lot of written "information" out there and almost as much disinformation. Read, think and wind. Expect the first five pickups to be crap. Expect the next five to be good, but go back a few years down the road and discover that they are more or less crap too. And learn from the experience. However never ever expect that making your own pickups will provide you with cheap pickups.

[Prostheta]

In general the same thing applies to upgrading cheapy guitars across the board. It might resemble a like-for-like copy however to make it awesome you need to replace every single last piece except for perhaps the knobs and switch tips.