Big_Bur Posted January 30, 2020 Report Share Posted January 30, 2020 Hello! I'm new here and new to guitar building. I love woodworking and have been playing bass for about a year and really wanted a fun project to combine the two. I came up with the idea of building a single string bass using the heaviest string I can find (.270 gauge) and tuning it to a ridiculously low note. it's not the most useful instrument in the would but seems fun. originally I was just going to buy a J-Bass pickup and turn it sideways but that seemed boring. I decided what I want to do is build a single, 2 inch in diameter pickup. on the finished bass it'll look like a two inch metal disc under the string. I'd like to get some opinions on this and some advice on how to go about it. I was thinking about tearing apart a speaker magnet. They're built with a magnet around a metal core which is attached to a large metal disc. I was thinking I could remove the round magnet, coil the wire around the core and attach a neodymium magnet to the bottom of it. it seems like it should work but I don't know what gauge magnet wire I should use or how strong of a magnet. I also don't know if the core of a speaker magnet is an appropriate metal to make a pickup out of. Any help, thoughts or opinions would be great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted January 30, 2020 Report Share Posted January 30, 2020 There's two ways to build a pickup and your explanation is mixing them. Either your polepiece is a magnet or the polepiece is steel to which you attach a magnet. Two magnets may cause anomalies. That said, you can use any magnet you have at hand as well as any bolt or a piece of steel rod. Or you can simply buy a cylindrical magnet for your pole piece. Note that a cylindrical neodymium magnet of some 20x20 mm is VERY strong! About 15 kg pull compared to the 4 kg of an Alnico! Check for variations e.g. here: https://www.first4magnets.com/ Since we're talking about a highly experimental thing here, there's no rules for the wire gauge. A pickup is a combination of the strength of the magnet and the number of windings. Knowing that neodymium is stronger than ferrite magnets, well... All I can recommend is to build several of them, or build one with a swappable pole piece and detachable magnets for experimenting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_Bur Posted January 30, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2020 7 hours ago, Bizman62 said: There's two ways to build a pickup and your explanation is mixing them. Either your polepiece is a magnet or the polepiece is steel to which you attach a magnet. Two magnets may cause anomalies. That said, you can use any magnet you have at hand as well as any bolt or a piece of steel rod. Or you can simply buy a cylindrical magnet for your pole piece. Note that a cylindrical neodymium magnet of some 20x20 mm is VERY strong! About 15 kg pull compared to the 4 kg of an Alnico! Check for variations e.g. here: https://www.first4magnets.com/ Since we're talking about a highly experimental thing here, there's no rules for the wire gauge. A pickup is a combination of the strength of the magnet and the number of windings. Knowing that neodymium is stronger than ferrite magnets, well... All I can recommend is to build several of them, or build one with a swappable pole piece and detachable magnets for experimenting. thanks for the input. i'm confused though. how was i mixing the two ways. if i remove the magnet from the core, coil the wire around the core and then attache a magnet to the bottom of the core, isn't that exactly what you said to do? or am i confused about something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted January 30, 2020 Report Share Posted January 30, 2020 Oh, I may have misread your post. I thought you were going to use both the round magnet of the speaker and a neodymium one together. Anyhow, the core has to be magnetic, either by being a magnet or being some ferromagnetic material like iron with a magnet sticked to the bottom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.