Guitar PIckups Who wants to be my Guinea Pig

[ansil]

in a nutshell i am doing a new pickup, its based off a few ideas that have had and talked with a fellow musician and electroniics guy.

i was wantign someone to check it out, i am going to do two of these. and all i am asking is that someone try it and let me know what they think, i am shipping it free of charge. if i get mulitple responses on this i will have it rotate throughout the forum each person ships it to the next. let me know what you think.

heres a description below. i will have a technical drawin up soon.

it is an active mulitple coil pickup with its own preamp and it has an adjustable midrange boost and high end cut. so as you crank up the midrange it givesyou a little less highs as you turn the knob. also i am putting a threeband eq in one of them to see how that goes. with a resonance trimmer with a thumbwheel so its all in the pickup. it also utilized one half of an inductor to help give some noise canceling via feeding back some negative humm off of what it picks up on its own, without being attached like a normal humbucker

basically i am taking an slightly over wound single coil mounting it on its side. using high output pickups. but redirecting the magnetic flow so that it pulls opposite of the normal vertical pull and pulls horizontal. there was a magnetic genius who happened to be a guitar player, all though i dont' remmeber his name. and anyway he developed these insanly cool pickups on this.

now i am using the heavy duty magnets and a slight over wound coil to compensate for the refocusing of the magnetic field and still have a good sound, i have already done this and i know it yields a very pleasing sound. so i am going to proceed with this design.

i dont' plan on doing massive runs of this pickup if it does dowell perhaps sell the design.

ANSIL

[Andreas]

I would love to try it out but I live far away from where you are so it would be a alot of shipping cost`s and also I dont have alot of expierence with differend pickups so as to grade it accurately.

[ansil]

where do you live. i can ship nearly anywhere in the world for five bucks. and well it will still be a couple of weeks before i am done.

[ansil]

http://img69.photobucket.com/albums/v210/a...ansilpickup.bmp

ihave no jpg or gif converters so theres the link a rough sketch

[psw]

Hey Ansil, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Seriously, i've been doing similar things with putting controls on pickups. So far passive swiching like phasing, coil taps and filters (caps, etc). What i've been working on is using micro tactile switches (it's hard to find one's that latch but they're out there) Ive mounted them on the top ends of single coils on either side of the strings but you need to have a non-standard coil design .

That's why I got into these rare earth magnets as their power means that you can miniturize much of it. As for sideways coils it has been done before - mainly gibson. And there is a design in Animal Magnetisim For Musicians which uses a sideways coil with blades to redirect the magnetic field.

One benifit of placing the coil on its side is that if you have your magnets also on their side, running along the string, you may use far more powerful magnets and less turns. It seems possible to make a powerful low impedance pickup in this way which would naturally be less noisy and passive.

I tried to use surface mount inductors to make a hex coil in an active pickup but got frustrated. Their cores are ferrite and just right to mount a 5x1.5mm R.E. mag to them. By wiring them alternately and reversing every second mag you diffuse the field (they are attracted to one another) causing less string pull but still retaining the power to the coils. The signal would be low but with active electronics it should work - in theory. Perhaps you'd like to have a go, theres no winding involved!

I mention all this because, in order to get your controls on board, smaller is better and designs as you describe enable better usable space.

By the way, Schaller make a humbucking sized pickup with screws where you would expect pole pieces. Actually they are EQ controls. They cant be adjusted on the fly as per your design though.

As for my latest coils. My sustainer prototype coil which is currently working, uses a ferrite core and RE mag and is only 5mm thick. Plenty of room for the circuitry below even in a single coil size. My next prototype is designed to be only 3-4mm thick and work on all six strings, even after being set in epoxy and has a steel "cage" and windings in two directions. It is powered by 7 RE mags only 3mmx2mm deep and a powdered iron/silicone core, so you see things can be really small (if a bit wide) Why so small, because I intend to mount it to the scratch plate with double sided tape. No routing etc.

Anyway, food for thought

You seem to be working in the right direction

psw

p.s It looks like a humbucker and I'm not inclined to take apart my 60's Les Paul just at the moment and my test guitar still only has one string and is made of pine so won't do it justice.... good luck

[Andreas]

where do you live. i can ship nearly anywhere in the world for five bucks. and well it will still be a couple of weeks before i am done.

I live in Cyprus. It is in Europe.

I have a strat copy of decent quality construction im willing to test it on..I would have to cut the pickguard to acomodate a humbucker but im willing to do so. I always wanted to experiment with that guitar but I never had that extra money to buy new pickups. (stock pickups are very poor quality)

[rob]

I'll be a subject! I'm on the Isle of wight(UK) and I would be putting it in a westone thunder IIA. I have daily band practises so I could give it a full work out! look foward to it man

[spirit]

Hell, I'd give it a try! But, again, I live a we bit away (Scotland, UK). Not sure which guitar I'd put it in, so don't count me as a test subject yet.....

[Primal]

Seems like the only people willing to test it for you are in Europe. I would test one for you, but sadly I am a bass player and haven't saved up enough money for a guitar yet.

Now, if you make a jazz bass style pickup, I would gladly help ya

[feylya]

I'd love to test one. I'd throw it into an Epiphone strat that's been cut for humbuckers. In Ireland so it wouldn't be too expensive to forward onto others if that's what the deal was.

BTW, MS Paint lets you save as .jpg

[bob7]

Ill test it, and im in NY.....Throw that guy right into my Test guitar (an old washburn strat copy that i have done Everything thinkable to...but it still plays well)

Depending on when (if) i try it out, i may throw it in my custom project too...

[Nalo1022]

hell ill try them out my guitar needs new pickups anyways lol , nad im in the US so you got one more american tester

[spirit]

Looks like you're getting alot of interest, ansil. Oh, and bump.

[weezerboy]

if theres any going i'll take one and shove it in the ibanez that has brians hotstick in it

[kings_x]

I would like to try it out. I have an Ovation Ultra GS which is basically a Strat copy with a humbucker in the bridge. Its my frankenstein guitar that I try out pickups and wireing schemes on. I also have a home built guitar using the Stewmac neck-thru neck and birdseye maple. I could record it in both for you so you can hear how it sounds.

PM me if you want me to try it out. I'll send you my info. I live in central Indiana, South of Indy.

[southpaw rocker]

I wouldn't mind trying something new. I live in Maine so I don't if that's too far away. I have a Washburn BT2 striped of all electronics that's ready to be reassembled.

[ansil]

cool i am glad there are alot of expiramenters here.

i am still hammering out the last details on it..

and yes psw that was teh book that i was talkin about very good i actually saw the pickups the guy was making

and primal there is a bass one in the works that i have been tweaking for some time.

i will basically start geographically and send one pickup overseas and then send one stateside and what i will do is send it to the furthest person stateside and let them pass it along on its way back to me.

i will continue to check this thread so everyone hang on..

and thanks

[BLS]

Ill definetly try it out. Sounds cool!

[nonamemx]

I'll try it.

how is it supposed to be/sound different with a horizantal magnetic field?

I live in Dallas, Texas.

[nonamemx]

oh, and how is the pickup oriented?

All that stuff is on a PC board, right? how big is it?

[Hotrock]

I'll shove one in my polished-turd-ocaster once it's done (only needs spraying). Another brit though

Infact, while I'm on Ansil, I'll reply back to your email soon (hopefully today) but I've been toying with a pickup idea for a while now and I'd quite like to run it past you. I'll attach it onto the email

[ansil]

Hey Ansil, are you thinking what I'm thinking?

I tried to use surface mount inductors to make a hex coil in an active pickup but got frustrated. Their cores are ferrite and just right to mount a 5x1.5mm R.E. mag to them. By wiring them alternately and reversing every second mag you diffuse the field (they are attracted to one another) causing less string pull but still retaining the power to the coils. The signal would be low but with active electronics it should work - in theory. Perhaps you'd like to have a go, theres no winding involved!

I mention all this because, in order to get your controls on board, smaller is better and designs as you describe enable better usable space.

thanks there psw i need to sit down with you and work up some stuff man i think we coudl make some crazy stuff that i think alot of guitarists would appreciate and have wanted for some time.

for instance if you dont' mind going active you can always make a little touch switch there and place it outside the pickup cavity. i did this years ago on my cort guitar and later on an ibanez for myself as well as half a dozen other peoples guitars.

just to the left of the picukps i put this little metal strips there, and encapsulated the electronics all in epoxy and ran it off of a rechargable little 12v caralarm remote battery. i used non rechargable ones in the customers or 9v if they wanted it.

also for the hex pickup idea, i think it has been covered here but a friend sent me a thing where you use the radioshack reed relays i belive for it.. and basically you shove a nail down through the middle of it. and file off the end. i tried it with some relays that i had that were like 1.5k on each coil or so.. and i had very good luck with it. i used ceramic magnets on it though as i had each individual one wired up to be by itself.. or you could with a switch flip it so that you could have some balance ot your sound and also combine that with the southe end of a humbucker.

see where i am going with that. i thought you might like that i sure did.

later i just did one with two of the rare earth magnets like you were talkin about, but i put a solid metal strip on the bottom so they were all sharing the two magnets.

also as for what you were talkin about before in a previous thread about using the synthesized note to drive the sustaionr..[i am oversimplifiying i guess sorry] try taking two 555timers or one dual timer [556] and u would need something like a single transistor or such to basically boost the singal up a little and enter pin four on the first 555 timer and use it to get a synthesized tone that clocks itself with the guitar freq. and then from there you can use my freq divider to down shift the whole thing.

thats a quick and dirty way to get it workin without using the standard flip flop design.

heres another idea ..what if we take a single coil of wire and wind it in a figure eight.. but lopsided basically and have two setts of magnetic poles.. one north andone south.. so as it comes around it effectively will be reversed wound with itself ie the top part of the coil infront of it.

still working on this one but i did a lowimpedance version of it, but i didint like the preamp i was using at the time. but the sound was unique to say the least.

i guess in theory i am trying to do what we all have tried with coil cutting and such. i want a nice single coil sound.. but i also like a fat humbucker sound.

so i figured i have gotten close using somehting like the clapton midbooster, using the same principles as that and building my own filters along with the mid booster. was thinking about making a nice mid scoop..[not too harsh or steep only slight] in single coil mode, and as you increase the drive which also increased the midrange and rolls of some highs and lows. effectively makign a nice humbucker simulator..

the hardest part of this is i am going to try to get it all in the pickup, this i know i can do if i just externally run the wires out and have external controls. but that defeats my overal purpose.

[jefm]

You could maybe make a couple slugs push push switches....

Or even have the one coil just along for the ride to cancel hum and have all 6 pole pieces as dummies

Or make it 7 string size

[ansil]

well actually thats what the other half of the inductor there is doing is to pickup up noise and invert it. though its active.. since it is under the picukp right by the other coil it will theoretically pickup any noise and trash that incurs. although this is still speculation at present moment but i do remembet the guitar i had with an inductor in it. and boy let me tell you take off the back plate and it would hum like the devil. so i was thinking apply the thoery in reverse.

[ansil]

ok to update my thread first prototype is completed, and is a success. it still is not up to my standards yet, but i am going to re tool this one and try again. interestingly enough i was toying with a theory i had. i took a decent sized single coil and stripped it down to a coil of wire.

using my meter i measured the continuity of the wire to check for breaks during the whole procedure. thankfully there were none.

i stretched the coiled up wire out as far as i could. and as you can imagine it became quickly like matted dog hair.

when i rewound it on the bobbin. i did so with it matted like that.. i probally had 100feet of matted wire and decided as long as it didnt' break i would rewind it and repot it. and try it out.

interesting but not enough to warrant doing this all the time. almost like a moving pickup.. its like the field of magnetism would shift overtime not unlike say out of phase. although it was most interesting with an another pickup in parrallel with it.

anyway as far ad the other pickup design goes it was very nice. i liked having the thumbwheel eq trimmers there so i could adjust my Q before it hit the amp. made a great idea for me. i was thinking of say combining. the previous thread on the sustainor and using say surface mount technology and design a new board. but put the whole thing in the pickup.. so it would be a new type of sustainor. i emailed my buddy, in knoxville and he breadboarded up my idea. he gave me his tweaks on it for guitar. and we have come up with something that is very interesting.