NinjaTaiken

I'd go with fender-style single-coil pickups, straight up. Vintage if that's your thing, slightly overwound for the others. For number of winds (or rather, resistance), check StewMac's website, they've got some info, or wind to the resistance specs other SC's you like the sound of have. Best I can do for ya (although I wouldn't mind numbers as answers either ;-)

As for Sonokeling, that's good 'ol Dalbergia Latifolia by any other name. East Indian Rosewood. Usually the name that's used for plantation-grown wood from Indonesia.

Thanks. There's a good source of info about Fenders pickups over at the links in Ampage. Did you mean i should overwind all of them or the bridge one?

I wanna make three singles for a strat style knockoff. It has a Basswood body, Maple neck and some wierd fretboard wood I've never heard of (Sonokilin or Sonokeling anyone?)

I was pretty much planning on making the earlier vintage Fenders, but I want to know if anyone has a different suggestion. No humbuckers.

Plus, what should I wind for the different positions etc etc, any useful footnotes that could help me are good.

There's only one common factor to the signal all the pickups produce, and thats the string. If it was just on one pickups then it's a 90% chance the low E magnet is dead. Anyway, perhaps the action on that string is higher? Just to be on the safe side,change the string to a brand new one intonate it, check the bridge saddle, check the nut, check everything that's possibly related to the string. Nothing works? Send it to a guitar tech.

Look at the magnet, could it have possibly sunk in a little? Most chances that it's just lost a bit of it's strength, you gotta rechargh it. See stewmac for more info.

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Oh, I didn't see you wrote it's on all of the pickups settings. Well, have you tried changing the string?

hello friends... im trying to build a pickup [humbucker] and i dont know where to start.... can somebody give me some pointers or links with tutorials bout iit...

with anticipated thnx.. 

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Google Jon Tirone, look at his website, great for what you need.

Plus, go to stewmac and look for the humbucker guide.

Is it 43AWG? Cuz with 42 AWG it would add up to 13,000 winds making it bigger than a P-90.

So how would you go about using a sewing machine to wind a pickup? I've been thinking about using one of the sewing machines laying around my parent's house to wind up some pickups, but I have no idea how the damn things work!

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1) Take the motor out, so you just have a spinny thing and a foot speed controller

2) Mount it on a piece of scrap ply, or something

3) possibly make a 'flywheel' type thing out of, say, scrap corian, mount it on the shaft (this to 'smooth out' the spin up and spin down

4) mount bobbing, start winding.

That's how I've seen it doen, anyway, and what I'm planning to do with the cheap surplus sewing machine motor I got.

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It could be great to have a foot pedal and all, but no chance my parents will let me take apart the sewing machine. Not yet atleast.

i use sandpaper on mine. or an emry board. and just tape it to a table or something flat.  a good xacto knife with the wire taped down is easy enough to scrape it off. but it helps to have a magnifying glass so you can really se what you are doing.

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Okay... I have a 4" diameter one here somewhere heh.

Stewmac says you have to peel off the coating with a knife and be careful not the cut the wire, and I doubt I can scratch a wire thinner than my hair without breaking it. Any tips on how its done?

Yeah, I should've labeled that picture

The big orange block is the magnet. You'll have to make the blades tall enough to stick through the four layers of Forbon, plus enough to hold the magnet in place on the bottom.

You can probably get away with using 43 AWG wire like on a Tele neck pickup. Keep in mind that single-coil sized 'bucker bobbins are TALLER than standard bobbins, so you should be able to put enough wire on 'em to get a fairly good resistance on both coils.

For 12k resistance, wind both coils to 6k resistance--probably about 5000-7000 winds.

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Well that makes sense. Thanks. Guess this isnt as hard as I thought.

What about covers? Could I get away with cutting off the top of a normal cover and painting the forbon white or something neat?

Yeah, I figured because it's a helluva thin coil I need more winds. The resistance should still be pretty low shouldn't it? How much res do I need typically?

Plus, how thin of a wire? Could 44AWG do? Uh, 44 is thinner than 42 right? It's backwards isnt it? 41 is thick?

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No clue on the resistances, but I'd guess you'd want the same kind of figures as you get from a regular humbucker (what, 4-7k per coil? I'm sort of guessing here..).

And yes, higher gauge = thinner wire. But 41 still isn't 'thick' by any traditional meaning of that word ;-)

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Thicker, that is. (:

The resistance is 11.78k bridge position and 9.86k for neck position. So how much resistance would I get for 2000 winds per coil with 44 gauge?

Where exactly does the magnet go again? Is it the big orange thing in the schematic?

To get high-output performance, single-coil-sized humbuckers are typically wound with very fine wire.  A machine has the consistency and precision to do it, but I'm not sure about doing it by hand.

Of course, you can either:

a ) give it a try, you have nothing to lose!

b ) use 'normal'-sized wire but just expect different output levels and sound in advance.  You might be pleasantly surprised!

To a previous question, though, yes you can use normal polepieces.  Lots of SC-sized humbuckers, like the Seymour Duncan "Little '59" do this.

Greg

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Yeah, I figured because it's a helluva thin coil I need more winds. The resistance should still be pretty low shouldn't it? How much res do I need typically?

Plus, how thin of a wire? Could 44AWG do? Uh, 44 is thinner than 42 right? It's backwards isnt it? 41 is thick?

So I wind the wire around the blade? wouldn't it make the coil shape a bit wierd? Or maybe it would just contribute size-wise?

Winding square like that oughta make the wire a bit more susceptible to breakge right?

Shouldn't there be a core? Like in normal humbucker bobbins?

or maybe I could just make a bobbin with walls, stick in the blades and fill it with wax or epoxy or whatever to use as a core?

the rails are the pole pieces its just a piece of metal with a magent behind hit and you can use magnets if you want they are just hard to shape. thats why rails/pole pieces/screws are used to carry the magnetic field

maybe ebaying a cheap rail bucker and taking it to bits :O would be a good idea

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So it's like a normal humbucker, bar magnet and all, but instead of polepieces you got a barpiece with a blade looking thingie on top? So technically, I could make single coil sized pickups with normal polepieces, only they'd be too big...

Meh, screw it.

I've never seen anyone 'do' single coil sized, parallel coil (two next to each other) blade type buckers. I'd guess it's possible, and the basic concept would be similar. There was a discussion not long ago on the MIMF where a few people said they'd made stacked buckers (coils over each other) that worked.

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Yeah, but I'm don't want minibuckers, I want single coil size humbuckers, Seymour Duncan style. Can't find any schematics anywhere ):.

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Stacked would be single coil. Standard dimension coils, just one on top of the other. You don't get the 'two blade' look, but it is humbucking.

And nope, no schematics. Pickup schematics are rare beasts anyway; only the most common ones are out there (strat, tele, humbucker, P-90, P-bass, Jazz Bass) and easy to find.

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Yes, I know, but I'm still looking for information about railbuckers.

Anyway, about the stacked ones, it would be taller unless its smaller bobbins, right?

I've never seen anyone 'do' single coil sized, parallel coil (two next to each other) blade type buckers. I'd guess it's possible, and the basic concept would be similar. There was a discussion not long ago on the MIMF where a few people said they'd made stacked buckers (coils over each other) that worked.

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Yeah, but I'm don't want minibuckers, I want single coil size humbuckers, Seymour Duncan style. Can't find any schematics anywhere ):.

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So, instead of polepieces you got rails inside the bobbin?

And very thin bobbins?

I've never seen anyone 'do' single coil sized, parallel coil (two next to each other) blade type buckers. I'd guess it's possible, and the basic concept would be similar. There was a discussion not long ago on the MIMF where a few people said they'd made stacked buckers (coils over each other) that worked.

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Yeah, but I'm don't want minibuckers, I want single coil size humbuckers, Seymour Duncan style. Can't find any schematics anywhere ):.

Stewmac has nor instructions nor materials for single sized humbuckers.

Two very thin coils with rails on them and no or one big spacer on the bottom?

Anyone got some instructions or a diagram of a single coil sized humbucker?

Plus, where do I get the materials? the rails and whatever that is?

I run 1400 rpm (about 23 turns per second) on my winder and have only broke the wire a few times. Takes a few minutes to wind both coils on a humbucker. I made my winder out of a old sewing machine, the Jason Lolar style. I even hava a spring loaded wire tensioner that I got right of the old sewing mashine. The coils are a little loose wound, but I always pot them, so thats no problem.

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Holy crap, thats faster then a proffesional winding machine.

I wind all my pups with a handdrill and I can easily do 10-12 turns by second. No more than 10-15 minutes for one coil.

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Really? Damn, thats awesome... No break or anything? It's gonna be a problem though because I want to make a counter...

And mattia, you can solder it together but it's really not very recommended.

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There's no problem at all with resoldering it. Read my pickup tutorial if you want to see how I do it.

http://home.zonnet.nl/wilmaremy/makingpups.html

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Still, it can get unpleasent if something screws up and you find your self dewinding a bajiliion turns. How much time did it take you to make the first one?

BTW, just a tip, instead of soldering a chunk on the wire, tin a really little amount of solder on one end of the wire, then solder them together with no extra solder.

I wind all my pups with a handdrill and I can easily do 10-12 turns by second. No more than 10-15 minutes for one coil.

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Really? Damn, thats awesome... No break or anything? It's gonna be a problem though because I want to make a counter...

And mattia, you can solder it together but it's really not very recommended.

like i said, just try to rip it once by hand and once by the resistence of whatever your winding with (drill, hand drill, hand, a3 HP air condition motor etc.)

the costs are none, and you should get the felling of what you shouldn't come near to.

but remember, putting the winds too loose, and you'll suffer from magnetic disturbes.

just for the protocol, i never tried (yet) to wind my own pickups, but i read a LOT of stuff, mainly because i'm dirt poor at the momnet and really don't want to waste money on something that in the end go for nothing.

if yet you feel like talking, my ICQ is 174440988 and my e-mail \ messanger is ron_amram@hotmail.com

i'de like to hear how your doing, beause frankly, your in the same position as i am

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ישראלי?

I made my own very cheap and simple winder from an aluminium lathe thing that you can attatch a power drill to in the bargain bucket at B+Q,cost a fiver.

I've used a hand drill as well at first and now have the motor off a Singer sewing machine with the little speed control pedal,replacing the power drill.

All of those work and i wind fairly slowly,probably about or less than 3 a sec.

I don't count the winds i just know when i'm in the general ballpark area and the measure the resistance by scraping a little insulation off,if it's wrong i just add or take away a few winds.

Pretty basic really as i'm poor and being a carer there's no change on the horizon with cash flow.

My first was the neck 'Bucker off my warlock as it was awful as standard and measured 15K.I used the same bobbin and magnets and just rewound it to a lower resistance-8.5K.I did use a trick i heard of though and used a very thin piece of plastic between the magnets and the windings,a la Gibby Airbucker.

It sounds very clear now and nothing like it was before and i had no way of waxing or potting it so i tried white wood glue added whilst winding.

It worked but if i went fast i got covered in PVA hence i wound slowly.I've wound about a dozen now and fancy trying slightly unbalanced coils in a 'Bucker as i have a good friend who is best mates with Jim Rolph and he does that with PAF's.I even mailed Jim and told him what i was doing and he said i was doing fine on a shoestring budget and confirmed that he has tried the Airbucker trick too.

As long as you're not in a hurry that works for me,hope it has been of some use to you

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The problem is I'm not very patient about these things... Plus if I break the wire after an hour of winding I'll probably be smashing the table against the wall