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So, what are my chances?

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2/18/2006 2:52 AM
dude	So, what are my chances? I really wanna make know pickups for my guitar, I've read pretty much everything there is to read, and before I go and spend 100 dollars, I need to know what are my chances of succeeding. I can't afford throwing away a hundred bucks, so I need to know if my chances are good of succeeding in my first shot.

2/18/2006 5:10 AM

Doing the research first is a good thing to have done. Your budget of $100 is tight. You will have to make some sort of winding machine and buy a tiny reel of wire. Then there's the pickup components. It's not easy to get the wire to come off tiny reels without it breaking. That may be the one thing that makes you want to give up. If you can overcome the problems you are bound to come across, you should reap the rewards. On that budget, I don't fancy your chances.

2/18/2006 6:39 AM
Dave Stephens	I wouldn't try to make pickups from the start, get some old ones or ones you have that arent very good and rewind them. Yes you'll need a winder and ALOT of time and patience. You'll break alot of wire and make alot of mistakes. When I started, it was probably a couple months before the constant urge to quit went away Flushed alot of money down the toilet during that time too.....

2/18/2006 7:48 AM

I can order a spool for 6 pickups and the rest of the materials for less then a 100$ from Stewmac.
And why shouldn't the wire come off the spool?
Everything I saw so far suggests I should place the spool like so:
http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/i-1465/1465_wirespool.gif
I'm less worried about breakage because I'm planning to be really really slow and careful. I'm more worried about tensioning and potting.
Could you guys please tell what were your main issues and how you solved them? It'll help me assesing if and how I'll approach this...
By the way, I'm planning to make a winding machine like Jon Tirone's, man-drill and so.

2/18/2006 8:11 AM

If you're only looking to make a couple, you can go very cheap on the winder (if you don't value your time all that much) - just jury-rig an old turntable or the like for a winder, set up a guide using a piece of teflon tube and some scrap wood/dowels/spring, and a simple scrap wood/felt/spring clamp for a tensioner. I throttled up an old record player to turn at about 100RPM and took about 3 1/2 hours to wind a JBass pickup.

The most expensive single purchase was the wire from StewMac, about $25 or so. I can see $100 being a reasonable budget if you're willing to go the hillbilly route like I did, even if you end up potting the pickups. Beeswax and parafin can be had for not too much money at a decent arts supply store (I got mine at Pearl in Cambridge, MA).

One thing I'd do differently is to buy the bobbins rather than make them from scratch, that was the biggest PITA part of the project.

2/18/2006 7:52 AM

Yeah, like I said, I'm going to make a winder from a man-drill, like Jon Tirone. It's just going to be those 3 singles by the way, and maybe another humbucker when I scrap up the cash. Do I really need a guide? I'm going to tension it by hand so guiding it shouldn't be my main issue.
Wax is seriously not an issue. I got a ton of paraffin somewhere, and I'll take apart a beeswax candle when I need to. And yeah, I'm going to buy 3 single coil kits, so it comes with everything, bobbins, staggered magnets so forth so forth.

2/18/2006 8:52 AM
DaveK	I'd take the time to make a simple guide. At first, I attempted to freehand it and I failed miserably. Perhaps your eyesight is keener than mine, and your hand is steadier, but spending an hour or two cobbling together something that limits the travel of the wire feed was worth it for me. As always, YMMV.

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