New pickup completed

[Steve W]

I had pictures of the bobbin before I built it but I can't find those now.

I wanted to try something different for my triple neck pedal steel. This is a single blade pole piece with an aluminum top, clear platic baseplate and two large alnico V bar magnets with the magnetism oriented out the end of the magnet so they are attached like a charlie christian pickup. The changer housing has a cut out so the three inch long magnets can travel under the housing and into the cut out under the neck. #40 wire wound about 5600 turns which ended up being around 3.8K. I used a shielded hookup wire. The mounting is direct to the guitar with four screws and compression springs. I wrapped the coil with a cotton string then used black tape to cover that. That should protect the coil and looks finished off. The string was so that the tape dosn't corode the wire or break anything and it will come off without destroying the coil if I wanted to add more wire or fix something.

I bought the aluminum plate at the hardware store and traced the original pickups on to it. Cut it to length and then ground down the corners on a belt sander. I polished it with 600 grit and then used a liquid electric tape product under the plate to help insure no shorting out. I cut and polished the blade and then laquered it to help corrosion and shorts. The long hole in the aluminum and plastic was done on a drill press. I used guitar ball ends for eyelets and glued them into the platic. The whole piece was glued together. Then I wrapped the blade with art cre-something tape. I made a bobbin holder and used my drill press as a winder. It is set at 560 RPM so I just did the math and watched the clock. The drill press depth was set for the size of bobbin.

I wasn't expecting it to sound good the first try but I'm pretty happy with it. I thought the output might be on the low side but it isn't. Range seems good. Low impedance doesn't always make for a pickup lacking in low range, this one seems to have good low end. (could be the guitar too) It also doesn't have ice pick top end. I'll try to do a sound clip later. I compared it to my Clinesmith and I like the results. The red tape was to keep the hookup from hitting the housing. I was thinking I wouldn't be able to see that but I can. I'll change that out to black or just get rid of it.

[azureskys]

How is that pickup sounding?