Steel Guitar Builder

Good morning y'all. Bent and a couple of you guys know that I've been building a couple more guitars this winter. I finished one of them a few days ago. I wound one of my regular style single coil pickups and used aluminum for the plates. Don't know whether it was that or whatever but that pickup hums so bad that I couldn't stand it, took it out and put it in my "junk" box. I spent a lot of time yesterday researching stacked humbuckers and decided to try something. I haven't wound any coils on it yet but will this afternoon. If you look at the pictures you'll see a spacer in the middle. The magnets are in that spacer. Last summer at a garage sale I got a kids toy set of "Mighty Magnets" construction set. There were about 100 tiny cobalt magnets 3/16" diameter by 1/8" thick in the set....enough for 10 pickups. What I've done is inserted one in each of the 10 holes in the spacer and coupled them to short steel rods going to the top and to the bottom plates. So now all the "tops" are "norths" and the bottom plate end are "souths". What I'm hoping is when I wind the coils (both CW) and connect the two coils in series I'll have a humbucker with a total DC resistance of about 12k which is what I want.
I'd appreciate any comments you guys might have on this experiment.
Thanks,
Mac

hi Mac, your pickup design looks enteresting , i hope it works out for you . i havent tried pickups yet but ive built a couple bobbins and i have wire but no magnets as of yet, anyway hope it works out . Russ

Russ -

When you're ready, try KJMagnetics.com. Wide array of types and sizes including the new Neodymium types. Prices reasonable.

Mac -

If you're not satisfied with the results, try the link I gave above. They will probably have the exact size that you need. Once again, prices reasonable.

Richard