Pickup winder

[Bent]

I don't think I would trust the magnets to hold it in place. I'll try my idea first and see what happens. It it flies apart I know I'll have to do something different
The most usual gauge of wire is 42. I got a 2 pound spool of it. That should be enough for 10 or 12 single coil 10 string pups I hope.

Maybe today I can get back out to the shop. Been busy fixing this computer grrr

[Bent]

Hi Mac,
As some of you might have read, I had a whole bunch of questions that Mac had already answered. SO I'll edit this one and promise to read the whole post before making remarks
Simplest is always the smartest. Now I feel like throwing away mine and using yours.
Looks great!

The clear plastic and wood thing..I guess that's your template for cutting out and drilling the holes in the plates?
My hat goes off to you!

[Bent]

Mac, is the clothespin fastened to the work bench? That way you have both hands free...one for guiding the wire and one for adjusting the speed

[mac639]

Bent....Yes the clothespin is actually fastened to the purple board near the edge. I'd forgotten that. The felt is a hunk off of an old blackboard eraser. It doesn't want to be too tight so the wire might break, but the spring in the clothespin seems to be just about right. Now the bobbin in the picture. That's an actual bobbin to be wound. The bobbin is maple wood. Works good 'cause it's so hard and you can drill right near the edge with out splitting or whatever. You want the bobbin to be as small as possible on the sides and ends so as to get the wire as close to the magnets as possible and also to make the whole thing as compact as possible. I make the bobbin first, then attach one plate and drill the holes through the bobbin, and the plate. Then attach the other plate and drill back through from the other side. Then I spray paint the whole works before winding. Awhile ago you were discussing magnets. I've got a whole bunch of different things. Last summer I happened on a kid's toy set at a garage sale. It's called a Mighty Magnets Construction Set, and I got it for a Loonie I think. Little plastic things with 3/16" cobalt magnets in each end. Dozens and dozens of them. And major strong they are!, and tiny. I've used quite a few for pickups. Just attach one or two to a piece of 3/16" steel rod (you don't need any glue but I put a drop of Krazy glue on each just in case) and put through the holes on your pickup assembly bobbin.

[Bent]

Wow, this is news to me. You are saying that you wind the wire around the wood? I would have thought that this would cut down on the magnetic field too much. I took it for granted that the magnets are glued into the holes in the plastic top and bottom and you wind the wire right around the magnets?

[mac639]

Well I guess there's nothing to stop you from winding right around the poles. I guess I'd wrap some electricians tape around them first though if I was going to do that. Any pickups I've taken apart had a injection molded plastic bobbin though. I just made mine from wood that's all. Anyway you sure don't want to short out the wire on some metal somewhere along the way, especially at the start which will be on the bottom. The way I have it I can move the poles up or down to adjust the "gain" of each string. I've tried threading holes in the ends of the poles for a screw adjustment without much success. On a slightly different vein, I've studied the Alumitone pickups from what I can see from the pictures on the web, but I haven't been able to really figure out how they are constructed or how they actually work. Do you know? Seems like a better way all around to make a pickup, but guess I'm too dumb to figure it out.
Mac

[Allan]

Hi guys,

I have been looking into making a PU, inspired by the pics of Bent's winder. I have a solid body mandolin that I made and then abandoned when I looked into buying a pickup for it. I really like the idea of the calculator as a turns counter. I have looked extensively through the 'net for information and this is some of what I have come up with.

Attaching the bobbin to the rotating part. Double sided carpet tape. I would have had doubts about this just a short time ago but I tried it recently to hold a profile jig to a work piece and used it on my pin router with complete success. I am not talking that light weight Scotch Tape stuff. This is thick, strong tape.
If you are using Alnico magnets you can't use them to hold the bobbin in place because, assuming they are new, they are not actually magnets yet. They don't get to be magnets 'till they are activated following the winding process.
It is OK to wind straight onto the pole pieces as a base Bent. It is not a fixed and firm rule but generally speaking, in the world of six stringers, Fender wound straight onto the pole pieces while, certainly later, Gibson used a bobbin. Either way will work and may well affect the sound.
If you can do so, it is good to make the pole pieces a press fit into the plastic cheeks. Also, allow them to project just a little at top and bottom. What that does is give you a little leeway to set them up unevenly to compensate for a possible string unbalance.

I visited a local charity store a couple of days back and found a variable speed hand mixer which I bought for all of two dollars.
That will be the heart of my machine. Copying my hero Bent, I went to the Dollar Store and got a calculator. That was not a success. I was unable to connect to the PCB at the '=' key as the PCB wasn't really a PCB at all. The concept is still excellent so I have got hold of a different one and I will open it up for a 'look see' later. At a buck a pop I don't mind buying a few more, if I have to, until I find the right one for the job.
This whole thing is just a little winter project for me as it is still way too cold to work, out in the shop, for more than a short time so I will not be chasing it with any great urgency. Despite that, I still find this to be a fascinating thread. Keep 'em coming guys.

Mac, the clothes pin is a good idea as it looks like it will give a consistent tension. Do you move the fishing rod tip as you wind or does it swing by its self? Or does it even just sit there as a non snag guide? I have spent many, many hours winding armored cables onto winches on survey ships and found that, if you feed then from far enough away, they are essentially self leveling. I have no idea if this translates to this application with the thin, single strand wire. I am only mentioning this point because, as far as I can see from the pic, your PU in progress looks like a nice, even wind.


Regards, Allan.....

[Allan]

Mac, I have looked at the Alumitones and as far as I can tell this is how they work. They use a single turn of wire and a very high impedance, very high gain matching circuit. That could be as simple as a transformer.

An engineer I used to work with showed me a pickup idea that he had come up with many years ago. It used a similar concept but didn't even have a single turn coil. It used the string as the coil in effect. A connection at each end of the string fed the high gain stage and the excitation was from a simple magnet placed close to the bridge. It worked but, due to what was commercially available back then by way of gain stage, was very noisy. The concept may well work today - I dunno.


Regards, Allan.....

[mac639]

Yes...good on the Alumitones. Something I've pondered for a long time. I keep looking at a spring reverb box and thinking....whack those springs and the little transformer which has the ends of the springs acting as the secondary really works to pick up the spring movement. Could something like that concept be modified/adapted to be a pickup?
And the winder. No the wire's too limp or small to level wind by itself. At one point I was thinking of incorporating an old level wind bait casting fishing reel parts to do the level winding, you know the small shaft with the continuous and reversing gear thingee (don't know what to call it). Anyway, never did get to try that yet.

Scary day today.....I just removed the fretboard (to replace it) on a 60+ year old Martin D28. Man that's not my favourite thing to do! Anyway I was really careful and slow and it came off with hardly a splinter on the neck.
Phewww......time for an afternoon snooze!
Mac

[Bent]

Allan, Go to the dollar store (where everything is actually One Dollar) and buy 3 or 4 calculators. Not all of them will work, heck, not all of them will even come apart! some of them come apart but so do the keys..they scatter all over of course, and you have to use trial and error to find the contacts you need.
When you open one up, look for wee little holes right by the contact point for each key.
I happened to have single strand wire that fit into that hole. On my calc I had to put one wire on the = and one on the 0 Bend the wire over on the other side of the circuit board.

I am back to square one here. I have to make myself a jig of some kind, to get the holes drilled evenly on top and bottom pieces.