New Article: Recoil

[The Tone God]

I posted a new article up at the domain, Recoil. Its about how I wind pickups. Pictures of the coil winder are included. While somewhat OT from effects I thought it might be an interesting read for some DIYers.

http://www.geocities.com/thetonegod/

Andrew

[Joep]

He Andrew

Cool thanks, I'll take some time to read it!

Bye,

Joep

[petemoore]

But not OT!  Pickups have a big effect on effect ckt in many ways.  
 It's a tricky trade to get into from what I've read on it.
 Lots of variables...however since my reads on it there may be more access to info about techniques and easier to get the 'improved'/right  materials.
 Doing your own ____ gives you first choice of whatever stock you produce!!!!!!!!!!

[MarkB]

Very cool article, Andrew...
and very informative - personally, I would have never thought to wind my own pickups..

So now comes the big question - how do they sound!?
"-)

[Peter Snowberg]

That's very cool!    

That's a much more impressive setup than a record player even if it isn't optimized for pickups. Nice job!

How do they sound?

-Peter

[george]

cool article TG, but where do you get the pole pieces and ceramic magnets (if you want to use them)?

Regards
George

[The Tone God]

Thanks for the good words everyone.

Pete is right about pickups affecting the way effects behave. I have some pickups that do some amazing things with certain effects. Its very interesting.

That's a much more impressive setup than a record player even if it isn't optimized for pickups. Nice job!

Thanks again. Seymour watch out!!! I'm out to get ya! The winder is actually going through some upgrades right now. It should be even spiffier once I'm done.

How do they sound?

Not to sound full of myself but to be honest I LOVE the pickups I build. I wouldn't go through the trouble otherwise. I have rewound the pickups on just about every guitar I own. I haven't found a production pickup that can compare to the pickups I wind.

One of the nice things about winding your own pickup is that you can play around with different things seeing how it affects the sound. After awhile I started coming up with particular windings that suited my tastes and style. Armed with this experience and knowledge I can tune my pickups to bring out what charateristics I like in a guitar. This didn't happen right away though. It took MANY tries to get something I like. Even to this day I sometimes decided to rewind a newly completed pickup because I'm not happy with it. Its scary to take a knief to a pickup that you either spent many hours or dollars on.

Its just like effect DIY, if you don't like the sound you can tweak it. I really hate buying a new guitar that comes with crappy/cheap sounding pickups that force me to spend more money for better pickups.

where do you get the pole pieces and ceramic magnets (if you want to use them)?

I usually rewind pickups I already have. Sometimes you can buy blown pickups from repair shops so you get the whole package. Some places may even have cheap pickups you can buy then rewind. The best place I can think of to get pickup parts is:

http://www.ampge.com/components.htm

Andrew

[george]

This is great stuff Andrew, I had been wanting to do things to the pickups in my Japanese Strat like putting baseplates and /or ceramic bar magnets on the base. Now I know where to get stuff like this! (pity the guy's on army duty until the end of October though :-()

Thanks and Regards
George