Gav's Pickup Winder

Good stuff Gav, looking great.


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great progress Gav, and cool to see the process

Thanks guys. We'll see how it goes when the real action starts :).

cheers,
Gav.

Great step by step Gav, interesting to see the winding process as you progress.

Thanks Tony!

cheers,
Gav.

hi guys,

After a successful trip to Jaycar in search of rare-earth magnets, I'm ready for the second step in the winding of a set of single coil Stratocaster pickups - magnetising the pole pieces. To do this, two magnets are needed with opposing poles. The magnets are mounted with opposing poles facing each other and the pickup is passed between them.

Using my son's orienteering compass, I determined the polarity of each magnet and stuck them to the jaws of my nut-making vise with just enough room for the pickup bobbin to slide comfortably between them (nothing like wrestling some strong rare-earth magnets!).

Attachment 3489

Attachment 3490

Once the magnets were in place, I took each bobbin in turn and passed them through the gap. It was pretty damn hard keeping the pole pieces from sticking to the magnets! I did 40 passes with each bobbin to (hopefully) fully magnetise each Alnico V pole piece.

Attachment 3491

To allow for noise cancelling when the middle pickup is used in parallel with either the neck or bridge pickup, the middle pickup needs to be RWRP - or "reverse wind, reverse polarity". Half of this equation means that the polarity of the pole pieces for the middle pickup need to be the opposite of the others. Therefore, having passed the bridge and neck pickups through the magnets in a "north facing" configuration, for the middle pickup I reversed the direction to create a "south facing" polarity.

Attachment 3492

After more struggling against the pull of the magnets, a quick polarity test of all three pickups showed that I had succeeded in creating a "reverse polarity" middle pickup.

With the pole pieces magnetised, it's now time to crank up the winder and see if I can get some 42 AWG wire on these bad boys. Let's hope I don't break the wire first time out! I will be going quite slowly so fingers crossed for no mishaps. I will also be stopping every 500 winds or so to measure the resulting resistance of the coil. That should complicate the process quite nicely ;). Anyway, I need to go steal some nail polish before I continue on, so stay tuned for the next installment!

cheers,
Gav.

this is a really interesting detailed build thread Gav, had no idea there were this many steps/stages in building a pup.
You got nail polish on again that you need to remove before the next photos ?

I was just thinking Gav, couldn't you make some plastic runners so you can pass the poles through without getting stuck to either side? If I remember right from physics the plastic won't interrupt the magnetic field, only widening the distance between the magnets will.

2-3mm poly runners and just slide the poles through?

Food for thought anyway...

great idea Nicko, he can try that once he removes the nail polish haha

LOL Wokka. Not that I'm averse to a bit of nail polish if the occasion is right, but the polish is to re-coat the wire after I take a resistance reading ;).

Nick that's a great idea. At one stage i tried to use a pen to do something similar. maybe some perspex either side? Hmm will hunt around for candidate materials.

cheers,
Gav.