I need help wiring a VERY simple single coil

[sexafone123@yahoo.com]

I just got into trying to make my own pickups, and i need help. ive got magnets galore, and 42 copper coil, but after winding it, i dont know how to wire the copper coil into an audio cable, Thanx much,
Kemp,
The $eXaFoNe

[David Schwab]

You take the start of the copper coil wire, and attach that to one of your audio leads, and the end of the coil to the other.

You have to remove the insulation on the magnet wire. Most seem to do that with very fine sand paper. I use a butane lighter (which is tricky... you can melt the wire). Then you wrap the stripped piece of magnet wire around a piece of insulated hook wire, and you attach that to your pickup's lead wires.

There's some info here: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-1465.html

[sexafone123@yahoo.com]

do you use just a regular 1/4 cable?

[Pep]

You need to put eyelets on your bobbin. Strip the insulation off the magnet wire at the ends and wrap this portion a few times through the eyelet. Put your hookup wire in the eyelet and solder it in. Check out stewmac.com for cloth covered wire. You could use speaker cable too if you want. It isn't really important so long as it is decent quality stuff with low resistance.

[Mark Hammer]

Personally, I like to take a piece of fine emery paper, fold it over and "pinch" the end of the coil, while I pull it through. Don't pinch too hard or you'll tear the wire. A couple of pull-throughs will take off enough of the insulation to provide a decent tinning later.

Tin the free end. Having about an inch of it cleaned/stripped and tinned is sufficient.

One overlooked source of hookup wire are the cables one can buy for connecting CD/DVD drives to your soundcard. These will generally have 3 leads and a shield inside an insulating outer layer. The shield won't be braided, but at least it's a shield. The gauge of this wire is appropriate for the task at hand and the length is suitable (as is the cost!). It fits nicely through just about any hole in a guitar body that I've ever seen. You can either clip the connectors off both ends, or clip one off the pickup end and use the connector at the other end to plug into a PCB in your guitar's control cavity. Obviously if you want to retain the connector option, you'll need to feed the wire from the control cavity out to the pickups first before soldering, unless you have a big enough aperture to feed the connector through.

It will prove VERY useful to have two things handy for this: 1) a pair of fine tweezers for gripping and twiddling the free end of the coil, and 2) some sort of dark surface (e.g., a piece of black felt or construction paper) to place on your bench/surface so you can actually SEE the free end and what you're doing. Grip the tinned coil wire with the tweezers and wrap it around the stripped/tinned end of the connector cable wire a few times, making sure to provide yourself some slack of both types of wire. A tiny piece of adhesive tape around the solder joint for insulation ain't such a bad idea.

One of the things I like to do these days is use teflon plumber's tape to wrap the coil first, and then wrap the soldered leads in place afterwards. It is adhesive free, so you can "back up" without being destructive. It is dirt cheap, and it fits nice and snug, conforming to anything you want. It is also fairly strong so it can provide some decent strain relief in holding the soldered leads in place. Once your leads are attached and the teflon tape wrapped in place, it is your choice to either leave it like that or tow wrap some more "classic" adhesive-based tape over top for cosmetic appeal. The nice thing about the teflon stuff is that it grips well and any adhesive-based stuff you put over top is not in direct contact with the coil itself. Great protection and insurance for a beginner.

Although pulling the teflon tape snugly will tend to compress the coil slightly (another advantage of the teflon) and make it a bit tighter, there are few substitutes for potting the pickup to reduce or eliminate microphonics. Since you're a beginner, you may not be set up adequately for potting. I have "semi-potted" SC pickups by laying them on their sides, and dripping molten paraffin over the coil. A bit of hot air from either a heat gun on low setting or a hair dryer will allow the wax to remain molten for a bit and seep into the coil. That doesn't get ALL the way into the coil, but truthfully it is the outside half of the coil that presents the microphonics challenge anyways, so you're most of the way there. Judicious use of teflon tape over top of the semi-potting to compress the coil a bit (assuming it has been wound reasonably snugly to begin with), and at least 90% of the risk of microphonics can be eliminated.