Question about noise cancellation

[Jack.Straw]

Hello. I'm building this steampunk instrument:


I'll be winding a single string pickup for the bass string & a 3-string pickup for the slide. Would it be beneficial to reverse wind/reverse polarize the two pickups and wire them like a humbucker? I was thinking that perhaps that wouldn't work because the pickups have different numbers of poles/magnets.

Thanks for your time,
-Scott

[Mike Sulzer]

Hello. I'm building this steampunk instrument:


I'll be winding a single string pickup for the bass string & a 3-string pickup for the slide. Would it be beneficial to reverse wind/reverse polarize the two pickups and wire them like a humbucker? I was thinking that perhaps that wouldn't work because the pickups have different numbers of poles/magnets.

Thanks for your time,
-Scott

You want to get the sensitivity to hum magnetic fields the same.

You might consider this:

You could use a single steel bar long enough to cover all three strings as a pole piece rather than individual rods. Make one long enough for the three strings, and make two that are half as long but otherwise the same and put them together for a short pole piece that is twice as thick and half as long. (Or use thicker steel, or some other way of getting the same cross section and mass of steel that looks good on your instrument.) Use the short one for the bass pickup. Use the full length one for the three string pickup. Then you have the same amount of steel in both and you use the same number of turns on both. This should get you close.

[Magnut]

That is a great looking instrument. It's always nice to see some creativity flowing.

It also depends are your wiring scheme. Will both pickups be on at the same time? I think a simple bar (blade) type pickup would look great on this. Either that or 4 single spool (bobbin) type pickups. Those could be wired to create humbucking effect.

Are those strings brass or bronze or is my monitor color off?

Edit* I would love to have cigar box like that to make an instrument out of.

[Chuck H]

If you wind four single string pickups two could be RWRP and that would do it. You could also just wind two physically identical pickups with one RWRP and accept that the pickup for the bass string is bigger than it needs to be in appearance. I don't think the symmetry would be a bad thing. Neat looking instrument.

[David King]

I love the looks of this thing. I'm sure whatever you come up with for the pickup will be fun to look at so please post it.
I think dummy coils will only add to the looks so that's the direction I'd go in.

[Jack.Straw]

Thanks for the ideas guys... it's much appreciated! I think i'm going to try the identical bar pickups, RVRP. I'd like to wire it with a DPDT switch to allow switching between series and parallel, with volume and tone controls. Does this diagram look correct?



Also, the pickup wires will be traveling through a piece of copper tubing into a brass control box. Will attaching the ground wire to the copper tubing where it enters the control box cause the tubing to act like shielding?

Magnut, yes.. both pickups will be on at the same time. The string are mixed right now... some scrap strings i'm using for visualizing and initial setup.

Thanks for your time,
-Scott

[peskywinnets]

None of the above suggestions will cancel the water noise through from those pipes though ;-)

(also I've seen centre tapped pickups before ...but that way of doing it is 'interesting'!)

[Dave Kerr]

But it does seem to satisfy gear acquisition syndrome pretty efficiently. I like the use of onboard effects, too - there's a compression fitting and a gate valve.

[David King]

The dual timekeeping metronomes should help with odd time signatures.