My Latest Pickup Winding Adventure

[tonedeciple]

It's been a while since I posted here, but I thought I'd share my most recent pickup experiment. I started out by winding two humbucker slug bobbins with 4,500 turns of 43AWG. Instead of using steel slugs and a bar magnet, I opted to try some neodium rod magnets that fit nicely into the bobbins. North up on one bobbin and south up on the other. The result? Easily the brightest sounding humbucker I've ever heard. There is still some good midrange and bass tone happening, but the treble is off the charts. In fact, I had to change my picking technique just to tame the squeal and easily achieved pinched harmonics. Even though I love lots of treble in my tone, this little experiment might be a perfect example of how careful I should be about what I wish for. Still, it may find its way into one of my future guitar builds. I'd love to hear from anyone else who has tried neos in an electric guitar humbucker.

[LtKojak]

It's been a while since I posted here, but I thought I'd share my most recent pickup experiment. I started out by winding two humbucker slug bobbins with 4,500 turns of 43AWG. Instead of using steel slugs and a bar magnet, I opted to try some neodium rod magnets that fit nicely into the bobbins. North up on one bobbin and south up on the other. The result? Easily the brightest sounding humbucker I've ever heard. There is still some good midrange and bass tone happening, but the treble is off the charts. In fact, I had to change my picking technique just to tame the squeal and easily achieved pinched harmonics. Even though I love lots of treble in my tone, this little experiment might be a perfect example of how careful I should be about what I wish for. Still, it may find its way into one of my future guitar builds. I'd love to hear from anyone else who has tried neos in an electric guitar humbucker.

Try using half slug over half of the same magnet. It should bring the highs to an acceptable level. Experiment with different lenghts of slug versus magnet. AND different alloys in the slug.

Once you find the best sound, be amazed how EXPENSIVE will be having made the different components to your specs.

Just saying...

PS: to the Mods and/or Webmaster, Forum Master, whoever: could we have a PROPER wink emoticon? Pretty please...?

[big_teee]

I haven't tried the Neos.
If it acts like most humbucker P/U's as you fill the bobbins up, with more turns it makes the pickup darker. So If it's overly bright I would put more turns of 43, or step up to 42 with same amount of turns it should be a fatter coil which should sound somewhat darker. I would keep experimenting till I got the formula right, and maybe you won't have to cut magnets!
Good Luck,
Terry

[Peter Naglitsch]

4500 turns, AWG43 for skinny coils and neos as pole pieces... Yeah, shrill is the first thing that runs through my head when reading those specs. The pickup might could use more metal in it to tame the treble, like Pepe suggests.

[Steve Conner]

I'd try putting a cover on it.

[Mike Sulzer]

I'd try putting a cover on it.

Or you could try to improve your understanding of how this works by loading it with passive components. Additional capacitance across the pickup will lower the resonant frquency back into the normal range. (Think of it like an extra long cable.) A smaller resistor across the pickup would lower the Q back into the normal range. (Think of it like using smaller value pots.)

Adding capacitance would also have the benefit of making the sound less sensitive to changes in the cable capacitance. If you use lower value pots to load it, then the tone changes less at intermediate positions of the volume control.

[Mike Sulzer]

By the way, there are other factors involved; so setting the resonance and Q to the same as a typical steel core humbucker will not make it sound exactly the same.

[tonedeciple]

The reason why I tried this experiment was because I am in the process of designing a guitar where the pickup(s) will be placed inside the body, just below a Maple top. I'll thin the top to about an 1/8" and set the action as low as I can. I tested the neo pup in my mule guitar on a circuit with one 500k volume and one 500k tone pot with a .047uf cap. I swapped between the neo pup and a alnico 5 that has roughly the same DCR so I could quickly gauge the difference with my ears. Then, I placed a 1/4" thick slab of Maple over the pickups to see what effect that would have. To my surprise, I couldn't detect any change in tone. Now I know I can install the pickup inside the body Of course when I remove the Maple and lift the pup close to the strings, that's when the treble gets way out of hand. I think my next move will be to wind the bobbins fat with some 42AWG wire. I'll report back with my test results.

[Joe Gwinn]

The reason why I tried this experiment was because I am in the process of designing a guitar where the pickup(s) will be placed inside the body, just below a Maple top. I'll thin the top to about an 1/8" and set the action as low as I can.

It may be possible to both cut the overbearing treble and physically reinforce the thin wood by putting a sheet of brass between wood and pickup coil.

[Mark Hammer]

The easy solution is to simply use a small value cap on the volume pot to tame the highs.

Normally, a tone pot consists of a medium-value (usually in the neighbourhood of .02uf-.047uf) cap placed between the input and ground of a volume pot. The tone pot simply provides a variable resistance in series with that cap to optimize or reduce its treble-cutting effect. No reason whatsoever why you couldn't stick, say, a 330pf cap between the input of the volume pot and ground, to provide a sort of pre-cut, that trims off the top end, permitting the tone control to take care of the rest of it.

[David Schwab]

I use neos, but I always use them with steel poles.

You might try smaller neo rods combined with a steel pole. You can try the neos on the bottom or top of the steel poles.

The steel will warm up the tone.

Also, I'm assuming you have the two coils wired up with the correct polarity. If they are out of phase that would be very thin sounding.