Low profile pick up for a banjo

[bbsailor]

See this link for an electric banjo:Woody's 2007 Gold Tone EBM-5 Electric Banjo

[gtrdoc59]

Following David Kings suggestion I did get a very thin single coil working. The bobbin was made using a piece of brass from a Jazz bass control cavity as the bottom plate, a ceramic magnet from a cheap P bass pickup and some cardboard harvested from a file folder for the top. I got 6500 turns of 43 gauge wire (7.5k). It still got in the way. A humbucker under the skin was not great. I tried using a single coil mounted directly under the bridge with a piece of a 22 gauge guitar string stuck to the under side of the skin. I ended up using a Schatten piezo banjo pickup (found it in a box of parts) and a Tilman style FET preamp, it's a little beefy in the bottom end but over all sounds great. Thank you for your suggestions.

[David King]

Well the price was right. K & K makes a well-regarded piezo banjo pickup for next time around.

[Bruce Johnson]

If you want to see the ultimate punk banjo player, look up Elijah Trotsky. A very interesting and funny guy, a friend and customer. When you see him playing his electric banjo, it's a Nechville (Electric Banjos - Nechville Musical Products) which is an unusual enough instrument. Elijah's is a Meteor, which I then heavily modified for him. Nechville doesn't make a long neck version of their electrics, so I made up a special custom neck for it. It's not only very long, but it's a tunneling-type 5-string neck. That is, the little 5th string dives down under the fingerboard at the 5th fret, and reappears on the headstock where the tuner for it is. There were some engineering challenges on that one. The pickup on that one is the stock Nechville setup.

When Bela Fleck plays the crazy stuff with The Flecktones, he's usually playing a Nechville Meteor. But he doesn't have a long neck Meteor!

Elijah also has a very cool Nechville acoustic banjo, an unusual one-off prototype that they sold him. It's a neat design, but it had some structural problems with the rim, and I made up some new braces to reinforce it. I don't remember the brand of the pickup he uses (I think it's K & K?) but we mounted it under the head on a bracket attached to the bracing. He loves that banjo, and it's been all over the world with him on tour.

[rjb]

If you want to see the ultimate punk banjo player, look up Elijah Trotsky. ...When you see him playing his electric banjo, it's a Nechville (Electric Banjos - Nechville Musical Products)

I looked, but the only stuff I could find online was with acoustic banjo.


The Horse Flies (formerly The Tomkins County Horse Flies) have been playing "Trance Grass" music with processed banjo sounds since at least the late '80s. For a while, they tried being a rock band, with Richie Stearns on clawhammer Stratocaster! Here's a cover of the Cramp's "Human Fly". Note the hypnotic phase-shifted banjo uke rhythm.

The Horse Flies - Human Fly (Live at Telluride 2003) - YouTube

Horse Flies trivia fact: Fiddler Judy Hyman is jazz pianist Dick Hyman's daughter.

[Bruce Johnson]

Here are two pictures of Elijah's Nechville electric banjo with the custom long neck I made for it. You can see the 5th string tunneling into the little tube under the nut.

[peskywinnets]

Low profile ahem 'bobbin' I've just made from scrap pieces of acrylic & FR4 I had lying around...



Its height is about 5mm ....this being 1mm PCB lower, 3.2mm of winding space ....with the remaining 0.8mm acylic upper surface (bobbin top).

It uses one rectangluar neo, which fits underneath & I'l be using laminated silicon steel for the blades (& if anyone can propose a method of cutting 53mm long/0.5mm thick steel into 4mm strips without deformation I'd love to hear!)

PS the wind was just a rough one (needs more tension)

[jonson]

Hi Rob how you doin all is well I hope. I cut my nickel blanks 0.5 and 0.7mm on a heavy duty style paper guilotine I got from Staples for about £40 and think that should do the job. If you wan't mail me to check my address and send a sample down and I will snip it before you outlay on one to make sure.

[peskywinnets]

Hi Rob how you doin all is well I hope. I cut my nickel blanks 0.5 and 0.7mm on a heavy duty style paper guilotine I got from Staples for about £40 and think that should do the job. If you wan't mail me to check my address and send a sample down and I will snip it before you outlay on one to make sure.

Hiya Steve :-) ...all is well, wife is away for a few weeks so dusted down an old project!

You can see my dilemna...



(those are 0.4mm thick laminations out of an old transformer)

for the proto I'm making, the aesthetics (& *huge* time sump), matters not a great deal....but if it works out, then I need a quicker way of making the many, many strips needed!

I'd been toying with the idea of one of these...

Shearing and Bending - Arc Euro Trade

(there's a video of another clone, cutting brass here - Demonstration of Micro-Mark #84734 Mini Metal Shear / Brake - YouTube )

but I'm thinking that curling is gonna be inevitable with 4mm 'strips' - I guess the only way I'm gonna find out is to pony up for one!

(ideally, I'd like to be able to cut up to 0.8mm thick steel)

[jonson]

If you get probs Rob then do come back to me. My guy that does my lasering has several hydrolic flat bed shears up to 3mtrs and as long as there is enough to grip by the drop bar then cutting dead flat is no probs. Pity it's not mild steel as that will shear or laser in long lengths leaving just a snip off.

[peskywinnets]

If you get probs Rob then do come back to me. My guy that does my lasering has several hydrolic flat bed shears up to 3mtrs and as long as there is enough to grip by the drop bar then cutting dead flat is no probs. Pity it's not mild steel as that will shear or laser in long lengths leaving just a snip off.

Thanks for the offer Steve...once I exhaust all local avenues, I'll keep your kind offer in mind :-)

[Joe Gwinn]

Photochemical machining

Photochemical milling can be useful making small quantities of silicon-steel lamination parts, in any shape.

Here is one vendor of many: Laminations | Precision Micro

The better vendors will supply the stock, which is a great help if one isn't making thousands of parts.

[David King]

Be sure to watch the 3 minute video of the photo-etching process: The Photo Etching Process | Precision Micro

[peskywinnets]

Be sure to watch the 3 minute video of the photo-etching process: The Photo Etching Process | Precision Micro

Enjoyed that (yeah, I don't get out much) ...I can't imagine that being a cheap service though - certainly not likely to be viable for a bloke who simply needs a few blades made!

[Joe Gwinn]

Enjoyed that (yeah, I don't get out much) ...I can't imagine that being a cheap service though - certainly not likely to be viable for a bloke who simply needs a few blades made!

I've gotten lots of adverts in the mail over the years. Don't recall the price for a small run (meaning 10 to 100 sheets), but it wasn't horrible, especially for those mfgrs that will provide the material, as this solves the small-quantity problem.

It's probably worth a phone call or two. But to someone in the UK.