Finish the pickup

[MrDeath]

Hi guys, this is my first post on these boards but i'm a usual over at www.diystompboxes.com. I'm curious about building this part into a working and useful pickup but I don't know where to start. I was hoping someone here could help me with that. Here's a couple of pics and some more info.

http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...ysterypup1.jpg
http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...ysterypup2.jpg
http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...ysterypup3.jpg

A friend of mine gave me this knowing that I play around with my guitar electronics and such. I never did anything with it because I didn't figure it was good for anything, but nevertheless I threw it in my parts bin and now here I am wondering if I can build a useful pickup out of it. It appears to be the windings with pole pieces and wiring but only has 5 pole pieces? It does have a magnetic charge to it because when I pulled it out of the bin it had 4 or 5 washers stuck to it. Grin It also has 3 wires coming out of the end; a red, a black and a white. I've only ever seen pickups with 2 wires except for EMG HZ's which have 5. So does anyone have any idea what I need to finish it off so I can use it? Huh

Thanks in advance for any help guys!

[Possum]

maybe....

I wonder if this is an old Dearmond acoustic guitar pickup guts? some of his designs use 5 poles....maybe someone else knows?

[madialex]

Hello

Can you get a good pic of the top looking straight down on it? I'm wondering if the third wire is a ground to another piece of metal, like some sort of steel bar in the bobbin it self.

[Sweetfinger]

Wot 'choo got there is...

You have the under neck magnetic pickup from the Taylor expression system. IIRC you should see about 180 ohms between the red and white wires, black is shield. Dunno how it would sound by itself without the dummy coil, pre-amp, and the other two magnetic body sensors.

[David Schwab]

Wow... buy an expensive guitar like that, and pull out the pickup? I bet the guy stuck a tele neck pickup in there!

While we're at it... pull that bridge off a Parker Fly and replace it with a Floyd... and get an Alembic Series I and put some Dimarzio's in it...

[Sweetfinger]

Wow... buy an expensive guitar like that, and pull out the pickup? I bet the guy stuck a tele neck pickup in there!

I don't think you could get a tele pickup in there. That coil sits in a perfectly snug fit route underneath the tongue. You have to remove the neck to get to it.

Actually, the mag pickups do sometimes go bad, but if the pup works, most likely it was pulled because on newer Taylors you have to switch out the neck pickup when you replace any faulty top sensors. The newer sensors don't quite match the older ones.

Now that I look at the pic again, that IS one of the newer pickups. The mags are painted black on the newer ones and unfinished gray on the older ones.

[dpm]

There have been problems with just about every component of that system. Mostly the top sensors, but also the neck pickups, preamps, power supplies... and the updated parts are starting to have issues too.

[MrDeath]

I don't think you could get a tele pickup in there. That coil sits in a perfectly snug fit route underneath the tongue. You have to remove the neck to get to it.

Actually, the mag pickups do sometimes go bad, but if the pup works, most likely it was pulled because on newer Taylors you have to switch out the neck pickup when you replace any faulty top sensors. The newer sensors don't quite match the older ones.

Now that I look at the pic again, that IS one of the newer pickups. The mags are painted black on the newer ones and unfinished gray on the older ones.

I'm not entirely sure where my friend got the pickup, he didn't say much about it, just that he had a "guitar pickup" and was going to throw it away. So in my infinite wisdom I told him; don't throw it away, I can use it! The he handed me what appeared to be half of a pickup...

So I can expect to get 180 ohms out of it? Aren't average single coils 5-7k ohms? I'm pretty good at building stompboxes and the like so maybe I can build some kind of pre-amp and hook this thing up to it. Ironically I have a Big Baby Taylor, and now that I know this is a Taylor acoustic pickup i'd rather put it in my Big Baby than in one of my electrics. Any ideas on how to attach it to my guitar?

[dpm]

I don't think there's much point. The Expression system uses 2x magnetic top sensors (which are a magnet suspeded in oil with a coil around it), the sensor you have, plus a dummy coil. By itself I doubt that coil will give anything close to good string to string balance or natural tone.