low-impedance pickups thin

[MisterBzr]

I've made a new pickup, using 0,1 mm wire, 800 turns around some neodymium magnets glued to two pieces of cardboard and about 300 ohm DCR.
I used transparent waterbased hobby glue to pot the pickup. There's a short soundclip.

[surdopickups]

I've made a new pickup, using 0,1 mm wire, 800 turns around some neodymium magnets glued to two pieces of cardboard and about 300 ohm DCR.
I used transparent waterbased hobby glue to pot the pickup. There's a short soundclip.

Bravo, complimenti bel lavoro.
la tecnica costruttiva xlr offre svariati vantaggi,in termini di qualità sonora, purtroppo peṛ è difficile farlo accettare ai musicisti, che sono rest́ a cambiamenti.
i musicisti per la loro formamentis ed anche a motivo di quello che offre il mercato, preferiscono pickups ad alta impedenza per ragioni di praticità.


Saluti
Antonio Surdo


Bravo, congratulations good job.
the construction technique XLR offers several advantages, in terms of sound quality, but unfortunately it's hard to make it acceptable to the musicians, who are remains to changes.
musicians for their Formamentis and also because of what the market offers, prefer high-impedance pickups for practical reasons.
Greetings
Antonio Surdo

[MisterBzr]

Bravo, complimenti bel lavoro.
Bravo, congratulations good job.
the construction technique XLR offers several advantages, in terms of sound quality, but unfortunately it's hard to make it acceptable to the musicians, who are remains to changes.
musicians for their Formamentis and also because of what the market offers, prefer high-impedance pickups for practical reasons.
Greetings
Antonio Surdo

I agree: The biggest hurdle I had to take when starting to experiment with other tunings / stringlengths and techniques was stepping away from all the musical
and technical cliches (although I realize that cliches don't get cliches for nothing...).

I love the simplicity of the design. The sound is indeed great.

[surdopickups]

I agree: The biggest hurdle I had to take when starting to experiment with other tunings / stringlengths and techniques was stepping away from all the musical
and technical cliches (although I realize that cliches don't get cliches for nothing...).

I love the simplicity of the design. The sound is indeed great.

you may also try to build the coil with metal plates instead of cardboard, magnets inserted sandwich between two metal plates, isolate all to avoid short circuits contacts with the winding, making reeling .from there has to be some photos I posted sull'argomento.Le metal plates serve to enhance the shielding.

see some photos
build flat pickups

potresti anche provare a costruire la bobina con piastre di metallo invece che con il cartone, magneti inserite tipo sandwich tra 2 lastre di metallo, isolare il tutto per evitare cortocircuiti contatti con l'avvolgimento, effettuare la bobinatura .da qualche parte ci deve essere qualche foto da me postate sull'argomento.Le piastre in metallo contribuiscono a migliorare la schermatura.

vedi alcune foto
http://music-electronics-forum.com/t37934/

[MisterBzr]

That's a great tip, I have some metal lying around, so maybe I'll make some someday.
Thanks

[MisterBzr]

I got the following idea when I saw a current transformer with a coiltap made halfway the coil.

For many musicians a guitar (re-)equipped with only low Z pickups may be a bridge to far, but installed alongside or incorporated with a conventional pickup would be less of a problem.
Would it be a good idea to make a regular single coil or humbucking pickup, only with a coiltap somewhere around 500 ohm (or at whatever spot you want). This coiltap can be send to a xlr or jack output.

It may be possible to take (cheap) regular pickup, unwound it for a couple of hundred turns, make a coiltap and rewound the pickup.

This way only an extra output jack or xlr connector is needed.

What do you guys think?

[bbsailor]

I got the following idea when I saw a current transformer with a coiltap made halfway the coil.

For many musicians a guitar (re-)equipped with only low Z pickups may be a bridge to far, but installed alongside or incorporated with a conventional pickup would be less of a problem.
Would it be a good idea to make a regular single coil or humbucking pickup, only with a coiltap somewhere around 500 ohm (or at whatever spot you want). This coiltap can be send to a xlr or jack output.

It may be possible to take (cheap) regular pickup, unwound it for a couple of hundred turns, make a coiltap and rewound the pickup.

This way only an extra output jack or xlr connector is needed.

What do you guys think?

Doing a little back of the envelope reverse engineering you will need a pickup impedance about one tenth the typical XLR input impedance of 2.4K ohms. Doing 500 turns of AWG 42 on the inside of the bobbin you could put this 500 turn coil at about 200 ft of wire. This will produce a coil of about 340 ohms. Here, you are at the limit of impedance loading where the upper frequency response will be affected by the XLR mic loading.

The other issue is will this coil be independent of the high Z pickup coil plus the volume and tone pot loading?

Will the outputs be used independently or together?

Maybe more MEF members will jump in and brainstorm this idea!

Joseph J. Rogowski

[MisterBzr]

My thought is to make a xlr-out only for the low z pickup and do all the sound processing (including volume) after the microphone preamp.

I have no idea how it will be effected by the remaining coil.

There are several alternatives:
First wind the low z coil around the bobbin, and wind the another high Z coil around it, this will yield two separate coils on one bobbin.
An other option could be to overwind a coil by 340ohm and make a coiltap at the point were the overwinding starts.
When I call the start of the coil 1, the coiltap point 2 and the end 3, you can use 0 and 1 for the High Z pickup and 1 and 2 for the low Z pick up.

Hans

[charrich56]

MisterBzr,

It really seems like you are wanting to both have the "high fidelity" extended flat response of low-Z pickups, combined with the added ability to make the pickup coloration sound "conventional" to be able to get "normal" electric guitar tonality that everyone expects for the normal musical genres, with distortion, etc.

I too was working with low-Z for a while; still like the approach, but wanted to do pretty well the same thing you are wanting to do, and came up with this medium-Z approach:

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t41094/

This is able to do "flat" response to about 8-10K as well as variable resonant frequency voicing . That post is getting a little dated now, and currently I am using just a buffer and low-wind normal humbucking pickups in parallel coil mode, to get both modes (hi-fi "flat", and resonant/voiced) with pretty minimal circuitry. Here's the post on the latest incarnation of the idea.

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t43081/

Realistically, it's not very useful IMHO to have good magnetic pickup response in the 10Khz-20Khz range. If you wanted it, my approach could work with lower inductance (400-600 mH) pickups and you could get to 20K, but don't be surprised if you don't find very much that's musically useful, and do find some things that aren't, up there.

The dual winding approach seems a bit overcomplicated in comparison but don't let me discourage you; you might come up with something really very cool.

I'm really digging my demo instruments right now and have found out that the "flat" mode (with variable lowpass) is surprisingly useful with a normal guitar amp, and not just only for its originally intended usage to go "flat DI" into a line-in on a computer DAW setup, studio or live board, etc. Having both modes of the variable resonant frequency tone control on the instrument makes the tonality amazingly flexible, and if you add onboard piezo bridge mixing, as I did on my demo Strat, it's beyond amazing.

Charlie

[surdopickups]

it's a good idea.
is an idea that I chase by time,
the double coil pickup is not difficult to build
The pickups can be built in 2-way
a) overlapping concentric coils (overlapping)
b) the coils joined as in the pickup Hot Rails

personally I prefer
that the coil is well screen
so as to constitute the screen, the pole 1 of the balanced connection

in conventional pickups
the construction of a good screen requires some effort




greetings to all friends
from ITALY

[surdopickups]

the circuit and the simulation







very nice that you think?

[surdopickups]

this is the pickups I build

[MisterBzr]

Thanks guys for the input.
I've read your post a while ago so had some time to ponder over it.
I think the low Z and medium Z pickups are the answer that I need.
For an acoustic guitar where I don't want to modify the guitar the low z pickup is a great and simple solution. Using an xlr / balanced connection it can be put into mic input or with a mic to line transformer it can be put into a guitar amp.
When modifying an regular electric the medium Z pickup with the preamp would be a cool option. I've ordered a cheap small humbucker for a couple of bucks and will build the preamp.
Would take same time when I'll get to it.

So thanks guys for the comments!

Hans

[Fluoroscope 5000]

Good info here. One thing about using an EM pickup on an acoustic guitar is that the signal level from the Bronze wrapped strings is much lower than the plain Steel strings. There is a type of micro-coated acoustic gauge string set made by Sfarzo called "Alloy 5109" that has warm sounding FeNiCo wrapped strings which produce a stronger/more dynamic sound through an EM pickup. They aren't expensive either. You might give them a try. I've been using Sfarzo strings for years. You can order from here: Alloy 5109 Precision Made Acoustic Guitar Strings

or direct now at 35% off: ALLOY5109 ACOUSTIC POLYMER COATED STRINGS WITH REDF.R.E.D. ? Alloy5109 strings are treated with an environmentally safe polymer liquid that evaporates quickly. - Sfarzo Guitar String Company LLC

I don't work fore them, but am an avid user. Just order from the acoustic gauges options closest to your normal acoustic gauge. The wrapped strings have a high wrap to (rounded-hex) core thickness ratio making them more slinky feeling and more dynamic than most strings. The cores and plains are Steel, but feel more pliable than most Steel stings -- possibly from annealing. They are highly break and corrosion resistant, and long lasting. I've let guitars sit out for almost a year with Alloy 5109 sets with no corrosion. Wiped them off and they sounded almost like new. I'd order at least 3 sets to compensate the shipping. They may sound slightly brighter than bronze strings, but not at all "cold". I wouldn't recommended them if I didn't think it worth the investment. Anyone I know who's tried them has been very pleased.

[charrich56]

Thanks for the pointer on the acoustic strings!

Are you saying that the special wrap on the wound strings allows the wound strings to balance with the plain strings, just as a normal electric guitar set, but still have a good sound on an acoustic with a mag PU ? That would be a very fine thing.