Sidewinder question

[GlennW]

I have a bunch of Peavey Predator (fake Strat) pickups I'm not using, and was thinking about using a couple to make a sidewinder for a bass. The ceramic bar magnets are 1/4" x 3/8" x 2 3/8". I looked here and found a lot of good pictures of the EB-1, EB-O, Ripper, Thunderbird, etc, which is what gave me the idea. I plan on trying it out with the magnets on the outside, and also on the inside.

My question is about the poles in the pickups. They have one-piece bobbins, and I was wondering if it would be better to remove all the poles and cut a slot for a blade like on the Gibson sidewinders.

[Spence]

I would try it with the poles in first. You never know. It may be something new.

[GlennW]

What a coincidence, I just did. I found two pickups that were 6.48K and 6.53K and reverse wound, and took three magnets and stacked them in between them (Tbird style, I believe), and stuck it in a test bass by the bridge. It wasn't the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it has potential. The main snag was the magnets would only read three strings because they're 2 3/8" and the strings were about 2 5/16" o. c. where the pickup was. Not a problem, because it'll end up where the strings are a little less than 2 1/8" o. c., so this style might catch all four strings. I'll try other arrangements too.

This thing was very noisey when the treble was turned up on the tone knob.

Would that have anything to do with the coils being sideways?

I thought I wired it like a HB - two RW coils connected at the end of one and the beginning of the other. I'll swap some wires and see what happens.

Edit: must have had the leads screwed up; tired it with just one coil and it was much louder with less noise from the tone knob; tried both coils in parallel, it got quieter, but had that rubbery/bouncey sound I like in a bass pickup; then connected the shielded ground leads together, and ran one hot to ground and the other to hot and it was also louder with less noise. This will be fun, and it doesn't really matter what it looks like because it'll be under the cover of a fake '51 P-bass.

[GlennW]

I feel kind of dumb, but I did figure something out. I had the coils wired together correctly the first time, for a regular layout with the tops of the pickups pointing up. On this little experiment the bottoms of the RW coils were facing each other, so by being connected correctly for facing up, they were wired wrong for how they were. That explains the bad sound the first go around because the RW coil was double reversed, so the winding direction was the same for both coils.