making humbuckers

[franklin01]

im trying to make a humbucking pickup and i was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions on how to make the bobbins, i keep trying different methods and they dont seem to be working. thanks.

[Ruel]

im trying to make a humbucking pickup and i was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions on how to make the bobbins, i keep trying different methods and they dont seem to be working. thanks.

I saw this site by typing "How to make a humbucker the hard way". Try it. You can get ideas from it.

[franklin01]

thanks

[David Schwab]

Are you making something non standard? There's plenty of standard size bobbins on the market.

All my stuff is custom, so I make bobbins from printed circuit board material... Either the perf board stuff, or the solid copper clad board. You can etch traces and pads into the PCB for attachment of hookup wires and stuff too.

Any non conductive material will do.. plastic, wood, etc.

If your bobbins are going to be exposed you have to consider the material's appearance. In my case they are in inclosed cases/epoxy cast.

[franklin01]

thanks, i was just wondring what kinds of materials would be suitable because i have tried wood(maple) and it just keeps cracking when im trying to sand it. i might try your printed circuit bord idea, also what about this epoxy cast? do you make it yourself or is it just like a cover that you buy??
thanks

[David Schwab]

You can buy a cover, which is actually a lot easier... then you place your parts inside and fill it with epoxy. That's how my prototypes are made. You don't have to epoxy them in the covers either if you don't want to. But the covers I'm using are expensive (at least if I want to buy a bunch) and I want my logo on them.

If you use a mold, that forms the pickup cover and encapsulates it all in one.

So the next step is to make a silicone rubber mold. You can do this a few ways... for example you can use a commercially made cover as a model, or make a model from wood or plastic. You then make your rubber mold from that using special rubber compound made for molds. You suspend your parts inside the mold and pour in colored epoxy.

You can have covers made, but the initial tooling for injection molding is expensive, although the parts are cheap after that.

What we are doing is to make a 3-D model on a computer, and have a solid model made from that using a technique called stereo lithography. Then the rubber molds will be made from that.

There's a lot of info on the internet on making rubber molds, and places to buy the supplies. There's also the book Animal Magnetism for Musicians, that explains making molds for pickups. it also shows how to make some pickups, but it's a bit light on details.

[franklin01]

thanks, that really helped me out and cleared things up