Stacked Single Coil Sized Humbucker

[nickc35]

Almost finished with this pickup......finally got it wound. All that is left to do is to solder the ground wire to the magnets and wax pot it. But I took a break and snapped a few photos to post. I used 43 gauge magnet wire, 8000 wraps per coil, DC resistance of 16.69k, two ceramic 8 bar magnets.

[copperheadroads]

All that is left to do is to solder the ground wire to the magnets

Grounding Ceramic magnets is not necessary (ceramic is not a conductor ) unlike grounding poles

[nickc35]

Grounding Ceramic magnets is not necessary (ceramic is not a conductor ) unlike grounding poles

Thanks!

[copperheadroads]

Very nice work ,thanks for posting

[big_teee]

Looks good to me.
I hope it sounds great.
T

[nickc35]

Well I plugged it in and it's not bad. I tried it in the neck position first and it was a little muddy. Then put it in the bridge position and it shines there. I really don't have anyway of posting a sound example that would do it any justice. It doesn't sound any better than the few Strat style single coils I've made but it doesn't sound any worse either. And it's VERY quiet which is a huge plus.

Here is a pic of it in my pickup tester guitar. Plus a view of the rear control cavity and how I use a little breadboard so I don't have to solder anything when I'm testing my pickups.

[David Schwab]

Here is a pic of it in my pickup tester guitar. Plus a view of the rear control cavity and how I use a little breadboard so I don't have to solder anything when I'm testing my pickups.

I hope that's not a new Gibson bumblebee cap!

[nickc35]

I hope that's not a new Gibson bumblebee cap!

Nope, I wouldn't give Gibson my money for that farce. It's just a left over cap I had from when I bought a bunch of different so-called bumblebee clones and tested them all in my Les Paul. I ended up buying a pair of 1950s vintage bumblebees and they did make a very subtle difference in tone particularly when I turned the tone knob down to between 5 and 3. It did seem like a warmer tone than the stock ceramic disc caps Gibson put in. But now that I'm winding my own pickups I keep making different ones to throw in my Les Paul and those old caps couldn't handle the continuous messing around I had to do in the control cavity to put a new set of pickups in there every month or so. (trying to wind the perfect set of pickups for my LP....haven't quite made it yet....though I'm close with the neck pickup) So I took them out and sold them. I got less than I paid for them but it was worth the exercise to me anyway.

[LtKojak]

Nickc35, is it me, or the cover of the p'up cavity have the form of a coffin...?

[big_teee]

Well I plugged it in and it's not bad. I tried it in the neck position first and it was a little muddy. Then put it in the bridge position and it shines there. I really don't have anyway of posting a sound example that would do it any justice. It doesn't sound any better than the few Strat style single coils I've made but it doesn't sound any worse either. And it's VERY quiet which is a huge plus.

Here is a pic of it in my pickup tester guitar. Plus a view of the rear control cavity and how I use a little breadboard so I don't have to solder anything when I'm testing my pickups.

Nice test guitar.
T

[nickc35]

Nickc35, is it me, or the cover of the p'up cavity have the form of a coffin...?

Yeah kind of....but it's not symmetrical.

[nickc35]

Nice test guitar.
T

Thanks. I just made some changes to it. That little breadboard while a great idea in theory is not so great in practice. I bought some push connectors....like the kind in the back of stereo receivers to connect the speaker wires. I routed out a spot for them. Then the lever switch I had in the guitar ended up being defective. So I'm waiting for the new switch to show up and then my tester guitar will be up and running again and better than ever.

[archtopguy]

This is my first post on this site! So, first-off, I'm not sure if I should post in an old thread or start a new one; but I felt this is relevant...

I'm building a Charlie Christian type pickup for an archtop I have and I'm experimenting with some different designs. Some of the features are: 1) 3-hole mounting and rout which fits inside a typical humbucker ring footprint. Therefore, if I can't get the p/u to sound right, I can just go down the humbucker route. 2) The pickup blade is removeable so I can try different blades for string balance and re-use blades to speed up prototyping. 3) On the latest designs, a single A5 magnet lies vertically inside the bobbin, south up, with the blade attached to it directly. 4) The last one I built has two coils stacked in an attempt to create a hum-cancelling pickup.

With regard to the last point, the attempt was a disaster as the pickup is even noisier than the single coils. - and this is what brings me here
Both coils had approx 7500 winds of 38awg, wound in opposite directions and wired in series. The tot output was just over 5kOhm and the signal is strong, even with the single A5.

Does anyone out there see some obvious flaw with this design?

Thanks in advance,

John

[Leo_Gnardo]

This is my first post on this site! So, first-off, I'm not sure if I should post in an old thread or start a new one; but I felt this is relevant...

I'm building a Charlie Christian type pickup . . .

Beautiful work: deserves its own thread! Don't be shy, start one up. Admittedly I'm by far not "the pickup guy", you'll be hearing from lots of them soon I'm sure . Any minute now...

[archtopguy]

Thank You Leo_Gnardo. I will take your advice and re-post this on a new thread