How were the first guitar pickups made?

[Dolmetscher007]

I've done some searching, and it seems that this question is not as cut and dry and simple as I thought it might be. I read about how people were using carbon button, condensers, electrostatic, piezo, and also electromagnetic gadgets as guitar pickups as early as the late 1870s, but for the most part, the 1920's and 30's were the real birth of the modern pickup.

Does anyone know what these first electromagnetic guitar pickups, were made from? For example... Did they have AlNiCo 1,2,3,4,5,... alloy magnets? Did they have hair-thin 42-43 AWG wire? I'm sure it was not coated in poly-vinyl. At first, I assumed they were wound by hand, but the more I think about it, I imagine that in the 1920's even the first pickup makers had some kind of pickup winder. Were they wound 400 times, 4,000 times, 40,000 times? Thick wires, thin...?

Anybody know?

[bbsailor]

Look up the name George Beauchamp on the web for his patent applied for in 1934 and given in 1937.
See this link below for a good historical summary.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/music-an...oj_mtech_2.pdf

Most of the early pickups used horse shoe type magnets because that was the most common type available in the early 1930s.

Early guitars needed to use the very early PA system technology needing high impedance and high output pickups to properly feed these amps with enough signal. Cone speakers and tube amplifiers was a very new technology back then.

I hope this helps?

Joseph J. Rogowski