Added: 3 years ago
From: SearcySW
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  • So can you give me the contact info for the winder?

  • I m new to pickups..wanna know how to determine north and south...

  • You don't pot your pickups?

  • When you solder the leader wires to the coils, don't you insulate these before wrapping around the coil? I would think there is a chance of these soldered joints to short out!. Do you wax the coils before putting them inside the covers? I know you say you send them to be waxed after they are complete, but does the wax penetrate into the windings, as you have already taped the windings up?.

  • How would you wire this, the url is cryptic or YT wont show it. I want to know what wires get sectioned of and joined and which then go to hot n ground and why does the biggest fattest black/bare wire cut the sound off completely? Dont copy and paste the URL its cryptic.

    htt*://3'w's.allthechords.webs­pace.virginmedia.c-o-m/pickup-­shematic.jpg

    Any help or advice would be most gratefully recieved.

  • As soon as I taped the 2 wires wound to hot or gound and did the same with the other 2 i got sound, but the pickup had to be very high to get decent volume. Also the 5th thick wire (black) sometimes called bare, if I grounded it all sound was cut off imediately. Im very cnfused in that two wires are said to be twisted and sectioned off and the other two act as hot and ground. This would not work. And the wires to twist were supposed to be red n white. But have a look at the back of my pick up.

  • ive recently put a hot rail in my tele neck. 5 wires coming from the pickup was really confusing and advice i got was poor, but may have been for a big name p.u. mine i think is generic it was a gift. everything i was advised didnt work, the bridge is s.coil and i have a hot n ground routed into the neck cavity. i was advised to wire 2 together off the pup and section them off making it humbucking, then the remaing wires one to hot one to ground. Nothing!!!

  • so the pickup winder was new?

  • Comment removed

  • great video!!! Do you wind both bobbins in the same direction? Does it matter in what direction you insert the magnet?

  • I gotta agree with Junk3t. Awesome video.

  • This is out-and-out porn to a guitar geek like myself!

  • where do you get the materials to build a pickup?

  • @evilguitar9430 Most of the parts in this video came from GuitarPartsUSAdotCOM

  • Thanks to upload a video!!! good stuff you made there!!! tell me if i wanna order a pickup, can i do it by internet? you send it in all world? sorry for my english!!

  • 1:00 i got a new hat by the way :D

  • what is the fewwest amount of wraps so you can still hear it and what is the point of zebra humbuckers if it is covered

  • where would a person learn all the knowledge like you have on building pickups? Are there schools or courses out there ???

  • Seymour Duncan has started to make pickups wound with silver my question is, is it worth it? and how would gold wound pickups sound?

  • @BIGSOULJAS you gotta realise that silver is a better conductor that copper.. which is why i think more number of turns are used to increase the inductance of the coil in order to get an output which is loud enough(if we speak of passive pickups) so if SD made an active pickup with silver, i think they were just wasting silver ...you see better conductor= lesser inductance= lesser output.. and since gold is a bad conductor of electricity i think you can make guitars with more bass with it :)

  • WHERE IS TESTING? :)

    

  • im doing this for a project at school. but i dont have an actual spin counter. whats the best way to wrap the coil with the acual machine?

  • How many times should i wind a pickup if i want to make a BKP pickup and

    will i need a ceramic magnet if i want it to sound like a metal guitar

  • @fleeper4 Dude why not just save the money and buy a Bare Knuckle Pickup. You can find them used all over the internet and honestly by the time you scrounge up all the parts to make one that isn't as good you could just save a little more and get the real thing.

  • Where would you go about buying ceramic magnets? Those would be handy to keep around to change out in old shitty stock pickups but I can't seem to find any (other than ones you would have to fabricate yourself) is there a store that carries them?

  • And technically is this 5 strand wire because he seems to ground one of the wires to the base plate. Im assuming this 4 strand wire comes with a ground wire with no coloured insulation.

  • @outofslumber The bare grounding lead isn't typically thought of as a "wire" in guitar applications. When you look up wiring diagrams for 4 wire humbuckers on the web the information you see with pertain to pickups built in the manner shown in the video.

  • Its a great video. The only thing unclear to the newbie like me is the wiring. Which wires were twisted together and where do they get soldered to. Which are ground wires which are hot etc. Very confusing.

  • @outofslumber Which wire goes where depends on what you plan to do with the pickup. Its coils can be wire in series or in parallel. You can wire them in phase or out of phase. You can disconnect one coil so that you have a single coil sound. With enough switches there are hundreds of wiring possibilities. My color code is the same as that used by Seymour Duncan. If you go to his web site and look to "4 wire Humbucker" you can see some of the possibilities there.

  • how many times should i wind a pickup if I want to make a P90 pickup and with what size coil should I use, 42 or ,43?

  • @KingsField418 10,000 turns of 42ga will get you that classic Gibson P-90 sound.

  • @SearcySW Umm... Humbuckers aren't meant to be hand wound. You have voltage issues and sound problems with non parallel winding. Just thought you'd want to know.

  • @2011dtish21 Clearly you have no experience with guitar pickups. I have been building and restoring them for over 10 years now and I can tell you that all of the classic PAF Gibson humbuckers were hand wound. This is actually common knowledge.There are no "voltage issues and sound problems" with unequal windings which is what I assume you mean by "non parallel". I'm always happy for people to add information to these comments but please don't confuse people by just spouting off nonsense.

  • @SearcySW i Work at Seymour duncan sir

  • @2011dtish21 No.... you don't.

  • Hi! Back with another question XD 7:22 You put in a smaller piece of metal on the outside of the bucker... is that just a spacer to keep bobbin from wobling, or is that a magnet too? so like this: ''magnet (small)-coil-magnet(big)-coil-­magnet (small)'' OR ''spacer-coil-magnet-coil-spac­er''? Thanks in advance & VERY nice vid :)

  • @Explorerrule It's a spacer. There were some pickups that used 3 magnets back in the 70's and 80's but that fad died out.

  • is one turn when winding the pickup a full wrap around or just half way around, so is it a 360 degree or 180 degree turn

  • @WizzardClassHacks

    360 is 1 turn

  • @WizzardClassHacks One turn is one 360 degree run around the bobbin. Like a race car making one lap around the track.

  • humbucker is finaly 10 k dcm ?

  • What type wire is it? Copper I know, but what brand, guage, etc..

  • Could you make gold covered gibson paf copies w/ one mounting hole for a hsh strat

  • Do you do pickups for 8 strings?

  • @MattixIcexBaby I've made a few 8 string guitar pickups and a few 8 string bass pickups.

  • Aw you don't have to do all the fancy stuff with graphics and text. this was plenty fascinating on its own.

  • KENNY POWERS!!!

    ahahah thanks for posting these great vids, i'm learning a lot.

  • @MrNixon79 step into my office lets do some blow

  • @MattixIcexBaby it was the egg rolls, not the ecstasy.

  • What makes the sound difference between the pickups.The copper wire or the magnet?

  • omm tell me all the metrial and how much it cost all toghter

  • tell me all the matrial u used and how much it cost all toghter well not the thing thats like a iron i have that

  • 1 question : The 2 single coils don't have magnets in them ? right?

  • @PitchBlackGuitarMan Correct. The magnet is the black thing that sits under and between the two coils. It's magnetic fiend is transferred through the coils and to the strings via that slug poles in one bobbin and the screw poles in the other.

  • how can i get a custom ordered pickup?

  • @LTLfilms My shop and home are still being rebuilt so I'm not taking new orders just yet. If you friend Searcy String Works on Face Book you'll get a notice when I'm up and running again. Hopefully by Spring I'll be winding again.

  • @SearcySW awesome!! how much is just one custom humbucker?

  • NEW HAT!!

  • @FatKidCookie You know... that hat died in a horrible natural disaster and I had to get an even newer hat ! Guess I'll have to make a new video so you guys can see it...

  • i have a question,using a digital multimeter,can you test the dc resistance of the pickup before cutting the coil wire?

  • @guitarlord247 Yes you can. It's tricky though. You have to use 600 grit sand paprt and sand away some of the insulation. You may want to practyice this a few time on some magnet wire before you try it on a coil you're winding.

  • i need an multimeter measuring inducyance to do this right?how many henries or mh probably?must i get?

  • how do you make the pickups with one big, long magnet (like a DiMarzio X2N)? because i pretty much want an 8 string X2N.

  • Yes you can. 

  • can u use electrical tape instead of that other tape?

  • That "gizmo" at 2:39 is called a roach clip

  • hey man how do u hookup the lead wires

  • hey if you could answer me a few questions i have about pickups would u please be able to email me ill send my email to you in ur inbox

  • So funny and informative :D

  • When your done winding the bobbins you will have a Start wire and a End wire. That's what are sticking out of the bobbins. It's important to keep track of which wire was the Start and which the End as you will need to know in order to wire it up properly.

  • when you wound each bobbins you had the 2 wires out, was that from the same line ? or did you have two ends of wire sticking out each bobbins ?

  • is that hard soldering or normal soldering?

  • New New New haha

  • Awesome man, totally awesome!!!!! I Absolutely dug you video!

  • hey bro a very nice step by step video,,!! but i wanna ask something,, which kind of wires are you using..??

  • @MohitThe1988 I think I used 43AWG on this one.

  • where did you get your parts?

  • also what is the difference between making a bridge and a neck pickup?

  • @jykonrock You can get every part used on this video at the GuitarPartsUSA Website

  • Yes and yes

  • Are the magnets giong to be isolated so that the copper wire dosent touch them? Also, if im gonna make a humbucker pickup, i just make two single coil pickups and wire them in a serie?

  • i dont know where to place the magnets!can anyone be helpful?????

  • @tdaiboo They go under the bobbins between the poles.

  • hi ! I want to know if its possiblle to convert a 2 conductor humbucker in to a 4 conductor . the reason that i want to ask is i want to put a push pull pot on my LP to achieve a out of phase sound on my bridge pickup.

  • @GUITAPHIL It is. I'll do a video about this soon.

  • in the photos there were front plates with no holes. are they made the same.

  • @LADYSMAN930 Yes

  • what was that little device you used to test the k of the pickups?

  • @guitarlord247 That's a digital multimeter. It reads voltage and resistance. Set it to resistance to read how many K ohms your pickup is.

  • How many turns you have make for a single coil pickup?

  • @ittnokia For a Strat I like 7600 turns of 42AWG

  • Hey, great video! What's your average RPM winding speed? Do have any preferences when it comes to speed/tension when winding, or is it a personal feel?

    Oh, and nice hat... ;-p

  • @spunkybrewster1972 I havn't chance to tach this winder. The tension is just a matter of feel at this point. Too much tension and the wire breaks. To little and you get sloppy feed back.

  • hey i have a question. I recently took some single coils and paired them together to make a humbucker. it works great but is wired in parallel im gunna put either a push-pull pot or a switch of som sort to switch between parrell and series. the problem is that i dont know how to wire single coils into series..... i know there a way to do it but i havnt really found anything on it. if you can tell me how or at least tell me how a series humbucker is wired it would be greatly appreciated

  • I'll send you a link...

  • @SearcySW Thanks

  • where do you get the suplies to build a pickup? i know a place, but it doesnt have the right magnets or the right screw poles for that kind of pickup.

  • @mykittytoby Try searching for Guitar Parts USA

  • @mykittytoby go to stewmac.com they have alot of things for making pickups

  • Searcy. quick question.. magnets provide different tones yes. would a simple magnet change change the sound. or would i haveto re-wind the whole thing??

  • be kind rewind

  • @MrGrumpyGinger I wold rewind it but idk if changing the magnet would do anything but buying another pickup would be easier then rewinding it

  • thank you. i have watched a ton of these videos and yours is the first that i actually learned something from

  • same here. what you wanted to know right off the bat lol

  • nice to know someone cares enough to actually put the information in the video that the title implies is there

  • Do you also have a video on how to wax a pickup? I am going to make an electric guitar as a school project (I know it's is a LOT of work, but I have a lot of time as well) and as I have no experience with it, I'm finding these instructional video's very helpful.

  • Why do you say soddering? It blantently has an L in it.

  • "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln

  • That's a lovely phrase but it still doesn't change the fact that it's pronounced soldering.

  • In the U.K. the "L" is pronounced. In America, where I live the "L" is silent.

    "two countries separated by a common language"

  • I can see why this bothers you. When you here soddering it sounds like sodding...which last I checked was a bad thing... :-)

  • can u use any magnet in pickups??

  • Just about any magnet will work. Traditionally Alnico and Ceramic is used.

  • i have searched here..they dont have those long small magnets u guys have..ive only seen round flat one's the hieght of 1/4 of an inch

  • also where did you get the solderable wire? i hate fileing off that stupid coating

  • can you show me how to make the kontrol box? i have the lathe so if theres anything i need to know about it plz add it in too

  • @Drokthemetalband i would just make a calculator into a counter and not mess with that box

  • @rskid23 The calculator wired to a mechanical switch only works if you're willing to wind very slowly. Too slow for me.

  • what were all the thin colored wires for if they get tucked in???

  • @earsBLEEDmetal1

    Those are the leads that will be attached to your switches and pots in the control panel at the other end.

  • they connected the pickup to the 4 conductor hook-up which will be connected to the guitar to make the pickups work

  • its called a soldering mate i think

  • i have one of those gismo's, with a magnifying glass

  • i have the helping hand to

  • thanks for putting this video up. very well explained and very much apreciated. 5*+ ^^

  • hey great video 5*

    how would you make a stacked humbucker? i get all the wiring, its just the pole pieces. can i use the adjustable pole pieces and just make them go right through both bobbins? and also where would the magnet go? can i just put it underneath with the south side touching the poles?

    lol i know, lotsa questions but it would really help me out alot with some answers.

    thanks

  • Sounds like you have it figured out! Look up some information on a Gibson P-100 and you will see something very much like you are describing.

  • its impressive how this is done. it's kinda similar to making a piezo pickup, only more complex. two q's though: where could i buy a baseplate/what can i use to substitiute a baseplate? also, what kind of cable was that at 5:27 for example that was connected to the baseplate?

  • GuitarPartsUSA has the base plates and the 4 lead wire.

  • @Aldotheapache66 4 conductor hoop-up wire the bare is attached to the baseplate for ground

  • I noticed you didn't pot the pickups,

    why is this?

  • I did pot these pickups. I mentioned that in the last 30 sec of the video. I wax or epoxy pot all my pickup unless I'm asked not to. Some folks like them a tad microphonic.

  • how much are you pickups?

  • Depends on the pickup. These are $130 each.

  • How many turns are the coils mis-matched by?

  • Just a few hundred turn. One has 6100 turns and the other has 5700 of wire.

  • Good vid searcy .

  • he's skipping parts on purpose. the only good thing about him is his new hat!

  • Really? What part did I skip?

  • the part where you get kicked by a ninja monkey

    (thnx for the video it was helpfull for me)

  • Ninja monkey no can defend against power hat of doooooooooommmmm!

  • ok so say i dont really have all these crazy sick machines and that amazing hat. how much wire do i need for this and how strong does the magnet have to be

  • wait... where do the magnets go?

  • You can see it going in at about 7:00

  • I'm so sorry to ask another question, so this is the last one. Where can you get a bar magnet like the one that you used, and how do u install? (I'm into hardrock, and my bands lookin for a new guitar sound, so rather than spend hundreds on a new pickup, I decided to do this!)

  • my dads an egineer, he can help me with wiring question, however i do have 1 other questions, 1: where do i get guitar bobbins. 2: Why do you did dip them in wax, and how do you do it?

  • also, how do you do the cool designs?

  • Epoxy magic!

  • You can get the parts on line at Guitar Parts USA.

  • now sorry to ask so many questions, but is the spacer only for if you add in the large bar magnet?

  • The plastic spacers help the bobbins sit flat. They are handy to have but you can make your own out of wood.b

  • Wax potting prevents microphonic feed back.

  • The wax stops the wire from moving on the bobbin... if this happens bad things happen... microphince feed back can happen(sounds lkike crap)... as well as other bad bad things... long story short...

    80/20 mix of perapin waxe to bees waxs will do you up right...

    don't let the wax get too... hot(no hotter than 150)

  • Well said!

  • Ok this is probably a bit of a n00b question but i'll ask anyway.

    How do I know (if going by say, dimarzio's wire color code, and winding both coils the same way) which color wire to connect to each coil's start/end?

  • Adjustable Pole Start = Green , Finish = White Slug Pole Start = Red, Finish =Black

  • Thanks a ton.

  • @BlackHawk2029 look on stewmac.com they have all the color codes

  • do you wax pot those?

  • That set of pickups did get wax potted before they were sent out. .The Saturn set that I make does not get wax potted.

  • You make handling such fine wire look easy. GREAT VIDEO!!

  • what pickups are best for a gibson les paul or epiphone or a fender strat

  • Naming "The Best" pickups is a highly subjective thing. Take the Les Paul for example. Are you trying to sound like Les Paul himself or Jimmy Page or Zakk Wild? Each of those players has a different sound that is perfect for them and each uses very different pickups.

    It's all about what you feel is your musical voice.

  • Got some questions:

    1: The srewpoleblabla and the other non screweble poles (the 12 dots) are not magnetic at al? Because at other youtube films they magnetice the metal...

    2: For metalmusic, how many windings is optimal (neck and bridge)and how thin is the wire? (what is #42 in mm or inch?)

    3: In the beginning you mesured the Ohm? Resistance?

    (like in question 2, what is the total optimal Resistance in Ohm per humbucker? neck and bridge)

    Thanks a lot for this film, it helped me a lot!

  • 1: The screw and slug poles are made of magnetically soft steel that will not hold a magnetic charge on their own. They do not become magnetic until they contact the actual magnet. Then they are charged as either North or South poles depending on what side of the magnet they are touching.

    2: "Metal" means different things to different people. The pickup made in this video uses about 7500 turns on each coil. 42AWG is a standard for measuring wire diameters.

  • 3: This was a bridge pickup. When the coils are combined on this humbucker it will read just over 13K. That's not super hot but it's hot enough to drive some heavy distortion. It was paired with a neck pickup that ran about 10K.I have made bridge humbuckers of 20K but I'm not crazy about them. They start to lose definition and are hard to get a clean sound out of. There is no optimal formula for making a pickup. One luthier I make pickups for wants his to be 7K and loves some as low as 4K.

  • Thanks a lot for the info!

    Now I have to find a supplier in Europe that can sell me a big fat ceramic magnet and 0.0633 mm (#42 (42AWG)) coper wire. This is gonna be hard... Thanks again!

  • @Explorerrule it doesnt have to be a ceramic magnet unless ur a metal head

    I would use an Alnico Magnet but thats my opinion

  • @rskid23 Ceramic magnets work fine for all sort of music. Joe Barden has been using them in his pickups for years. Gibson 496R and 500T pickup use ceramic magnets and are far from Metal monsters.

  • what direction is a neck humbucker spun? both pieces

  • You can wind them both in the same direction so long as you link them together right.

  • good lessson !!

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