Works in progress. #funktronicpickups #basspickups #boutiquepickups #boutiqueguitars #custombass #handwoundpickups
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Works in progress. #funktronicpickups #basspickups #boutiquepickups #boutiqueguitars #custombass #handwoundpickups
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I’ve got this micro coil pickup project on my bench. This bobbin prototype is made of cast polyurethane and paper. I’m looking forward to getting this li’l guy up and running. #funktronicpickups #pickupwinding #handwoundpickups #basspickups #boutiqueguitars #luthiery #boutiquepickups
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Yay! My custom fabricated ceramic 8 magnets came in! Just waiting for some laser-cut flatwork to come in and I’ll be making pickups. #funktronicpickups
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Every day I inch a little closer… Picked my poles up from the fabricator today. Set me back about $6 and some change each. Not bad. I’ll have to start running some tests with these once I get that guitar body off my desk. #funktronicpickups #basspickups #bassplayer #madscientist #madeinfillmore #handwoundpickups #hechoenfillmore
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Photo taken at: Ventura, California
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I bolted the pickup into the body the other night and I’ve been rocking out on it for a few days now.
With the StingRay pre I have, it can go from really deep to really bright and has midrange to spare. I’ve dialed a little bit of the mids back on my amp and I got it sounding pretty good. I may look into building up a 3-band version of the preamp just to have some more control on-board. This pickup puts out a fair amount of information, so I’m feeling like the 2-band is a little limiting.
This pickup has a lot of kick! It’s pretty sensitive and seems to pick up pretty much everything that comes out of my fingers. If I play softly, it sounds soft. If I hit it hard it hits. Overall, the attack and responsiveness I think I can attribute to the neos. Did I say it has a lot of kick?
On a side note, I tried wiring it in both series and parallel – interestingly enough, they sounded pretty much the same, just the series version was quieter. It didn’t get that scoopy sound I usually hear from a parallel HB. I think that may be because a majority of the action is coming from that center bar.
At some point down the line, I may try a few other versions of this pickup, specifically:
I’m really happy with this pickup. I’ll be posting a quick iPhone clip in the near future. In the meantime, I’m going to start thinking about some other aspects of this project.
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Photo taken at: Fillmore, California
Moving right along here…
As far as names, I’m thinking it really needs an appliance name. I’d say it’s definitely resembling a toaster!
Anyway, all the parts are made, except I have to actually get the mounting hardware to work. I polished the steel blades by hand, which was long and tiresome.
The dog ears came out pretty good. The surfaces need a little work, but for now, I’m going to leave it. Most of them will be inside the body of the guitar. Eventually, I’m going to have to make a new mold. Ill worry about it then.
However, I wanted to point out a cool detail with the dog ears:
I cut these little channels in the original so that they’d lock into this little joint on the coils…
OK, so the next thing I gotta do is figure out how to glue the danged thing together! That is going to be a really cool trick once I figure it out!
On a side note, I decided I’m going to sell my wide format inkjet printer to my work and use some of the dough to buy something like this:
It seems like there’s a lot of them around for about $100 – $150. There’s about 3-4 time a week I find myself thinking, “It sure would be a lot easier to do this with a sheet metal shear instead of using a hacksaw and file to clean the edge.”
I Think I’ll Call It The Toaster
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Photo taken at: Fillmore, California