I managed to epoxy the pickup pieces together last night. It came out OK. Once I clean it up a bit, it’ll be fine.
As far as my pickup assembly, I just took all the loose parts and glued them together. I didn’t get a chance to take many photos photos because it wasn’t exactly and orderly process. The dog ears didn’t fit as well as they did in the dry run, and one of them was slightly askew. I’ll be able to sand it in such a way that it will work, and most of the problem spots will be inside the guitar and won’t be visible anyway.
One thing I’d really like to do is eliminate the process of gluing the blades and coils together. I’m thinking if I put a little groove on those nubs on the sides of my coils, I might be able to make the dog ear serve as a snap-together part and use spacers to set those pieces apart. I don’t have the machining capabilities for something that refined, but it’s something to think about. I have to really fine tune all the parts so that they all fit together and ensure that they are straight and parallel.
Gluing the baseplate to the bottom of the pickup wasn’t bad at all. Everything seemed to survive OK. I could easily make that process easier by making a simple jig to hold the baseplate in place with the rest of the pickup. I attached a photo showing my wire terminals. I have hole behind them where I’m hoping to attach a ground wire. I stuck a piece of copper tape that stretches across the blades.
Overall, I’m happy enough with this as a prototype for my neodymium sidewinder design. However, I’m torn; there’s a lot I would like to do to refine and perfect this design and perhaps make it more of a production piece but I would also like to move on and build a bass and put this pickup in it. In addition, I’m also starting to come up with more pickup designs that I’d like to start working on as well. In conclusion, I’m at a point where I have take a few minutes to relax an do some prioritizing. Refining this design is pretty high on the list, but to a certain degree I’m constrained by what I can execute using the limited tools I have at my disposal. I may have to invest in more tools or tooling to take this one to the next step. In the meantime, now that I have a working prototype in my hands, I can get back on track and start cutting some wood.
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