Can you wind pickups by hand

They need 1 a winding machine, either bought ready-made or custom-built in-house - building one is another skill you may or may not wish to acquire. There are various winding machine designs out there. And 2 they also need the component parts to assemble the pickups, usually sourced from a specialist pickup parts supplier. The specs to build standard style pickups are not too hard to find; manufacturers may guard some of their recipes, although there's no magic involved - there are only a few major variables that one can manipulate coil wire, wind count, magnets.

Or rather than just following stock designs, you may wish to dive into pickup design principles to make more novel pickups, ie the underlying physics. There are a number of sources on that.

Many pup winders cost more than a decent guitar. Built some Ricky style toasters, using MIC toaster type pups, then cut down some P90 type bobbins to fit inside. It takes me about 12 minutes to wind a pup but I'm just starting out. Pup winding is not expensive to do, unless you buy a commercially made winder. Post by nikkij » Wed Jul 15, pm Wow thanks friends!

Those were both really helpful responses. I'm going to look into all those sources, they should be a big help. Post by whatisdust » Sat Aug 22, am Jason Lollar wrote an excellent book about winding pickups that is available for sale again. Who is online Users browsing this forum: Trout and 24 guests. Board index Contact us. The proper wire is not cheap, but it's readily available. An average pickup requires thousands of windings, and a single break in the very fine wire means you start all over again..

Most makers build or improvise a winding jig of some sort; old sewing machines are popular. It's hardly worthwhile if you just want one or two for a project, though it might be satisfying. However, if you were planning to do a number As far as I know a lot of pickups are still made my hand but the creation is still aided with specialist tools you'll need to get your hands on first.

In all honesty, it won't work out cheaper than going out and buying yourself a nice set of new pickups, but if you're doing it for the "I made this factor", then you definitely can. This book is one you can't go past if you want technical specifications on pickups and info on building them yourself, it'll teach you everything you want to know and more. I just found this instructions page to make your own pickup It will be almost free, but I would not expect much of the sound quality Interesting project though.

A possible problem you could run in to is if your guitar has active pickups uses a battery , then the process changes. If your goal is to get new sounds out of your guitar, first try raising or lowering the existing pickups.

I have found this to create much more dramatic changes in tone compared to pickup replacement with different flavors of the same design different strat single coils, for example. If you want to build your own pickups for the fun of it, go for it! Your worst case scenario is that you fail miserably and learn something in the process. Sign up to join this community.

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Can I wind my own pickups? Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 10 months ago. Active 10 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 2k times. Improve this question. Ali 6, 1 1 gold badge 23 23 silver badges 43 43 bronze badges. Luiscencio Luiscencio. This can depend on the guitar. Different guitars have different electronics and thus different wirings.

Do you have the manual? Could you look up spec sheets online? These things can usually be found Fender, for instance, has a ton of documentation online.

Luiscencio: could you edit your question to read "how are the pickups wired " ; — Jimi Oke. Jimi - Agreed, question is unclear as it is; I'm not certain if the author wants to wind new pickups to experiment on, or try modifying the existing ones. While intriguing, I would vote to close if I could. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Jduv Jduv Add a comment.