How to make a single coil guitar pickup ? ? ?



What You'll Need:

Stuff:
-Paper
- 42 or 43 gauge copper wire (very thin)
- Six steel machine screws and nuts
- Neodymium (super strong) magnets or one long bar magnet
- Thin plastic (like that on a cd case) or Thin pieces of wood
- Wax
- Wire
- Solder
- Superglue

Tools/equipment:
-Dremel and dremel accessories
-Screwdriver
-Sewing machine (optional)



step 1.
Make your pattern
There are just a few parts to a pickup, and the bobbin(the thing that holds the coil) is the first thing you need put together. To do this, you'll need to do is make up some kind of pattern for your bobbin. You need one piece for the top and one for the bottom. Look at the pictures and factor . . .

step 2.
Drill holes
Now you need to drill the holes for your post pieces. Before you drill mark where the holes will be, as this isn't exactly something you want to do freehand. Usually the strings on a guitar are about 1cm apart, but check the spacing of the strings to be sure. Also, you'll need to mark two holes . . .

step 3.
Assemble the bobbin
After your bobbin pieces are drilled, you're ready to assemble. First, screw the screws part of the way into the top piece of the bobbin. Then sandwich a spacer of some kind between the top and bottom pieces, as shown in the picture below. I prefer to get the two outside screws and a middle one i . . .

step 4.
Riggin' up a pickup winder
There are a lot of things you can use as a pickup winder. You could use your hands, obviously, but that can be kind of slow and inaccurate. You could also use a drill or electric screwdriver. I chose to use a sewing machine, mainly because it's really easy to rig up and use. On the side of all s . . .

step 5.
Winding
Pickups are made using very thin copper wire, 42 or 43 gauge. I would recommend buying your wire in a spool to make the winding easier, but you can find this kind of wire in other objects if you want. For example, I found mine in a pair of old dog clippers. However, just a slight warning, the win . . .

step 6.
Soldering
Once you're done winding your coil, you need to solder the lead wires. Before you can solder though, you need to scrape the reddish coating off of the wire that is wrapped around the two holes on the bottom piece of the bobbin. You can use very fine sandpaper, your fingernail, or the end of a l . . .

step 7.
Potting the pickup
Potting or saturating a pickup with wax is done to help keep the wires in the coil in place and prevent the pickup from becoming microphonic. I used Gulf Wax (candle wax) to saturate my pickup because it was available, but you could also use a mixture of 80% candle wax and 20% beeswax. Melting . . .

step 8.
Finishing Touches
There are just a couple more things left to do! After your pickup has totally cooled from the potting process, you can put the magnets on your pickup. The magnets you need are called neodymium magnets(they are also known as power magnets, or super strong magnets). When you put them on you have . . .

step 9.
It Is Time!
This is the crude rig I use to test my pickups since I don't have a spare guitar to ruin. Also on this page is a picture of another pickup I made . . . Selengkapnya...

An amplifier's basic purpose is to increase the frequency of the hertz produced by audio waves. There are many different types of amplifiers designed for specific purposes; however, the most common type is the audio amplifier. You can build a simple audio amplifier by following these steps.


step1
Install the transistor to the base. You need to connect a NPN transistor to the solderless breadboard. The MPSW45A Darlington transistor is actually two transistors in one packaging that increases the amplification. You must connect the transistor at J27, J28 and J29. Then connect the jumper wires from I22 to I27 on the labeled grid on the breadboard.

step2
Divide the voltage. You must use transistors with the same ohm. Connect one 100,000 ohm resistor the positive side if the 9 volt battery. Then connect the other one to the negative side. This will cause the voltage to be split in half where the resistors meet.

step3
Connect the 100,000 ohm resistors and battery to the breadboard. You need to connect one resistor to the grid from H27 to H28. Then connect the other resistor to the grid from I28 to I29. You must install the negative side of the battery to F26 and the positive side to F34.

step4
Stop distortion. You need to install the 10,000 ohm resistor to stabilize the voltage and eliminate distortion in the sound. Connect it to the grid from G20 to F28.

step5
Set the wattage for the amplifier. This amplifier can handle 1 watt of power without over heating or draining the battery too quickly. You must install the 50 ohm resistor from I33 to I34 in order to regulate the watts.

step6
Hook up the speaker. You need to connect the speaker to the breadboard. Connect it from F29 to J33 on the grid. Selengkapnya...

Here’s one way to make an inexpensive stomp box. In fact, if you have access to some trashed electronics and some scrap wood you can make one for almost nothing. I think both John Lee Hooker and John Hartford used stomp boxes. KT Tunstall stomps on a tambourine and uses lots of other neat pedal effects.

Material



You’ll need an 8 ohm speaker with a paper cone, bigger is better. I used one with a 5-inch cone for the box pictured here. One piece of wood about a foot wide and about 18 inches long, a half to three quarters inch thick. Another small piece about 1 inch by 12 inches.

Some speaker wire and a soldering iron.

Four wood or metal screws: 2 short, 2 long.

An old piece of carpet, a nice fluffy rag, an old towel, or some fake fleece like shown here.

Assembly



I assume you can deduce how to put one of these together by looking at the accompanying photos, so I won’t go into excruciating detail.

Solder the wire to your speaker like you normally would for one side of a stereo connection.

Put a plug of some sort on the other end. The plug should match the device you will plug the speaker into, most likely an amplifier.

Screw the small 1-inch high by 12-inches long board onto one end and underneath the 12 by 18 inch board, making a ramp (this thing should really be called a Stomp Ramp!). This board determines the steepness of the ramp and how comfortable your foot is while stomping or tapping, so experiment around for the feel you like.

Cover the ramp with the carpet, fluffy rag, fleece, etc. I had to use a staple gun for the fake fleece. I suppose that dreaded, but convenient, hot glue might also work. You can put more than one type of material on the ramp to make different sounds.

Turn the speaker cone facing down, place it on top of the material you chose and loosely screw it onto the wood piece toward the very top. Two screws are enough. I put some heat shrink tubing and some surgical tubing around the screws before I put them in to keep the speaker frame from causing a rattling sound. But you might like that sound. Try it both ways.

Putting the speaker on top of the material gives it a thumpier sound as opposed to a tap-tap-tap sound if you just put it on the bare wood.

Create some strain relief on the wire from the speaker if you anticipate rough use. As shown in the photo, I tied a knot in the wire and then put a horseshoe nail just in front of the knot, toward the plug end.

Plug the speaker into an amplifier and the output of the amp into a regular speaker. Or a big Marshall if you’re so inclined.

Operation



When you tap your foot you should here a thumping noise coming out of the speaker. Loudness will be determined by how hard you tap your foot and how high you turn your amp. To hear what this stomp box sounds like with a 10-inch speaker, a little 15 watt amp and just a white sock on, double click on the movie below. I didn't have to use a shielded wire for the speaker (to prevent hum and picking up talk radio stations!) but you might have to depending on your location.

You can change the tone of your box by changing the equalizer on your amp or mixer and by fooling with the thickness and type of material you use on the board. I used fleece for the tone quality and because it wouldn't show the dirt from my shoe as much as the old, white gym towel I first tried.

I’ve tried 2, 3, 5 and even a 10-inch speaker. The bigger speakers made for a stomp box with somewhat lower tones.

I sometimes put an old, upside down Rubbermaid plastic bowl over the top of the speaker and it seems to work like the air enclosure on a woofer, it produced more bass. Hey dude, don't step on my Tupperware!

Why does it Work?

When you tap on the board, the speaker acts like a microphone and generates a small current as the speaker’s cone coil moves through the magnetic field generated by the speaker’s permanent magnet. It's the same principle as a phonograph needle and cartridge. It’s a passive mechanism so it doesn’t need any batteries.

Disclaimer

When I Googled “stomp box” what I got was lots of effects pedals. When I searched for “acoustic stomp box” I got a few for sale that ranged in price from $100 to $200. Some recommended putting a microphone in a box then into an equalizer, etc. But I didn’t find much information on a DIY stomp box that was to my liking so I winged it and made a few like this one. My apologies to any inventor if I’ve inadvertently ended up duplicating something that’s already out there. Also, it’s not purely acoustic since it depends on an amp to work. It should be called an Amplified Acoustic Stomp Box Ramp I guess. The same is true of the few commercially available "acoustic" boxes. Of course, you can also run the output of this box into an effects device. I fooled with that for a while and then gave up figuring I would be better off to practice some more rather than further amplifying my sketchy guitar playing and stomping.

After I posted the Stomp Box Video above I happened to listen to the sound on someone's Gateway PC Laptop. Awful! It was nearly impossible to hear any bass at all, which of course is necessary to judge whether you might like this DIY Stomp Box. If possible, check it out with decent speakers or headphones. It sounds MUCH better through my little M-Audio Studio Pro 4's or even with $4.99 Coby headphones.

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