Last year I added an electronic counter to my winding rig. I bought three digits of the counter from "Dick Smith" as a kit. The kit is designed to be expandable, and having a fouth digit was simply a matter of etching the extra board and buying a few extra components. As you can see, it all fits comfortably in its box, (another item from the Dick Smith catalogue), along with its power supply. You can see I've made a heatsink for the voltage regulator from an aluminium jiffy box lid. You'd be surprised just how much current those four seven-segment-displays draw and I use a nine volt wall transformer. The counter is triggered by a tiny device called a Hall Effect Sensor which you can just see in the top photo mounted with two white zip-ties to the spindle housing. I super glued a small magnet to the inner flange of the spindle which passes about 1 or 2 mm from the sensor. I guess the bobbin must usually be spinning at around 800 RPM and the counter never misses a beat. The lower image shows a humbucker that I made for my black tele. The cover is machined from a piece of mahogany, then stained black and sprayed in a satin polyurathane. As you can see, it has two rows of alnico magnets. The bobbins are made with fibre glass circuit board material. This material is stiff, but not brittle, machines and drills well, and is compatible with superglue. The pickup leads solder right up to it, and the bobbins can be earthed for shielding purposes. I also have a page about a custom pickup that I made for a mate's Riverhead bass, and a page about a custom pickup that I made for one of my seven string basses. |
stone with a spacer tube, and attached a flange to the end of the spindle. The bobbins are held up to the flange with a combination of their own magnetism and two small blobs of "Blu Tac". (That soft sticky putty used to put up posters.) I know this sounds a bit dodgey, but in practice, it works well. When I wind a pickup, I put the spool of wire on the floor directly under, but slightly in front of the winder. I guide and tension the winding wire with my left hand while my right hand cranks the handle. I think the "grinder winder" has gears of about 8:1 ratio, so it doesn't take much effort to get the spindle really humming. You can wind an average coil in about ten minutes. When I'm winding, I keep my 25 watt soldering iron and my multi-meter handy, and if I want to test the DC resistance I simply "tin" a small section of the wire and apply the probes. Ocassionally, I'll stop and paint the windings with lacquer. This is known as "Lacquer potting", and is done to reduce microphonics. (If windings in the coil are allowed to vibrated the pickup can act as a microphone). I found that nitrocellulose laquer actually melted the insulation on the winding wire, so I now use a waterborne acrylic lacquer that dries just as quickly. You can also pot the pickup by placing the finished coil in its cover and carefully pouring runny epoxy in until the bobbin is just covered. This works well too, but of course you have to attach the lead first or leave some solder terminals sticking out of the epoxy. This also makes rewinding very difficult! (But not impossible - check out this pickup.) |
A few years ago, I got interested in winding my own pickups. Some web searching uncovered several FAQs and even the titles of a couple of books about the subject . Jason Lollar's book "Basic Pickup Winding and Complete Guide to Making Your Own Pickup Winder" and another book called "Animal Magnetism For Musicians" by Erno Zwaan were both very helpful. To wind the bobbins I've been using an old hand cranked sharpening grinder which can be clamped just about anywhere. As you can see, I've replaced the |
stone with a spacer tube, and attached a flange to the end of the spindle. The bobbins are held up to the flange with a combination of their own magnetism and two small blobs of "Blu Tac". (That soft sticky putty used to put up posters.) I know this sounds a bit dodgey, but in practice, it works well. When I wind a pickup, I put the spool of wire on the floor directly under, but slightly in front of the winder. I guide and tension the winding wire with my left hand while my right hand cranks the handle. I think the "grinder winder" has gears of about 8:1 ratio, so it doesn't take much effort to get the spindle really humming. You can wind an average coil in about ten minutes. When I'm winding, I keep my 25 watt soldering iron and my multi-meter handy, and if I want to test the DC resistance I simply "tin" a small section of the wire and apply the probes. Ocassionally, I'll stop and paint the windings with lacquer. This is known as "Lacquer potting", and is done to reduce microphonics. (If windings in the coil are allowed to vibrated the pickup can act as a microphone). I found that nitrocellulose laquer actually melted the insulation on the winding wire, so I now use a waterborne acrylic lacquer that dries just as quickly. You can also pot the pickup by placing the finished coil in its cover and carefully pouring runny epoxy in until the bobbin is just covered. This works well too, but of course you have to attach the lead first or leave some solder terminals sticking out of the epoxy. This also makes rewinding very difficult! (But not impossible - check out this pickup.) |
Last year I added an electronic counter to my winding rig. I bought three digits of the counter from "Dick Smith" as a kit. The kit is designed to be expandable, and having a fouth digit was simply a matter of etching the extra board and buying a few extra components. As you can see, it all fits comfortably in its box, (another item from the Dick Smith catalogue), along with its power supply. You can see I've made a heatsink for the voltage regulator from an aluminium jiffy box lid. You'd be surprised just how much current those four seven-segment-displays draw and I use a nine volt wall transformer. The counter is triggered by a tiny device called a Hall Effect Sensor which you can just see in the top photo mounted with two white zip-ties to the spindle housing. I super glued a small magnet to the inner flange of the spindle which passes about 1 or 2 mm from the sensor. I guess the bobbin must usually be spinning at around 800 RPM and the counter never misses a beat. The lower image shows a humbucker that I made for my black tele. The cover is machined from a piece of mahogany, then stained black and sprayed in a satin polyurathane. As you can see, it has two rows of alnico magnets. The bobbins are made with fibre glass circuit board material. This material is stiff, but not brittle, machines and drills well, and is compatible with superglue. The pickup leads solder right up to it, and the bobbins can be earthed for shielding purposes. I also have a page about a custom pickup that I made for a mate's Riverhead bass, and a page about a custom pickup that I made for one of my seven string basses. |
Pickup Winding |
Pickup Winding |
