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Built my own pickup winder - Works great

Got tired of looking for low profile jazz pickup to use on my CBGs. Decided to wind my own. I have seen the FlatPups ad think they are super cool. I wanted to give it a shot, myself and see what I came up with.

It worked out pretty well.

Here's a link to some videos of the project and results.

Thanks for all the inspiration

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Permalink Reply by Skeesix on June 9, 2013 at 7:34am

Good job!

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Permalink Reply by Don Goguen on June 10, 2013 at 12:08am

She's a beauty.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on June 10, 2013 at 1:06am

sweet!

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Permalink Reply by David McQueen on June 10, 2013 at 10:18am

You have just become my hero. Great work.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Drommond on June 10, 2013 at 11:38am

You are too kind. I'm no hero. I'm just a reflection of the stuff I've learned here and on a few other forums over the last year. Until last Father's Day, I just played my old acoustic '82 Alvarez I bought new and just piddled around with the same 4 or 5 partial songs I'd always played..parts of..sort of..kinda. I received a Squier Strat for Father's Day from my 11-year old son. I started looking for lessons and tabs on youtube. Started learning some theory and actually playing music, instead of playing along with music. I found cigar box guitars while searching.

Shane Speal and Seasick Steve are the two artist that got me hooked on this and learning about it.It been non-stop guitar, cigar box guitar, building guitars and discussing guitars ever since. I'm plum eat up with it. Having more fun with music than I have in 30 years of playing.

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Permalink Reply by David McQueen on June 10, 2013 at 2:39pm

My story is not that much different. The guitar is a 1975 el Degas. But, I had always wanted to make guitars. A friend of mine bought me Cumpiano's book on guitar making, but the tool set was much larger than the budget. I first ran into CBG's on Blues Boy Jag's site. I have vintage Macintosh computers and went there looking for info on that. By that time I had scrounged together about half of the tool set for full sized guitars and said to myself, "I can do that". So last March I did. 16 CBG's later I don't regret it.

What hooked me was the localness of it and the folks versus the people, do it youself from local materials mind set. The ultimate goal would be a honkin instrument with absolutely all materials sourced locally and everything hand built. The pickup winder with hand made bobbins is a step towards that. The only thing I don't know about from those videos is setting up,the counter. But I do know what I am looking for at the yard sales. :)

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Permalink Reply by Tom Drommond on June 10, 2013 at 4:04pm

For the counter I found one on ebay from China. It was $15.00 with free shipping. It's a magnetic switch with a digital counter. It's very accurate to 1200 rpm, which is plenty fast to wind a pickup. You can get 4-5000 winds in 10 minutes and that's stopping to check the coil shape and distribution. The magnet is attached to the wheel on the left side of my winder.

The arbor was the key component. I found it on ebay and that set the wheels turning. I bought it for $45 with shipping. I have not seen another one like it, but if I do, I'm buying it. Back in the 50s, Sears made a Craftsman 7" Arbor. That would be a great find, too.

The sewing machine ended up being more waste than necessary. I gave more to ship it than I did for the machine. It was $15.00, but $30.00 shipping, due to weight. Very heavy cast iron body.

All I needed was the motor and foot pedal. I could have bought them cheaper from a sewing machine repair shop. I should have hit a few Salvation Army and Goodwill stores, too.

Hope that's useful