hey everyone, i wanted to know if anyone has made pickups from cracking open an ac adapter and using the coil. if so any tipps secrets to make them better, or maybe another source for coils found around the house.
Thanks
bill
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I have so many questions about this. What kind of magnets do you use? I guess you should get really strong ones but can you use one big bar magnet, or do you have to use a bunch of little ones? What kind of pots do you use? Technically these are single coil pickups but they sound pretty dark. Should one use a higher value to let some of the higher end in? Also, if you keep both coils together it seems a tick away from a humbucker. Has anyone tried to put some magnets on the bottom and wire them to some slug metal near the top? I'm not really clear about how humbuckers work but I think it's 2 coils with opposite direction and magnets with reversed polarity wired together. Speaking of humbuckers, I once heard that you can remove the slug screws from a standard humbucker and get a single coil sound with no hum. Can you just stick a magnet behind a single coil to remove the hum? If anyone can take on all these questions I'd have a whole lot of respect for your knowledge. Thanks.
thanks guys for all the input... this is a great place to get the answer to just about everything. Pick thanks for the link to that vid. there is another one out there too where you can leave the plates on the coil thanks to the phrygian kid for that info, that was actually very interesting. I have to agree with you on that git by Brian Hunt that is screamer if ever i saw one. would love to hear it. i would like to keep this going as there was hours of information i got from it, i'm sure there are others out there with the same questions. thanks everyone i've tried just about every combination i could come up with. i've even stripped the wire off the coil and wound it around bobbins. they could be louder but with a little help from a pedal all is good. i will post some pics probably by the end of the weekend of some of the experiments i've tried. thanks again and if anyone has any other way to make these adapter or sewing bobbin pickups i know i would love to try them out.
bill
The Book "Cigar Box Guitars" By David Sutton has a nine page article Titled "Building a homemade electromagnetic guitar pickup, by One String Willie! Using sewing bobbins, enameled wire, magnet(s).
I saw someone on youtube who made a diddly bow and had some salvaged parts from electric clippers as the pickup url below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC9dGSMPpi0&feature=related
yeah Brian, real nice..
but i regret i disagree with some of what you say..
you do not NEED TO remove the steel core plates, although they make the whole thing ,more bulky, it'll function just fine with those left on there, and you can in fact stick a magnet or two on the bottom and use that steel as your 'pole pieces' removing this steel is often a fiddly and slightly dangerous job, its real easy to get blood on it. its also tremendously frustrating, if you wanna experiment with your own capacity for patience so you may as well have a crack at winding imho..
similarly, you do not NEED TO cut off the secondary coil, you can for sure, but you can leave it there, wire it in series or para with the other, in or out of phase, or just leave it out of the circuit without cutting it off...
there are plenty of other places you can find nice coils Bill, if you ever blow up a sander or a drill, jig saw, hair clippers, many many devices of this nature have a big stinkin coil in em just waiting for someone to rock out on em, dont thow this stuff away, bust it open for a surprise
thanks for the info, i have tried the adapter that way as well with the steel left on. i do have a question for you,. im not much of a wiring guru could you tell me how you would wire them in series or para or in or out of phase this i think i know how to connect them in series, is that where you connect the positive from one to negative of the other and the then the out
Thanks for the compliments on the guitar guys. I really enjoy this particular guitar. I have it tuned to an open D and it is a lot of fun to play with or without a slide. I just wish I could play it as well as it deserves. There were some amazing builds in that 2011 contest. Every once and awhile I reread that one just for the number of great ideas found in it.
HI Phrygian Kid,
I really don't think we have a disagreement. You are correct, I just posted the way most people including myself seem to do this hack. Everything you posted will work as well though I would hate to try to mount a pickup that would be that tall. If I had left everything in place and just added magnets the pickups would have been sticking out of both the front and the back of that guitar. I also agree with you about some nice coils in unusual places and that you should always keep your eyes open to the possibilities. I currently have a couple of transformers out of some old microwaves I intend to turn into a welder sometime down the road.
all the best.
Brian.
yeah mate all good. your guitar is really really nice btw..
im just putting it there so folks understand, you can spend a couple hours on it like you did for sure. you can also have one working in a couple minutes if you choose :)
some wall warts are much slimmer than others. cell phone chargers for example work pretty good and can be quite slender. you can also experiment with the orientation of the coil, it neednt necessarily orient like we are all used to seeing on a strat
ps can you link us the page youre talking about? im guessing it was some other forum ?
Once again we are still in agreement. The sharing of information is one of the things I love about the cigar box guitar culture.
Since we are sharing information, I must add that one of the most disappointing thing about wall warts is when you open one up and there are no transformer coils, instead you have a bridge rectifier created with diodes, capacitors and resistors. I always throw those boards into an electronic parts box and hope to find a use for them down the road.
Thanks again for the compliment on the guitar. I need to get around to posting some videos so people can actually hear some of my builds. I am just a little gun shy about letting people see and hear my amateur chops. The learning curve for playing has been somewhat steep in my case despite regular practice.Though I quite enjoy building and playing guitars, cigar box or otherwise.
My next planned project is going to be a telecaster and then I want to start a classical guitar but first I need to finish up some resonator cigar box guitars I am in the middle of.
I hope what has been posted here helps others in their experiments for DIY pickups from found copper wound coils. I know it was quite exciting for me the first time I got a working pickup going from found parts. Right now I am waiting for some magnets to get here that I ordered from ebay so I can start experimenting with some DIY wound pickups I have some ideas for.
: )
Brian thanks for your info, and the righteous git pic. as i said above i would love to see this post grow and grow with ideas, failed ideas or questions from other people. i have had alot of fun over the past few days trying them all out, so much so i've started tearing apart a mixer a about 20 wal warts and taking a circular saw apart but thats becomig difficult. lol
thanks again
bill
please join my solid body club sir :)
http://www.cigarboxnation.com/group/solidbody-city?xg_source=activity
if you need any help with winding im at your service, ive done a few
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