Where to Find Pickup Wire..

I'm looking at trying to make some different pickups, and have been looking online for different characteristics based on wire size, winding shape etc. I have an old sewing machine, with a bobbin winder on it, and several plastic bobbins. I was going to mess around a little with single string pickups.

If I use 42 awg magnet wire (just for the sake of discussion), it's about 1 ohm per foot, about 50,000 feet per pound of wire, but most of the 1 lb or larger spools I find on ebay, etc are around $40-$50/lb by the time I pay for shipping. This means a 10,000 ohm pickup will have around $10 worth of wire in it. If I knew exactly what I wanted to to, and wasn't planning on a lot of trial and error, this wouldn't be bad, but the prospect of spending $50 to "mess around" with pickups doesn't really excite me.....and would excite my wife even less :S

Am I the only one who doesn't know about "wire r us" or some place to find magnet wire more cheaply??

Any sources out there that I'm just not thinking of?

Thanks in advance.

Replies

Don Thompson July 24, 2010 at 6:36pm

http://www.guitarpartsusa.com/item--Guitar-Pickup-Coil-Winding-Wire...
The price has gone up since the last time I bought some,lots cheaper than Stew Mac
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=magnet+wire+42+gauge+&_cqr=tru...

better price I think, depends on shipping I guess
Don
Don Goguen July 24, 2010 at 6:13pm

One piece of advice I have for you is to not focus on the impedance but rather the number of turns. This is especially so when winding smaller 3 & 4 pole pickups for CBG's. The output and sound of a pickup has more to do with the type and strength of the magnets and the number of turns and the gauge of wire and the height, width and length of coil. The typical 10k 6 string pickup will not translate with the same sound in a smaller pickup. When I started building smaller pickups it took me some time to figure out the right balance, gauge and magnet type to get the sound I wanted.

That said it takes less wire per turn for a small pickup so you won't use as much wire for the same output as a 6 string. I've been buying 5lb rolls from various places. Mojotone has very good quality but the prices are high. I found some 42 gauge heavy at a midwest electronic surplus place online but the roll was beat up on the outside making the first 10th unusable. But for $70 for a 4.5lb roll that's not bad. The place is called surplus sales of Nebraska. I wouldn't use this for building humbuckers or strat coils but more than suitable for building CBG pickups.
Skeesix July 24, 2010 at 4:32pm

Copper is just really expensive these days. The prices have risen considerably (doubled?) since I got into winding a few years ago.

If you just want to mess around with a few pickups, I would get a very small amount from tech-fixx on eBay. I did this recently when I wanted to experiment with some different gauges. It was maybe $12 per roll to do this.