Pickup Winder: Wire Caddy

Procrastination is getting the better of me with this pickup winding deal. In the the packaging for the wire, it advises that the wire should slide off the side of the spool (perpendicular to the spool wind) whilst winding your pickups. I couldn't think of a way to nicely achieve this without some kind of caddy to point the wire spool towards the winder. And so, an hour today was spent building just such a caddy.

42 AWG wire spool sitting on the wire caddy.

So basically, there's now now excuse for me not starting to wind my first set of Stratocaster pickups. I have everything I need now in place. I just have to sit down and do it!

Everything is now ready to start winding my strat pickups.

Stay tuned, it's gonna happen any day now ;).

Pickup Winder: Strat Pickups Part 2

After a successful trip to Jaycar in search of rare-earth magnets, I'm ready for the second step in the winding of a set of single coil Stratocaster pickups - magnetising the pole pieces. To do this, two magnets are needed with opposing poles. The magnets are mounted with opposing poles facing each other and the pickup is passed between them.

Using my son's orienteering compass, I determined the polarity of each magnet and stuck them to the jaws of my nut-making vise with just enough room for the pickup bobbin to slide comfortably between them (nothing like wrestling some strong rare-earth magnets!).

Testing the polarity of my rare-earth magnets

Using my nut vice to hold both the opposing magnets

Once the magnets were in place, I took each bobbin in turn and passed them through the gap. It was pretty damn hard keeping the pole pieces from sticking to the magnets! I did 40 passes with each bobbin to (hopefully) fully magnetise each Alnico V pole piece.

Magnetising the neck and bridge pickups as north-facing.

To allow for noise cancelling when the middle pickup is used in parallel with either the neck or bridge pickup, the middle pickup needs to be RWRP - or "reverse wind, reverse polarity". Half of this equation means that the polarity of the pole pieces for the middle pickup need to be the opposite of the others. Therefore, having passed the bridge and neck pickups through the magnets in a "north facing" configuration, for the middle pickup I reversed the direction to create a "south facing" polarity.
 

Magnetising the middle pickup as south-facing.

After more struggling against the pull of the magnets, a quick polarity test of all three pickups showed that I had succeeded in creating a "reverse polarity" middle pickup.

The resulting polarity of all three pickups compared.

With the pole pieces magnetised, it's now time to crank up the winder and see if I can get some 42 AWG wire on these bad boys. Let's hope I don't break the wire first time out! I will be going quite slowly so fingers crossed for no mishaps. I will also be stopping every 500 winds or so to measure the resulting resistance of the coil. That should complicate the process quite nicely ;). Anyway, I need some nail polish before I continue on, so stay tuned for the next installment!

Pickup Winder: Strat Pickups Part 1

I finally got some time today to start wiring a set of 3 single coil pickups for my Ash Stratocaster build. The first step in getting the pickups wound is to assemble the pole pieces into the flatwork, and that's what I ended up tackling. The pickup kit that I purchased from aliexpress.com came complete with the flatwork (with eyelets already inserted), alnico V polepieces (unmagnetised) and push back vintage wire to create all 3 pickups.

Strat pickup kit and the tools to assemble the flatwork.

The pole pieces were already bevelled on one edge, removing one step in the process (phew). The pole pieces that came with the kit were the following sizes: 3x18.7mm, 1x18.3mm, 1x17.5mm and 1x19.8mm. Referring to the pickup winding guide from Stewmac as a rough tutorial, I assigned these pole sizes to the string positions as follows:

E: 18.3, A: 18.7, D:18.7, G: 19.8, B: 17.5, E:18.7

Using my regular hammer, I bashed the non-bevelled ends of the pole pieces into the bottom flatwork, making sure that the eyelets were facing up. In preparation for lacquering the completed bobbins, I also covered the eyelets with a little painters tape. It took more effort than I was expecting to get these pole pieces seated - the holes in the flatwork are quite a deal smaller than the diameter of the pole pieces themselves, and this combined with my sausage fingers meant that it took quite a bit of effort to get them hammered in.

Pole pieces finally bashed into the bottom flatwork.

With the pole pieces now in and standing, it was time to get the top flatwork installed. To make sure that it was installed at the correct height, I created two 11.5mm high guides out of plywood to sit either side of the pole pieces.

11.5mm high guides cut from plywood and held with a rubber band.

Held in place with a rubber band, these allowed the top flatwork to be hammered home without mishap. To help me, I created a small tool from a piece of perspex whose 55mm diameter hole fit over each pole piece and allowed me to lower the flatwork around it. This was another useful hint from the stewmac winding guide, and it really saved my arse.

A piece of perspex with a 55mm hole. A genius hint from Stewmac.

Although it took a little bit of fiddling to get all the pole pieces lined up with the holes in the top flatwork (especially the lowest B string pole piece) I soon had all the pole pieces hammered through and looking great!

Pole pieces installed! This baby is almost ready for winding.

After the first bobbin was assembled, I went on to complete the remaining two. Yet again it took more time than I was expecting (most time was taken with the initial hammering pole pieces into the bottom flatwork) but finally I had all three bobbins assembled and ready for the last step in their assembly.

Three strat bobbins all assembled and ready for lacquer!

This last step is to spray the entire bobbin with lacquer to make sure there's no electrical conductivity. This was achieved using the dregs of my White Knight acrylic cans from a previous build. I used a piece of hookup wire through the screw hole to hold each pickup for spraying and later hanging to dry. The painters tape hopefully stopped any lacquer from coating the eyelets!

Bobbins sprayed with Lacquer and hanging to dry.

So there you have it! 3 assembled strat pickup bobbins ready for step 2 in the process - magnetising the poles. I need to source some rare earth magnets from Jaycar during the week so that I can get this done and be ready for winding. Exciting times!

Pickup Winder: Wire Guide

I finally received the last parts for my DIY pickup winder today - a 30cm piece of 6mm brass tubing to act as a wire rest and two more Aluminium Hubs from Jaycar to act as guides.

Brass tubing with Aluminium Hubs to limit horizontal wire travel.

I've also received some cheap pickups kits from China (via Aliexpress) and hope to do some winding soon. I've got a couple of strat sets and a telecaster set.

Pickup kits: one Stratocaster and two Telecaster sets.

All I need to get started is a spool of 42 AWG wire. That's going to have to wait until the finances are a little stronger!