Handwound some pickups (test)

  • Got some 42 AWG wire from Stewmac and their humbucker kit. Did one Alnico5 pickup out of curiosity to see how hard it is. It was a PITA to be honest. :D


    But got hooked anyway, since it only takes half an hour to make a humbucker, and sourced parts for more locally.


    Here's the ceramic humbucker I built in high gain context against the EMG 81. Disclaimer: gain has been adjusted between the guitars, since the handwound passive is relatively low output.


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  • that is a great sounding pickup!

    have you checked out AlNiCo8?

    I'll get to those eventually! These are just the first two pickups I've done ever. But I do have a sort of method/ideology of how to make these.


    I have a hunch that lower output pickups with high gain settings will sound better than high output ones with lower gain. Simply because the more winds you have on the coil, you start to get more compression and lose some high end.

  • I'm a big fan of handmade pickups by small businesses. I have few from a german maker (Ruebezahl pickups) that sadly stopped working in this area, and others.


    If you keep making pickups, I'd be really interested to order something from you :) it is such a rewarding investment the propbably the best way to enhance your guitars once you got to know them and figure out what he perfect pickup compliment would be.

  • Fantastic, well done ! We buy and sell pickups all the time, a skill like this would clearly save us lots of money and have a way to start a small business.


    The best pickups I have were handwound P92, huge P90 humbercke sized , fat, bright and screaming. Quite unique models made by my luthier.