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Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
The pickups whose form factor I had to copy. The eagle eyed among you may notice that the middle pickup is not really a conventional single coil, it's simply one humbucker coil sat on top of two ceramic magnets: not enough coil height for proper single coil treble response .... Hummmm I think we can do better than that.
The two new baseplates ans the bobbins I will use ... one spare plate in case I cock up lol.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
This may run to several parts as it's quite a 'big' build :-)
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
The custom 3mm thick baseplate uses a slotted hole for the four conductor hook-up wire to exit ... a small touch, but this allows the wire to exit the pickup base at an angle rather than going straight down. What's wrong with straight down you may ask? Well cavity depth is limited on many 7 strings, and the bend needed on the relatively thick four conductor 4mm cable to go through 90 degrees soaks around 6mm of clearance ... making your pickup essentially 2mm taller. With a slot you only use the 4mm of actual cable diameter.
You see in the pic the copper ground plane attached ... and next
The 'magnet pack' is added ... this 7 string uses our 'Tapered Magnet Grade' system and the assembly is protected from prying eyes of competitors by tape and gunk for this pic ... sorry :-) As far as I know I am the only winder using this technology ... which allows the benefits of using alnico and ceramic magnets in the same pickup BUT specifically applied to certain strings.
Next the bobbins are mounted. The gloop you see on top is potting wax, as the bobbins have already been potted 'naked' for maximum penetration (oooer missus) but will be potted again with the whole pickup once fully assembled. Double potting ensures lack of nasties in the high-gain environments most 7 strings inhabit.
Again, little touches ... we custom cut bobbin spacers from maple that create snug pockets for the pigtail wires to sit in, leading to nice, neat wire runs and snug fitting final tape wrapping.
Next: on to the middle pickup. This was a special challenge, as the Ibanez unit fitted wasn't really a proper single coil, just being one half of a humbucker (normal shallow bobbin) sat on top of two ceramic magnets. The key to a 'Fender like' tone is a tall bobbin and this most certainly didn't have that! I am limited to 17.3mm of overall pickup height by the Ibanez routing but actually that is plenty to fit in a heavily customised 7 string version of my Materwound Lizzy-Belle P90/Strat hybrid.
To be continued :-)
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I'm glad that they'll be the same height as a regular pickup after the hell I've had with the bareknuckles!
I decided a while ago to go for the low profile fibre baseplates as standard on my 7 strings. This came about after creating custom angled 7s for Carillion guitars, and meant I had some standard CAD drawings that could be modified for streight pickups and other spacings. This means I can be very flexible and also offer super low profile pickups ... as the 'cranked' metal baseplates really do suck up space.
Anyway, on with the pickup build:
Right ... this middle pickup well the original Ibanez is really just half a humbucker, with the very shallow bobbin that characterises a bucker, simply sat on a pair of big ceramic magnets. To get a proper stratty tone you need a deeper bobbin, so I would have to custom build one to be 20% taller but still not make the pickup any higher overall. The baseplate would be cut with our laser, then given a ground plane like the humbuckers.
I suffer for my art!!! in making the custom bobbin there was 'claret!'
Anyway
Here we have the as yet unwound custom bobbin ... trial fitted with pole screws and 'placeholder' magnets to check it all goes together.
I have used black slot head pole screws for the middle pickup as these are available in the softer grade steel that better suits single coil tone. The pole screws are not driven in all the way ... and won't stick up like that on the finished pickup.
More soon
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
And here it is wound and potted.
more soon ....
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message