After years of wanting what I couldn't get out of pickups, I finally decided to start building my own and finally came up with something the perfect blend of single coils and humbuckers for me!!

[Silver Hand]

 

After almost a year of experimenting and prototypes, this is the pickup I finally became happy with. I call it a "Full Range Humbucker" because it looks like a "Wide Range Humbucker", but they sounds much more like a Strat neck pickup and hot bridge single coil than a humbucker. This is because it it uses 6 (3+3) rod magnets, staggered like a P bass under the covers, instead of 12 charged screws like a humbucker normally does. Between the poles being magnets like a single coil and not using 12 rods, they typical phase cancellation that occurs on humbuckers gets taken away while not losing the advantage of the hum cancelling properties of a humbucker.

 

Neck Version:

- 6.1K

- 2.6H

- Alnico 5 rods

 

Bridge Version:

- 9.5K

- 5.5H

 

I've fell in love with the pickups, and just wanted to share!

 

Here's a quick unprocessed sound clip I made of the neck model:

[papaschtroumpf]

They look and Sounds similar to Fralin split singles like the P92 or Twangmaster?

 

 

I've been thinking about making my own pickups, but I'm worried I won't have time play guitar anymore....

[wankdeplank]

Yes it does sound a bit Stratty. Be nice to know what kind of guitar the neck pickup was in when you made the recording.

[Fusion1]

How would the Wide Range pickups sound doing your own metal clips on your Soundcloud page?

[Silver Hand]

I remember seeing them a while back, but I wanted complete control over the resistance, inductance, and wind pattern, and to have adjustable magnets. I'll have to listen to that clip later.

 

Assuming they only use 3 magnets per coil, then they are very similar in design to my Full Range Humbuckers. I'm VERY surprised that this style of "noiseless single coil" hasn't been done that much instead of much more convoluted stack designs for noiseless single coil tones. IMO it gets waaaaaaaay closer, and is much easier to create from mostly stock parts.

 

If you build your own pickups, be prepared to spend a fair amount of money and spend a lot of time learning by trial and error! Its very fun though!! I actually surprised myself with how damn good my pickups sound now.

[Silver Hand]

I forgot those recordings were on there! I don't even know where those source files are anymore. I remembered the pickup was a Seymour Duncan JB into a Mesa Dual Rectifier though.

 

The Wide Range Neck would be tough to do metal with. The bridge that I have now wound to 9.5K (no sound sample on my soundcloud, that's a lower output version in the bridge) sounds great through the same Mesa amp though. I haven't tried it for metal though, just heavier sections of rock, and it works great. I get the feeling it wouldn't be ideal for metal though. Probably too many bright overtones.

[Silver Hand]

I realized I linked to the soundfile for the old bridge version I made, which was a bit higher output. I fixed it and changed the link to go to the neck version I mentioned. Whoops.

[Jkater]

Longest thread title ever.

[Jkater]

Longest thread title ever.