What makes a good pickup?

[Annoying Twit]

What makes a good pickup, compared to a rubbish one? The basic design is very simple. So what is it about a Seymour Duncan or Bartolini pickup that makes it better from something you could make at home with some appropriate magnets, wire, and wax? (And popsicle sticks if the article I've read is to be believed).

[chunky-b]

 

 

[Guttermouth]

the quality of components and variance/ pattern of winding are what make all the difference from what i've seen and heard.

[D Aussie]

Im not doing this to be mean...

 

What makes a good beer, compared to a rubbish one? The basic design is very simple. So what is it about a Duval or Fullers that makes it better from something you could make at home with some appropriate malt, water, and hops? (And sugar if the article I've read is to be believed).

 

Quality, knowledge, experience.

[Annoying Twit]

 

Im not doing this to be mean... What makes a good beer, compared to a rubbish one? The basic design is very simple. So what is it about a Duval or Fullers that makes it better from something you could make at home with some appropriate malt, water, and hops? (And sugar if the article I've read is to be believed). Quality, knowledge, experience.

 

 

Well, if that's a good analogy, it's pretty easy to make good quality beer at home. Because you can put the effort into it which would be uneconomic for large scale typical cost beer manufacturing. Recipes of sufficient quality are easily available. A newbie beer maker might make some mistakes which might ruin the beer, but even newbies frequently end up making a good quality brew, and decide that they aren't going to buy that mass produced bottled stuff again.

[birdboy7007]

 

Well, if that's a good analogy, it's pretty easy to make good quality beer at home. Because you can put the effort into it which would be uneconomic for large scale typical cost beer manufacturing. Recipes of sufficient quality are easily available. A newbie beer maker might make some mistakes which might ruin the beer, but even newbies frequently end up making a good quality brew, and decide that they aren't going to buy that mass produced bottled stuff again.

 

 

You could do the same with pickups, if you put the time in to learning and trial and error....

 

Edit: For further clarification, you can no more expect to make a good beer out of {censored} components and no know-how than you can to make a good pickup. That's D Aussie's point. If you put the time into learning/practicing anything, and use high quality components I'm sure anyone could be good at that too.

[Annoying Twit]

 

You could do the same with pickups, if you put the time in to learning and trial and error.... Edit: For further clarification, you can no more expect to make a good beer out of {censored} components and no know-how than you can to make a good pickup. That's D Aussie's point. If you put the time into learning/practicing anything, and use high quality components I'm sure anyone could be good at that too.

 

 

Yes, but the amount of learning and trial and error is also of interest. As an example, making an excellent ginger beer is pretty easy and a good recipe with good ingredients should give an excellent result first time. And obtaining good ingredients for ginger beer is pretty simple. Possible for pickups?

[Wanderlusterer]

 

Well, if that's a good analogy, it's pretty easy to make good quality beer at home. Because you can put the effort into it which would be uneconomic for large scale typical cost beer manufacturing. Recipes of sufficient quality are easily available. A newbie beer maker might make some mistakes which might ruin the beer, but even newbies frequently end up making a good quality brew, and decide that they aren't going to buy that mass produced bottled stuff again.

 

 

Yes, but from your analogy then you're saying that someone could possibly make a good quality beer from scratch. That doesn't mean it's good for everybody. You might happen to like certain things that compared to everyone else, tastes like sheot.

 

The same could be said for making pups. No matter how good you think your product sounds, does not necessarily mean that everyone's going to like it or want it.

[Jazz Ad]

It is pretty easy to build a pickup that works. It doesn't even take a lot of tools.

Now building good pickups is another story. Components end tools are very expensive and you will waste a lot to get where you want to go.

[Annoying Twit]

Fair 'nuff. I note on a link I found that people making pickups usually practice on broken cheap-ass pickups first. I ran across an article where they made a bass pickup out of magnets, popsicle sticks, and wire. I was wondering how easy it was to get into the "sweet spot", and whether it was mainly component quality (usually easily solved) or skill (not so much so), or design (prolly easily reversed engineering for pickups) that made the difference.

 

http://www.diyhappy.com/how-to-make-a-guitarbass-pickup/

[pbass_groovin]

Timmy C should know. He winds his up.

[Jazz Ad]

In essence a pickup is an extremelly simple component. I made a few for fun.

Take a magnet, wrap copper wire around it to form a coil, you're done.

It becomes more complicated afterwards.