Making a Single Coil Pickup: Complete Guide

[guitarmd]

Finally finished this. Intended as a reference/overview for anyone curious about the process of building a single coil pickup from the ground up.

[cynical1]

Interesting. Do you make a p-90 set?

HTC1

[antigua]

What an awesome video. This is legit the best video I've see on the subject. If you're making these at production scale, some of these steps might take a little too long, but if you make small quantities of pickups, the attention to detail and quality work is what it's all about.


I wonder how Abigail Ybarra handled this issues while winding single coils for Fender. I know they don't bother with the kapton tape or gluing the magnets. I'm not sure if Abigail Ybarra pressed the flatwork and the magnets together. I would guess not, since it's somewhat more physical than spooling, but then again Fender must have some custom made jigs and tooling that let them press it all together with the pull of a lever. 

[guitarmd]

Dec 21, 2022 13:17:11 GMT -5 cynical1 said:

Interesting. Do you make a p-90 set?

HTC1

I've made P90's before, but haven't gotten around to offering any sets yet. Usually I'll do one-offs, as I only stock parts for Strat and Tele pickups. The baseplates/bar mags for P90's, humbuckers and the like get very expensive very quickly. I've been meaning to try out these phenolic standoffs for making a fiberboard flatwork P90. I might have a couple regular plastic P90 bobbins left. Recently did one for a J45 acoustic, funnily enough.

[guitarmd]

Jan 17, 2023 23:06:21 GMT -5 antigua said:

What an awesome video. This is legit the best video I've see on the subject. If you're making these at production scale, some of these steps might take a little too long, but if you make small quantities of pickups, the attention to detail and quality work is what it's all about.


I wonder how Abigail Ybarra handled this issues while winding single coils for Fender. I know they don't bother with the kapton tape or gluing the magnets. I'm not sure if Abigail Ybarra pressed the flatwork and the magnets together. I would guess not, since it's somewhat more physical than spooling, but then again Fender must have some custom made jigs and tooling that let them press it all together with the pull of a lever. 

Thanks so much! I think I'd go mad if I went into production level on pickups. Sometimes I'll take weeks or even months off, then get some new ideas and get back at it. I have found that the superglue helps a *lot* to prevent the top flatwork from deforming, especially when using higher winding tension and using a lot of turns.

I also recently switched to Kapton tape after using black cloth electrical tape for years, as the Kapton tape is a lot thinner.

I've never seen anyone else discuss it, but I think the tape around the mags can impact the sound. The black tape is around .007" thick, I think, and the Kapton tape is around .001". By using thicker tape, you are effectively making a very slightly bigger coil. It would make sense that the inductance might be slightly higher as the total length of wire for the same turn count will be greater when using thicker insulation around the magnets. I don't know if insulating more or less around the mags would have any impact on the sound other than that, but who knows.

I do wonder about the jig Fender used in the past, and what they use now. I have seen tooling before that does it all in one shot, and I think Fred Stuart might do it that way, who used to make some Fender Custom Shop pickups if I'm not mistaken, unless he's always just made his own brand. One of the reasons I wanted to make this video was exactly that there are no other videos showing this process so clearly, at least none that I could find.

I did forget one detail: tapping the threads with a 6-42 tap. I just use a cordless drill, nothing special, no fixtures or anything, just do it by eye. Can't believe I forgot that! It's so easy to forget little things like that. Frustrated, because I spent a lot of time and wanted it to be definitive and I forgot that one little detail, but it does make a huge difference. Unthreaded holes in the flatwork are a huge pain and make adjusting the pickups unnecessarily difficult, as then you have to thread the flatwork yourself by driving the screw through it forcefully.

The build quality is a huge thing for me. In my early days on eBay (and it's still the 'early days' given that I still only sell maybe one pickup every few months), I had one complaint. The guy was able to fix the pickup, but he had to re-flow the eyelet joints. To me that was unacceptable. That was maybe 5 years ago. I thanked him for letting me know and then made a more serious point of *always* tinning the magnet wire before tying around the eyelets, and making sure the joints are rock solid. I'm going to be experimenting with lead-free solder soon and seeing how that works as well.

I think of building pickups as building them for multiple lifetimes of use. I think the black cloth electrical tape may hold up the best, but that Kapton tape is super strong too, despite how thin it is, and might be just as good or even better. It also allows for more winding space, being so thin.

I will admit that the build process takes me so long, I'm almost relieved I only sell a couple pickups here and there, and only do a couple rewinds here and there. To me, I just don't feel secure or safe or good about sending anything out to anyone that isn't the best I can do. But it is very time consuming and labor intensive, to the point I've considered going to plastic hookup wire instead of the Gavitt pushback wire. As much as I love that stuff, it is very expensive, especially with the price of everything going up so high these days.

Also just posted this one the other day: