DIY pickup winding machine.

WezV · April 2023

I'm making this partly as a test for the laser cutter, partly to use that box full of old broken pickups and maybe even design a few of my own for 1 off builds.

I've wound a few before, but on some very basic drill based winders with very mixed results.

Parts required.

Box- I'm using laser cut 6mm ply.
Motor - Geared 12v DC 1000 RPM motor
Speed control - DC motor Speed control, preferably with a CW/CCW switch
Counter- 5 digit LCD counter with magnetic sensor
12v DC power supply and plug
On/off switch (optional)
Guide rail- 5mm stainless steel rod
Shaft collars - 5mm
Flanged motor shaft collar-6mm

Thats £50 worth of parts off ebay, and 2 sheets of A3 6mm ply

I'm doing things in the wrong order and designed and cut a box before all the parts arrived

The good news is the box fits together well, i just need to bevel teh edges on the angled piece. it should be very strong once glued.

I included a couple of motor supports in the file. I will bolt the motor to the side panel, but have the option of adding more support if needed, depending on how bad vibration is

Parts are starting to turn up, i just need a motor and LCD counter now.

However, I didn't account for the depth of this speed controller. I chose it as it has the CW/CCW switch on it, but it is also very deep and may foul the motor in it's current position. or I may dismantle it and move some parts around

I'm also not sure the LCD counter is best placed for visibility, so I may shuffle things around a bit and re-cut a couple of panels once all the parts are here

The on/off switch on the front isn't really required as the speed control does the same. I just added it to prevent me accidently putting the machine in reverse when i want to turn it off

Also I set the machine to engrave the letters rather than cut, but missed some of the center bits and it cut them out. I can live with that

axisus · April 2023

Fascinating!

GuyBoden · April 2023

Fantastic, very impressive.

Funkfingers · April 2023

If the positioning of the internal parts doesn't work out, place the empty box somewhere accessible in your kitchen. Time how long it takes for a cat to climb inside it for a snooze.

timhulio · April 2023

Very cool. I built one a few years ago when I was planning to get into guitar building properly, but only made a few pickups. How do you intend to count revolutions? I had a hall effect sensor, but it didn't work fast enough to count every revolution so was only approximate.

WezV · April 2023

Funkfingers said:

If the positioning of the internal parts doesn't work out, place the empty box somewhere accessible in your kitchen. Time how long it takes for a cat to climb inside it for a snooze.

i don't think the cats will fit, although I assume another batch of kittens will arrive at some point

timhulio said:

Very cool. I built one a few years ago when I was planning to get into guitar building properly, but only made a few pickups. How do you intend to count revolutions? I had a hall effect sensor, but it didn't work fast enough to count every revolution so was only approximate.

the LCD display comes with a magnet and magnetic sensor. I'm basically copying this sort of thing

WezV · April 2023

i've bevelled the back edges of the face plate

and it now first nicely

Most of it is glued together now, I've left the top 2 plates loose for now in case i need to redesign the layout.

DartmoorHedgehog · April 2023

Nice project - laser cutter's working well then (I'm quite envious of that).

(of course cool people use Lego and a broken pedometer

)

Funkfingers · April 2023

DartmoorHedgehog said:
a broken pedometer

What reading would that give for Prince Andrew?

WezV · April 2023

Small update

The shaft collars arrived for the guide rail

I designed it with the shaft going all the way through the machine, and the collars hold it in place both sides. It should be sturdy, but more importantly, nice and square to the motor and bobbin plate.

The two on the shaft get set to the height of the pickup, similar to this

Image: https://www.stewmac.com/globalassets/product-images/m002000/m002900/m002999-schatten-pro-pickup-winder/2111-1-1500.jpg?hash=637733430440000000

WezV · May 2023

still waiting on a motor. i'm hoping it is here in the next few days

WezV · May 2023

motor turned up

everything fits, but spacing could be better so it isn't so cramped together

with a humbucker bobbin stuck on it

and a couple of thousand turns done as a test

the guides work perfectly. I was worried they would be difficult to set-up correctly, but it took about 10 turns by hand to be sure they were correct.

There is a little wobble on the bobbin holder at the moment as it doesn't fit the shaft perfectly. I think I will recut those plates at some point.

It goes about halfway round the speed dial before the counter starts to crap out, but works well up to that point

WezV · May 2023

Thought I would try a rewind on a pickup from an old Satellite guitar. One of the worse things I have ever heard and it died a long time ago.

The wind went well, but I then broke a winding removing it from the machine and killed it.

Other than that, the winder did really well. I got 5000 turns on without issue, even though the old bobbin is pretty distorted in places.

Think I will make a sturdier bobbin to fit this case then remake it

impmann · May 2023

Those Satellite pickups are turd - I'll be interested to see if you can make something out of it that sounds OK.

WezV · May 2023

I don't hold out much hope, but it's fun to practice a few things with - i will get to that in a second.

First, eliminating wobble.

I missed an important detail about the motor in my original design and put the mounting screws in the wrong place. So today i cut a template for the screw positions and drilled them out

i also tried something different with the pickup plate to try and get it firmer, but ultimately this led to more wobble instead of less

whilst playing with the laser i cut these bits of 6 and 3mm ply to act as the centre of some bobbins, as well as some 1.7mm black acrylic flatwork not shown

here is the new bobbin for the satellite pickup along with the old one for comparison

It's an exact fit for the metal base and also bigger in all dimension so i can get more winds on. I got 4500 on the original clear bobbin.

looks a bit messy with the tape I used and wire position, but I got 7500 winds on the new bobbin with plenty room to spare. it measure 5.92k. I swapped out the short original pole piece screws for some humbucker ones too. This gives room to play with. I can either stick a magnet to the bottom like the original, or position them between baseplate and coil more like a p-90

I also did another bobbin to fit around a bar magnet and wound that into a pickup too, not expecting it to sound great or anything, just playing really.

I wound that to 8000 turns, or at least I thought I did. It seemed to go pretty quickly. The magnetic sensor on the counter was picking up the bar magnet and counting half revolutions

it measures 3.7k

So I think I have 2 things left to do. I want to move the counter sensor well out the way of the pickups to prevent the issue above, that will need a longer mounting plate to go with it

WezV · May 2023

Image: https://tfb-user-images.eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/bbbc9a05473ca4a15fe15b2e115c3e404259c68181cd9e570c

that's the plan for the box if anyone wants it. This version has the sensor underneath the motor and further out, and 3 pickup mounting plates at the top for spares. The magnet hole for the sensor should be well out the way of most pickups

WezV · May 2023

Strat pickup rewind

slight bit of flaring on the top plate, so I need to work on tension, but successful other than that

WezV · May 2023

i've potted those wound so far, just left over candle wax and a double boiler - along with a close eye on temperature. They smell like an old hippy!

I think I will put my old beater back together for some tests

WezV · May 2023

i've added a flanged shaft collar to the motor and moved the sensor. also made a thicker and longer bobbin holder

normula1 · May 2023

Watching this with lots of interest. I've fancied making one for ages.... trying to persuade my son to 3D print me "chassis"

WezV · May 2023

I don't think there will be much more to show now.

I may work on something to help with wire tension, and maybe make a few more plates to hold different pickups in different ways.

DartmoorHedgehog · May 2023

Looks like that's working really well.

@normula1 if you're just looking to make a pickup or two for curiosity and happen to have some Lego around the house (as everybody should), the Lego winder I made really did quite a decent job. Bit slow and no variable speed, but I made a couple of successful coils with it. But something like Wez has made is obviously far more flexible if it's more than a passing curiosity.

DannyP · May 2023

WezV said:

I don't think there will be much more to show now.

Fair enough, but it would be great know how the prototypes sound

WezV · May 2023

yeah, another options is the drill based winder in the stew-mac pickup kits
https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/learn-about-guitar-pickups-and-electronics-and-wiring/single-coil-pickup-kits/

Speed control helps prevent a lot of wire breakage though. I've only snapped the wire once when actually winding with this machine.

for easy speed control, you can just stick it all on a sewing machine

WezV · May 2023

DannyP said:

WezV said:

I don't think there will be much more to show now.

Fair enough, but it would be great know how the prototypes sound

if they sound good it is more luck than judgement

WezV · May 2023

I got some cheap ali express pickup kits for extra practice.

Not the best components, but for approx £10 per set they are perfect for mucking about with this... and the cheap magnets and baseplate can always be swapped out later if desired.

I decided to do the P90's first. 10000 CCW winds on the bridge, and 9500 CW winds on the neck.

Technically you don't need to reverse wind one of the pickups, just wire the leads the opposite way round, but I wanted to try it here to make sure the machine works well in both directions. I have only used it spinning CW so far, which gives a CCW wind pattern.

It did great up to about 80% speed before the counter became unreliable.

The neck is the first coil i ajve done without stopping. Ended up with a slightly top heavy coil from that but that is okay

And now we have a calibrated pair. 8.5k in bridge 7.7k in neck

WezV · July 2023

I've made a couple of perloid topped P90 sized pickups bobbins, just waiting on some wire before I wind them

This is just playing around as I found a small piece of old white pearloid that had aged to this colour.

It's a single coil around 2 blades, with a bar magnet at the bottom. Not the most efficient use of space, so these will likely max out at 7k with 42awg wire.... I have no idea how it will sound