Anyone ever make their own pickups?

My guitarist Andy has hand-made almost every pickup he now uses, and I've been toying with the idea of trying it myself. But since he is a guitarist, I wanted to get the perspectives from our bass brethren here. I know there are a few DIYers here, so does anyone have any advice? Specifically, I'd like to maybe try building a humbucker.

How do you build coil forms?

What gauge of wire do you use?

How many feet would I need to make a really hot humbucker?

EricHaven wrote:

How many feet would I need to make a really hot humbucker?

I never use feet, just a creditcard and ebay

I've never done it before, but as you guys probably remember I was going to. I did a lot of research, so I can probably help you out

So, to answer your questions:

1.what do you mean by coil forms?
2. IIRC AWG43 or 42
3. I don't know, but what you need to do is figure out how many wraps you want, then multiply that by the circumference of the bobbin, then add a bit since the outer windings will be wider than the inner ones.

Thanks KS!

By coil forms, I actually meant bobbins. And I don't really know how many turns of wire I would want, since I want enough to build a humbucker that can melt iron. But I did see on a blog that I would need something like 4,000 feet of wire.

EricHaven wrote:

By coil forms, I actually meant bobbins.

OK, well that was the one part of the pickup I actually did before abandoning the project. You can buy squares of bobbin material for pretty cheap. I forget where or for how much exactly, but whatever. Then buy the magnets. If all you care about is output I'd go with neodymium magnets. They'll give you the highest output. They're also brighter, so it will take more windings (which means even more output) to get the amount of mudiness or clarity you want. They are very strong magnets though, so you'll have a bit less sustain.