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The first one is ash, maple and cocobolo; it is also my first attempt at winding pickups.

This one is made from padauk, ash, maple and lacewood. It has TV Jones pickups and the strings are loaded through the top, and attach inside the guitar through keyholes in a steel plate.

Really nice. Great job. I have been thinking of making my own pickups. Did you buy a winder or did you make one? i know stewart macdonald sells the winder and bobbins. pricey though....Mike

Man,

Beautiful use of woods, looks like very tight jointery, pretty good looking finish - overall very beautiful guitars. I may be a bit more 'classic' in my look, so the small areas that catch me off guard are some of the discontinuities in the body profile, and some of the discontinuities in the carving - but some of these may only be "apparent" as you have used a slightly unconventional lamination on the lower curves of the guitars...

But aside from these, which are preferential (that is what you are going for - as you have duplicated it between the two guitars) they are great looking instruments...

Nice work
Stephen

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www.ziegenfussguitars.com

Thanks for the comments.

MRS: I did make my own winder, and I definitely think that it is the way to go. I think the price that Stew Mac wants is ridiculous.

Mine was super low-tech, and most people would want to do more with it than I did, but mine was entirely free because I scavenged all the parts.

I would suggest getting a sewing machine motor, because they are DC motors and you can control their speed. I used an AC motor because that is what I had, but it would have been nice to control the speed. I think that the only reason you would need a counter is if you would like to make a lot of pickups very consistently. If you are just gonna make two at a time whenever you finish a guitar, just measure the resistance.

I was thinking (mmm....smell of burning hair...), would it work to use a specific length of wire instead of a specific # or wraps? If your pickup core is always the same size/shape, you should get very close to the same number of wraps?

-Matthew

Matthew,

I think that you could use a specific length of wire, that is basically what you are doing when you measure resistance, or even winds. The trick is how to measure it. I do not know of a good way to measure that much wire in inches, I think that is why resistance is the preferred unit of measure. If you could figure it out, I am sure that it would work fine, and it would be really, really accurate compared to my method.