GuitarGuy

I was just wondering if anyone could tell me what you would use a long shaft pot for rather than a standard pot.  I'd like to buy a wiring kit for my project, but I don't know whether to get a long shaft pot kit or standard.  Thanks!

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You need the longer shaft for a thick topped guitar like a les paul.

I understand the wear issues but lego is easy to come buy. So part replacement should be easy for the mantinence crew to take care of. I find the modular aspect very appealing. This is by no means a production machine. I'll be lucky if I make 3 or 4 guitars this year.

Google the mindspring stuff sometime. It is really interesting stuff (fully programable). Mechano would be better but they dont sell it here. The tutorial to make this is in the camera right now. I'll see what I can get done when I get home from work.

When I was doing the tut pictures I inspected the gears and spindles and the wear was already present. It's not really destructive wear but you can see the polishing effect the rubbing is making. On reassembly I added graphite powder on all the pivot points hopefully this will slow any wear. But in the end its lego so you can't expect it to be indestructable.

My results of this experiment...Voodoo. It's all in your heads.

naw...i have done the experiment with the first guitar i ever built...steel mounting rings vs direct mount.

the sound of the direct mounting under high gain was noticeably muddy...so i routed ears and hung the pickups from the steel rings...much more clarity with the rings.

i think which is best really depends on what you play,what you play through,and what body wood you are screwed into.

the bottom line is that some people can't hear the difference...some people can..but those with the poor tonal perception always think the ones who CAN hear it are some kind of weak-minded fools who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

i guess it is easier to accept that everyone else is stupid rather than admit they may have a shortcoming

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Key word: steel mounting rings....thats going to upset the magnetic field of the pickup and therefore you will hear a difference.

With plastic rings at the same distance from the strings as the direct mount. That would tell a very different story.

I was cruzing ebay and I found a mindspring set for aroun $150. That stuff is so cool. YOu can program the lego to do certain functions. It would be really neat to speed up and slow down the travarse. In therory I think you could program the rotations as well. So it would just stop when its done. No counter needed. Too Cool!

As sad as this may sound, I haven't fully tested it out yet.. I'm still trying to find a place to find the wire for the windings but I can't seem to get it here.. Probably not looking in the right places.. Any place online I could get it?

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I found a few places in the US:

StewMac

WireTronic

In the UK:

Comax

In Malaysia:

Leader GoldStar

Hope this helps,

~David

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Also EBAY!!! you can usally find it for $20 a roll

Oh, and to test it just use thread. It's a lot stronger and is much much more forgiving. Once everything runs smooth then try the wire.

cool, hows it wind at 9:1? Mine being 6:1 is really fast... so that must be cruzin!

I would have never thought that LEGOs could spin around that fast! Did you lube the moving parts or anything?

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No lube, legos tend to fit with loose tolerances so its not really necessary. It may prevent future wear tho.

No, no...everyone loves V's...in fact it wouldn't be GOTM without a couple of Vee's. I'm thinking that Brian should change the name from Project Guitar to Project V .

On topic...it can be quite hard to separate veneers on quality ply but if you can...it's just a veneer, if it looks good, use it!

psvv

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Personally I would plane it . Till it was down to some thickness like 1/8". But it may end up being hard on your planer edges. Thickness sander? even better.

But there really is no substitute for real wood.

I just tested this theory with that pickup I just wound. I was checking the phase.

And I connected both terminals of the pickup to the multi-meter. Recalling this thread i tried banging with a screw driver on the pole pieces. Turns out its reverse polarity (in case you were wondering) But next I waved my fingers over the pickup and got nothing. So I went to the 200 milliamp setting and waved my fingers over the pickup. I got .1 mA so I tried a piece of lego (got a bunch hanging around my work area for some reason ) and It did nothing so I tried hitting the pickup....Still nothing. Keep in mind this is before wax potting. So then I start hitting it with a piece of wood...still nothing.

My results of this experiment...Voodoo. It's all in your heads.

Now if only someone could work out an easy way to make good looking bobbins!

BTW...how are you mounting the pickups to the winding machine...double sided tape or something...

Nice pickup by the way...let us in on how it performs

pete

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Walmart Double stick, $1.49

I just watched the video to make sure it worked and this thing reminds me of somthing outa charlie and the chocolate factory

Finished a pickup!! Thought I'd rewind a cheap tele bridge pickup I had.

#44 wire

8360 turns (meant to be 8000 but I was having so much fun)

Measures out at 9.5K

took about 20 min to fully wind.

and heres a video of the winder in action. It only has a tele neck pickup on it for demo purposes. ( I couldnt film and wind at the same time) You'll notice I also have a 200ohm pot to soften the start and stop.

Just put this in your browser window i cant figure out how to likn it in the forum here

http://www.airos-guitars.com/images/lego pickup winder/lego winder.wmv

Actually its Luke Skywalker. But I believe Bill is his middle name. Bill the pickup winding guy.

i've since added the motor out of pure curiosity and surprisingly it dosent break the wire. Im also playing with the gearing. Right now its 3:1 so to get 9000 winds you only have to turn 3000. im thinking of kicking it up to 6:1. Im curious if the wire will take it.

as of right now it takes 15 min to turn 8000 winds

Thats a great idea. Ill look into the calculator because the stepper is just too slow at counting.

As far as the shuttle goes its just a pushrod on a rotating arm. Im going to write a tutorial on it in a couple days so then you'll get the idea of what im talking about. But this does also pause at the end of the stroke but its not that bad. If been thinking of speeding up the shuttle.

The production of pickups has been so good that I've hired a full-time employee. He's a hard worker but doesn't have much of a personality.

Looks good man!!!

You know, I had the same idea to build a pickup winder outta my old Lego.. Difference was that mine would have been motorised.. Didn't get 'round to building it, though, 'cause I found that the Technic motor I had was dead..

I don't suppose that counter was very costly? (Kellog's kinda speaks for itself) That was the other problem I encountered; where to get a cheap counter..

Looks good!!

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Free in a box of froot loops. I ate the froot loops too.

I have a lego motor but the turn on and turn off is the problem, It's geared really low so the on and offf is a really abrupt stop. Abrupt and 42awg wire dont mix well

I just finished building a pickup winder from Technic Lego. I know what you're thinkin' it wont work, not strong enough etc etc etc. This one works great! The counter is from the kellogs step counters and it counts the turns of the crank, not the actual bobbin spindle. Reason being, the steppers must have a min wait time before it can be tripped; and the spindle is spinning too fast. The ratio is 3:1 so for every turn on the crank it turns 3 on the spindle. The shuttle is run from a worm gear and it is geared down so the spindle runs 9 revs per transverse.

Im going to wrap a few pickups with it to work out a few bugs then I'll write a tutorial for making one.

Scratch it up and ding it then fill the voids with rosewood or black epoxy

Hi everybody,

A customer has asked me if I could make him a semi-hollowbody or chambered guitar with nylon strings that could be "picked up" and amped through a standard guitar amp.  I really don't know what to say.  This is not to be an acoustic.  He wants an electric with nylon Strings.  Any ideas?

Peace,

Dave

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With nylon strings you would have to use piezo's under the bridge. A coil pickup only senses something with a magnetic field (steel strings). Thats really the only way I can think to do it. The problem- its going to sound more like an electro/acoustic than an electric. If thats what he's looking for then great.

Just finished this tutorial and thought I'd post it. I know splitting humbuckers may be an old hat to some of you but for those who don't know how, here it is.

Splitting a humbucker

I like the idea, the aluminum pickguard will be a nice touch. I could do without the headstock shape though, kind of looks like an anteater. Whats more classic than a tele headstock? That aside, I really like what you have going on there, keep us up to date.

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The first thing I thought of was Joey's big ceramic dog on Friends.

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Yeah the headstock is just because I wanted somthing original, i guess I might go back to the drawing board on that one. The multi-laminate is just because I have a lot of 1x12 birch. I suppose I could have gone with face to face laminate but it was just easier this way. With a solid finish the laminate dosen't matter.

Sexybeast - I had the chance to feel up a nice piece of basswood at our local specailty wood place and I think I'll retract my last thoughts. Its seems to me to pass the fingernail test better than the oak I have. So no matter what you put on it, I dont think you will have as much trouble as you have been lead to believe.

Heres some pics of the latest creation, It has been longer that I had expected because I've been making jigs as I go along (most of mine have been thrown out etc since ive built my other guitars). The finish will be a semi-gloss black with rat rod styled pinstriping and some car-tooned images.

This is a front shot of this tele styled with the epoxy filler on

As you can see this is a multi-laminate birch body and the neck is birch as well.

This pickguard is hand cut from sheet aluminum.

You will notice the tuning machines are angled back (because it looked cool)

The fretboard is cocobolo (I have no idea if I spelled that right)

The neck was carved with my favorite shaping tool, the die grinder with an aluminum bit.

Found this at our local stained glass shop for 6 bucks CAD.

its 12" by 12" adhesive backed foil (same as the tape stew mac sells) only these will cover large odd shaped cavities.

Stained glass shops sell all kinds of other items that would be useful for sheilding.

How do I get my hands on CA?  is it pretty common?

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Superglue

Or epoxy, take your pick