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Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

Can also recommend Covet, great songs, and the guitar work is pretty bonkers--really incredible what different tunings and tons of practice/talent can do. I watched a YT where Yvette Young was talking about how her 1st tele had Bill Lawrence pickups, which (after a truly mad dive into pickup research) I now also have in my main guitar (microcoils + an L45-S in a strat, not a tele, I'm not a monster). My point here is: be careful or you might find yourself up at 1am trying to decide what capacitors you want on your tone pots.

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Thats one rabbithole, but mine might be worse. I recently made my first pickups.

First I made a coil winding machine, after lots of late night research. I bought an old sewing machine and took it to pieces for the main components. After my first build I improved my machine with some 3d printed parts.

Then there is the process of choosing and sourcing the components, coils, wire magnets, wax...

Then the actual process of getting the winding done...lots of broken wires later...my tele has an awesome set of pickups which sound so clear. The neck pickup is very non standard, more like a strat pickup.

What a stupid hobby!

I love that you did this DIY. I just had a guitar built by a guy who also winds pickups per your specs - I loved that I could have him dial in the tone exactly how I wanted.

I needed a set of tele pickups. I like the sound of YouTube guitarist Danish Pete's telecaster. I heard it had a Fender 'nocaster' bridge pickup in the bridge, and a 'twisted tele' in the neck. Fender only sell those as sets of two of each, so I would need to buy 4 pickups for the two I needed. List price is £200 for each set, and try and sell the unwanted pickups on ebay...but other people are already onto this and there are lots of the 'wrong' pickups listed.

Making your own is the obvious solution!

I have 2 strat projects I needed pickups for too, so it will begin to pay off. I reckon I broke even in equipment (but not time) after one pickup.

Wow that is _wild_ and I love it. See this is why I need to buy a house: I need space for the sewing machine I'll inevitably use to wind my pickups haha.

I think it's a super fun hobby, I really loved the process of choosing tone and options and learning what affects what. It made my guitar feel like a real players' instrument, like I made my own tool. I'll almost certainly do it again--maybe yeah make my own pickups, but what you did is next level haha.

I rent a storage unit so I can have spare sewing machines on hand. Without that where would you keep your spare oscilloscope, your various antennea, and your guitar projects?

The guitar I put them in...I made that too. To be fair I got some of the parts from a kit (cheap way to get some parts), but I modified it in a number of ways, and changed all of the hardware. It is a lot of fun. I did think about blogging about it, but I didn't think anyone would care

Would read! There's not a ton of info about this online as far as I can tell, and more would be better.

Whatever you do, don't start building your own effects pedals or this probably gets exponentially worse

Too late for me I'm afraid...I built my first effects pedal before I owned a guitar! I have not built that many since tbf, but that doesn't stop me planning to.

I found my fuzz face recently that I spent forever characterising AC128 germanium transistors to get that magic combination...it still sounds completely mental!

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