Hi. New here. In a fit of apparent madness, I started building sort-of an electric cigar box guitar using the designed published in Make Magazine a few months ago. You can find it here: http://makezine.com/projects/make-37/license-plate-guitar/
It's my first guitar, so as you can imagine I've run into some troubleshooting problems. I've completed the build and soldering, but can't get sound to come through my amp. The electronics include a hand-wound pick-up, a potentiometer/dial, and a pot. Basically, when I string up the guitar and plug it into the amp, no sounds comes through regardless of how high I turn up the volume. When the dial on the guitar is turned all the way up and I tap the metal rods of the pick-up with a magnet, I can hear that sound through the amp though, so the wiring is (hopefully) correct?
I was hoping someone here could help me troubleshoot this. Am I missing something obvious (likely)?
I can dig up some pictures if that would be helpful.
Thank you.
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Lowering the bridge won't help..the basic design set out in the instructions is really poor - the neck doesn't go through as a neckstick and the heel end of the neck is shown as being simply butted and screwed to the end of the box with a woodscrew into the endgrain, so it's bound to just pull up under string tension. It's a real shame, but there's so much wrong with the instructions. I wished I'd managed to do the article for Makezine, and I'd assumed they'd get a competent reputable builder to do this instead of me...but unfortunately it looks riddled with stuff that's bound to cause problems for the rookie builder.
I've partially wound a couple of pups for testing purposes and then decided it wasn't worth the effort... It's a cool thing to do, but a ton of setup work.
I thought the same thing until I decided to go ultra simple. I clamp my hand drill to an end table. I chuck the center pickup screw in the drill. Set the spool of wire on the floor so that it spools off the end and wrap it a few times by hand around the bobbin, then slowly tighten another clamp around the drill trigger so that it picks up speed, using my other hand to guide and tension the wire. I get that thing cranking and wrap 42AWG wire to 7-10K in less than 20 minutes. You could substitute a friend to run the drill and eliminate the clamps, which would simplify setup even further, though a second shop stool and a beer would then be required.
ReturnToSender...I do the same thing to refill my weekwacker spool, LOL
I've never wound a pick up before, so maybe this is a silly question. How does the strength of the magnet factor into the output of the pick up?
It looks like you used screws for magnets. How did you magnetize them?
In my limited experience, the stronger the magnet, the "sharper" the output. Weak magnets seem to have a warmer, more mellow tone, while the rare earth magnets have a very strong attack, crunchier, more punchy sound. The magnetism also affects the strings, so too strong a magnet too close to the stings will cause problems, but too weak a magnet too far from the strings will have a weak output. I usually just stick the magnets on the bottom of the screws. Lately I've been breaking up hard drive magnets and sticking on the little pieces, if you get the polarity right, they work just fine.
Hey everyone. Thank you for the great responses and suggestions. I finally got a chance to get back to work on this guitar, so I wanted to share a follow up.
I tried using some larger/stronger magnets (.47 in neogymium discs) on the bottoms of the posts and held the strings really really close to the pick-up when testing. I tried putting a metal screw across the top to bring the string closer (what I had on hand), but the pull of the magnets wasn't sufficient to hold it there.
On the pick-up with the heavier gauge wire (22), I managed to get a very faint sound with everything turned way, way up on the amp. On the pick-up with 42 gauge wire, I got a slightly stronger sound, but only when I literally touched the pick-up to the strings (I was holding it, so maybe not being mounted makes it weaker?).
So yay! Sound! Kinda.
I've got the magnets lined up and alternating which polarity is pointing up (i.e. + - + -). Is that going to cause problem? I tried getting all 4 polarities pointing in the same direction, but then the magnets just shove each other away, which obviously isn't going to work out.
Since I'm still not happy with the volume, I'm going to try re-winding the pick-up one more time with the finer gauge wire and a lot more of it. I was wondering which of the pick-up "frames" I've built (below) might be better. The biggest difference (I think) is how far apart the posts are. Any thoughts?
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