Contributions to the development of a noncommercial simple cheap current based DIY pickup by

Buggy, darryl kernaghan, David L, Flatfish, Fornhorach, Hal Robertson, JL, John Sawyer, Joseph J. Rogowski, Matt Quinney, Nathan Binns, Paul Craig, Regan, Ron 'Oily' Sprague, RTZGUITARS, Timothy Hunter, turtlehead, Wayfinder.

Let me know if I didn't list your name.

Lace Alumitone, «technically a transformer»

German forum, with technical diagrams and photos
https://www.musiker-board.de/threads/lace-alumitones-aufbau-und-fun...

Interview with Don and Jeff Lace about the alumitone design
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/laced-with-tone-1

Further alumitone development, with Joseph Rogowski involved
http://www.ricktoone.com/2009/06/lace-alumitone.html

Joseph Rogowski's contributions

 
Greg's Garage's approach
 
 

turtlehead's videos on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgCEzGvBElg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4SBlQqQAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-rxzURxNo

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found on another site, a pretty fair summary without all the false trails, it leaves out a bit, but the essence is there, hope it helps anyone interested

   On another board I had posted a terrific article detailing the work of about a dozen people in creating a "new kind of guitar pickup".  That article was removed along with a great deal other valuable information over what proved to be a severe misunderstanding on the part of several people (myself included), tempers flaring, and knee-jerk reactions rather than calm, friendly solutions to problems. 

    I can't do anything about that... but I can to the best of my ability restore this bit of knowledge to the Handmade Music community.  Unfortunately I don't have a copy of any of the original articles so don't have the names of the commenters and can't attribute participation in the project-- the people that helped invent this device.  But I do have the method and the diagrams, which will serve.

    To the best of my ability, following is a rough re-creation of the original article, along with diagrams (fortunately I did have copies of the diagrams).

    The term induction pickup is simple way to say "transference of electricity".  The concept is simple: 

    1. Ferrous guitar strings (steel or nickel or chrome) disrupt the pickup's magnetic field.

    2. Copper within that field converts the energy generated into micro-voltage.

    3. A step-up micro-transformer converts that micro-voltage into a higher voltage that can be recognized and increased by a guitar amplifier.

    No battery or external power source of any kind is required, nor is a large coil required.  The only coil exists within the transformer and it is very small, largely impervious to RF or EM interference.  That fact makes the impedance pickup highly resistant to hiss and noise.  It is a "single-coil, clear pickup".  I hate to even call it a coil, as in my mind one piece of wire does not constitute a "coil".  A loop perhaps.  So perhaps a more accurate name for this would be a "loop induction pickup" or "loop pickup" for short.

    Following are four different designs detailing how to make a loop pickup.   Enjoy.   If you have any questions I can answer them in the comments.  Let's keep the questions / discussion technical and leave the drama and personal issues over at the other place.   I'm posting this here for the good of the community so that this information is not lost due to a bogus misunderstandings and the following misdeeds.  I do here what I can to rectify at least part of the consequences of those decisions.

DESIGN #1:  BASIC SIMPLIFIED

    This is accomplished by surrounding a thin bar magnet with a copper wire.  The N/S poles of the magnet need to be on the wide faces.  Wrap the magnet in packing tape to prevent shorting the wire, then tape it to the wire.  The wire should be a gauge that fits the hole in a pass-through micro-transformer (available on Amazon or Ebay).  The ends of the wire will be soldered near the top of the magnet prior to assembly, as you do not wish to get the magnet warm  The side diagrams shows how the wire passes down through to the interior of the box.  You can use any micro transformer you wish in this basic size.   I've tried just about all of them, and they all sound good.   Since sound is subjective, some may prefer one transformer over another.

The wires run to the volume control, just as with a normal pickup.  If you wish, you can bend the wire and transformer so that it sits underneath the magnet / wire area.

METHOD #2:  4-prong Transformer

This is made similarly to method #1 but rather than using a pass-through transformer, uses a step-up transformer (4 poles, 2-in 2-out).  The wire attaches to the two in poles, wire runs from the two out poles to the volume control.  Other than that the concept is the same.

Method #3:  Full wire pass-through transformer

With this method a copper loop on a thin wood backing surrounds either a bar magnet or disc magnets.  It is soldered at one end (or a side) prior to installation.   The magnets are insulated by tape as above and the wire sits around it.  The other end of the wire runs into a pass-through transformer with a large hole in the center, allowing both sides of the wire to run through the same hole.  This creates current as the wire runs in and out of the transformer.   The transformer itself is quite a bit blockier, but can be made of items such as disassembled power adapters (wall warts) with satisfying results.  This is the "scavenged and found" parts version of an induction pickup.

Method #4:  Plate Diagram

Unlike the others, this is made from an aluminum or copper plate rather than copper wire.  It is a bit more time-consuming to build but offers excellent sound.  Copper plate is recommended.  In this design the plate is cut up the middle to separate sides of the plate, in effect creating a single "loop".  It is then bent so that the end of it drops down and underneath the box lid.  The tape-insulated bar magnet can be put on the top or bottom of the plate.  Two bolts and nuts are run down through the sides of the plate and clamp a copper wire, which runs through a pass-through transformer as used in the first two diagrams.   The wire from the transformer runs to the volume control.

 

As can be seen in all of these methods, the basic principle is the same:   surround the magnet with a copper or aluminum loop,  which converts the magnetic distortion field to voltage, increases that voltage at the micro-transformer and sends it on out to your amplifier.  Just about anyone can make these.    This was a community product and is public domain.

The result is a pickup that produces crystal clear, noise-free and hum-free sound.  They are relatively easy to build once you have collected the parts.  If you don't want to collect the parts, you can find a pre-built version here that works very well.

--o--

P.S.   It has been claimed that someone had invented something similar years before but never marketed it.  Kudos to that bit of genius, but that is at best of historic interest and irrelevant to this article.  This post documents the work of a group of indivdiuals flying by the seat of our pants and figuring out-- from scratch-- how to make a new kind of pickup.  That effort took some 95+ pages of research and discussion.    The resulting design is what you see above, is now "public domain" for anyone to use, is documented, is currently being marketed and can be built by anyone who so desires.

Hey Darryl:

A lot of reverse engineering time could have been saved if you just looked up our patents at the PTO in regards to the Alumitone technology.  And I might add if anyone would like to just buy one you can check out our Matchbook pickup built specifically for CBG players. Thanks for your time.

Holy Cow! Even Lace Pickups is getting in on Cigar box guitars, added by BeetleJuice! on January 21, 2017
http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/holy-cow-even-lace-pickups-is-g...

Donald hi,

from the beginning was straightaway clear, that there's no chance to reverse-engineer the alumitones: from the tiny thing underneath the alumitone humbucker you pull out 3.4K, without the need of an additional impedance matching transformer, definitely out of the realm of DIY possibilities: the point of departure was Joseph J. Rogowski's research on experimental ultra low impedance pickups.

That is not my work Donald, just a re post from elsewhere i found to help Moritz try to renew the original thread, somewhere in that 200 odd pages, your patents were presented and discussed, the electrical theory got a little deep for me at times and i stayed with the simple  1 step transformer set up, i hope you don't consider my posting the above as an "in your face", if so, that was not the intent

Great thanks Darryl for the posts, with the comments of Joseph J. Rogowski we have now a good deal of the information we've lost.

A remark: the first post of the initial thread was «the alumitone be technically a transformer», so we cannot claim having started off from scratch to develop a new type of pickup. Even on an early stage, two DIY implementations were known: Joseph's with an available transformer and Greg's Garage's with a bobbin he wound himself, see the links on the first post on this discussion: the development followed the way Joseph had shown, due to it's simplicity and the availability of cheap wall wart transformers.

Anyone with any knowledge of the initial thread should be aware that Turtlehead introduced us to Joseph's work very early via Greg's garage, and i think Oily found his postings from other sites

Yeah Darryl, but the idea is to reconstruct the essentials of the thread even for those without any knowledge of the lost ones. That we never took apart the alumitone shown on the head of the thread to get the idea but started from another point of departure may become important as the Lace brothers have appeared on the nation. Let's hope for the first detailed DIY cookbooks for further discussions.

Man, I didn't even know all that went down,, took a few months off.

There was no Alumitone taken apart that I remember, there was a video and Josephs work posted, the early variations by Darryl and Turtlehead used wallwart transformers I believe, and at the same time as they worked on their pickups more research brought up the transformers that Joseph used and similar and people went on from there. With testing by several people(sorry I can't remember the names, been awhile) it was found that the 500-1 current transformer worked the best. Some people used 14 gauge and went on to use 10 gauge with reaming of the transformer hole(or was it even higher?) some found that solid wire worked better, seems to me later on multi stranded came back into play due to some reasoning. This is just going by memory, wish I could add more.

Regan

I would just like to exspress my thanks to you for rebuilding this thread. I would also like to exspress my sadness and frustration that you all are having to work on this again. Whoever deleted this thread owes all of you guys an apology. An over reaction and heavy hand indeed. Thanks for your help, I'm going to go make one of these pickups.

I'm wondering when we might see the matchbook pickups for sale on our sponsor's site, cbgitty.com?

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