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Making flat pup/cat style pickups.

Hi everyone,

I'm new here to CBN and new to CBG making. I've made 4 so far. I am planning to make a pickup. So far I have been using piezos, which do the job fine if you can keep the feedback to a minimum. But I like making things from scratch and I have a little bit of electronics experience. I've seen plenty of vids on how to make single coils and then in my research came across the Original Flatpup and I was really intrigued. So I just have some questions some of you might be to help me with. Is the same length of wire used to wind both sides or is it two separate lengths of wire? This leads me to my next question. If it is two separate lengths of wire, one for each side, is one side the hot and the other the ground? I hope that doesn't show my ignorance to much and thanks in advance.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on February 1, 2017 at 1:25am

Ooooo, you've opened up a can o' worms!

Try an induction pickup first:

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/forum/topics/lace-alumitone-how-is-it...

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Permalink Reply by JL on February 1, 2017 at 2:54am

The can-o-worms was a recent thread divided between "this is a place to share knowledge" versus "we have members that make a modest profit making and selling flat pickups and as a family we should protect their interests"

By contrast, there was a joyful enthusiasm in taking apart a commercial company's induction pickup, figuring out how it worked, prototyping, and lots of diagrams to share how they work and how to make your own that functions the same.

The difference was that it was a they and not a one-of-our-own.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on February 1, 2017 at 3:19am

Zackly. One needs worms to go

Besides, Elmar showed how he did his, so no secrets...

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on February 8, 2017 at 8:15am

P.S. Jeff Lace is now member of our CBN family, according to his profile information: «interested in creating cigar box pickups»... By the way, I'm not sure we understood exactly how his Alumitones really work...

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Permalink Reply by JL on February 2, 2017 at 3:54am

so the simple idea is... magnet in the center, pole pointing up, start winding the first coil forward to one side of the magnet, then continue winding backwards the same amount to the other side.

noise cancellation occurs because the windings on either side go in opposite directions, and because the magnetic lines of force are also going in opposite directions on each side the induced charges add instead of subtract.