When I started out making pickups, I had just bought a bigger lathe and had one of those mini one that I was just going to sell.  I instead turned it into a winder.  I added a counter and made a platen to mount the bobbins to.  Has served me well but it is heavy.  So perhaps it is time to revisit the winder.

This is going to be a simple design consisting of just a DC motor, a PWM motor control (courtesy of Dan Sleep) and a counter.

Still picking out a motor but have ordered the…

I love brass all nice and shiny.  Here is a completed prototype of my version of the Thin Pickup.  This is one of a few sizes I ended up designing.  This one is wide enough for a 6 string and measure in at slightly over 1/4" thick.  For my typical builds, it is not a problem mounting this on right on top of the box.  Like this one.…

A fairly productive day.  I got one of my favorite standard CBG builds completed for use as a test platform and wound a few variations of my baseline design.   I picked up 4 different magnet sizes and so far have experimented with 2.  So far I've wound 7 different coils ranging from severe under wound to slightly overwound. 

In the above picture I used a small square…

Like many, Shane's post/challenge put my creative side into overdrive.  I had made some attempts at a thinner pickup but really didn't like the way my experiments turned out.  A lot of time and learning has passed since these early experiments.  What I have learned in the last couple of years has to do with why some parts of pickup design just doesn't directly translate when you make them smaller.  There are a bunch of reasons that a 3 pole single coil pickup wound with the same number of…