How I Learned How To Make My Own Guitar Pickups

The pickups are essentially what gives a voice to an electric guitar. This is how I used my CAD and 3D printing skills to get started. And yes, even the most basic hand-wound ones sound better than stock pickups.

There is an infinite debate on where the sound of an electric guitar comes from. Is it the type of wood? Is it the mechanical parts? Is it the fingers of the player? Regardless, everybody agrees that a big fraction of the source comes from the pickups, which convert the vibration of the strings into an electrical signal, which in turns gets amplified by — guess what — the amplifier and converted into a sound by the speaker and the cabinet.

I don’t play the guitar, I play the strings — John Mayer

Guitar pickups that are on the market have wildly varying prices, ranging from $30 a set on Amazon to more than $100 each from “boutique” manufacturers such as Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Jason Lollar just to name a few. These people went a great length to create the most unique, beautifully sounding pickups, and they deserve a huge respect for that. Nobody is expected to match their quality with a $100 DIY equipment. On the other hand, I believe the road that takes you to 80% of that goal is full of surprises, requires a lot of inventiveness, and in the end will give you a result that in my opinion is superior to whatever is installed in…