Wiring a Coil Pickup

DIY tutorial on wiring a coil pickup to your cigar box guitar.
Ken's Facebook page: / kpcigarboxguitars
Contact Ken: [e-mail]

[@lrstaf6]

THANKS, YOU SAVED MY BACON! I bought C. B. Getty's prewired pickups for my first cigar box guitar. I bought a Piezo and a magnetic pickup for this guitar. Before I started I made a little diagram of what I had to do to wire them in combination for this guitar. Guess what, nothing out of the magnetic pickup and an intolerable squeal out of the Piezo. So, I went back to the drawing board. I got on KZbin, pulled up this video and on the back of a scrap paper about the size of a business card made a quick diagram of a pickup wiring. By the way, I still had the iron hot. I discovered that both prewired pickups were wired in reverse like someone had set them on a table with the stems up and wired them like your diagram instead of doing them from the back. Well needless to say, I removed all the pre-wiring and started from scratch. Using my little sketch of your wiring method, I completed the wiring and "wala!" I've got sound. I haven't strung the instrument yet, but tapping the magnetic pickup with the tip of a pocket knife gave me sound from that pickup and tapping the top of the box over the bridge area gave me sound from the Piezo. Thanks again, Lrstaf6.

[@tracymcdougal6381]

The grounding is just out of this world.No wires outside of the box copper tape great idea. Especially the ball canning lid .

[@bradtoogood6353]

Thanks man, you’re an angel

[@douglas_kmg365]

I know it’s been a while since you posted this video, but having only just viewed it I have a few comments. You didn’t give the brand or source of the output jack you used, but it appears to be a stereo jack having a tip, ring, and shield. That being the case the second pin (the taller of the two) is not ground, but is the ring connection. The wire clamp is shield and the true ground on this jack. Plugging in a stock guitar cable with an 1/4” mono plug will ground the guitar if the ring connection is wired as ground, but if someone were to plug in a 1/4” stereo jack, the guitar would not be grounded. If your expectation is that only mono plugs will be used on this instrument (and I think it is), then you should wire the ring connection (the taller pin) to the wire clamp. This way if someone plugs in a stereo plug (tip, ring, shield) then the guitar will truly be grounded. The intent of providing three connections in this jack, (tip, ring, sleeve) is that you can use the ring/sleeve to switch on a powered guitar preamp when the guitar is plugged in. You used discrete wires for the output jack to volume control wiring. This is ok, however you should twist the wires between the jack and volume control to help reduce hum. I know it’s a short distance, but hum occurs through magnetic induction through the wiring. Magnetic induction ina twisted pair of wires occurs both in and out of phase with the wires there by cancelling potential hum. While piezo pickups do not work by magnetic induction the way coiled pickups do, I twist the leads from my piezo pickups so as to minimize any hum that might be picked up by the wire itself. You chose to run all your grounds to the case of the volume control which is ok and there was nothing wrong with running a wire from pin 1 to the volume control case. However, you could have just easily bent pin 1 over till it touched the case and soldered it directly without a jump wire. With that said, what I do since it works on all volume controls is strip the ground wire from my output jack to a 1/2” or so, run it through pin 1, solder it there, then solder the end to the case.

[@7884golfguru]

Cheers bro

[@luisenriquepedrazaduarte322]

X favor en español gracias.

[@FezzantPlucka]

Ken, do you ever use flux when you do your soldering?

[@Noseypoke-mr7th]

Use modern solder which has flux in it heh heh

[@lrstaf6]

You need to talk about the pickup and does it really matter which wire out of the coil becomes hot and which becomes ground? Also does it matter what orientation the magnet is in the coil? This is for those of us who would like to try making our own pickups.

[@paulmerojunkpileguitars]

Making coils is out of my league!

[@lrstaf6]

Anyone else know the answer to this question?

[@paulmerojunkpileguitars]

lrstaf6 find Darren Dukes on Facebook

[@douglas_kmg365]

lrstaf6, I know it’s been 9 months, but I’ve only seen this video. The answer is it depends. The pickup used in this demonstration has a shielded cable so you would use the braided shield wire for ground and the inner insulated wire for hot. If your pickup has two discrete wires, e.g. a white wire and a black wire, then technically no, it does not matter in a single pickup guitar which wire is used. However, it will matter if wiring in two pickups. In that you case want both pickups to be in phase, otherwise one pickup will cancel out the other when both are switched on.

[@jllachance]

You had put a piezo and pick up combo in another older video how did you wire that into one plug jack

[@paulmerojunkpileguitars]

James LaChance good eye! That one only had one pickup.

[@garthnewman5859]

That's what I'm planning to do - One input jack for both a coil pickup and piezo, then a separate volume pot for each.

[@17hmr243]

can i run a 6 string pick up sideways on 1 string?

[@paulmerojunkpileguitars]

Can't see why not. It would be interesting to hear what you get out of angling the pickup where a couple of the magnets engage. Let us know.