OilCityPickups Workshop Course

springhead

I spent a lovely day yesterday with Ash at @OilCityPickups workshop playing with magnets, coil winders, spools of hair thin wire and a glimpse into the laser cutter making flatwork.  We had three attempts at correctly rewinding an old dead Kent Armstrong Strat pickup.  Seeing a brand new lovely shiny coil cut off with scissors and chucked in the bin, twice, because it wasn't quite right was alarming but also reassuring in attention to detail and endeavouring to match the original spec of wire diameter and turns. 

We then made one of Ash's new noise cancelling P90's.  This will go in the Epiphone Coronet I use for slide.  I'm used to P90's being noisy but this one is very hummy, particularly on the stage of our local gig venue - some horrible electrics underneath the floor perhaps.  That involved three coils, two magnets, soldering, hammers, drills, hot glue, Big Bertha and the Death Star....

Fascinating and satisfying.  I don't know why in 40+ years of working in electronics/engineering and playing guitars I've never been near a coil winder.  Long overdue.

Lots of good nattering about all sorts of related and unrelated things whilst we worked, plus tea's, coffee's and lunch outside.  

Thank you Ash for a brilliant day.  I'll be studying your book and asking questions!

Jules

OilCityPickups

It was a pleasure to have you over Jules ... 

Showing others how to make pickups is very satisfying ... hopefully my published version of 'the book' will be available for others who can't physically make it to 'Oily Towers' to be shown the secrets :-)

Ash 

TTony

A book??

I think we need to know more @OilCityPickups !

viz

Hey Ash, the pickups you did for my daughter’s bass are sublime! They’ve breathed new life into an instrument that was otherwise perfect to play, but sounded shit. Now it’s perfect to play and sounds bloody awesome! Cheers, viz. apols for the thread hijack

OilCityPickups

viz said:

Hey Ash, the pickups you did for my daughter’s bass are sublime! They’ve breathed new life into an instrument that was otherwise perfect to play, but sounded shit. Now it’s perfect to play and sounds bloody awesome! Cheers, viz. apols for the thread hijack

You are most welcome ... so many folks don't think i do bass pickups ... lol they are wrong :-) 

TTony said:

A book??

I think we need to know more @OilCityPickups !

Well I have been correlating together all my teaching day notes ... experience with old and unusual pickups, tips, tricks and general trade secrets and gradually turning them into a book on pickups and pickup winding. Those who have come to my workshop have had a ring binder version that has been gradually expanding, but a properly published version is coming.  It'll be the ultimate guide for changing pickups, magnet swaps, your own pickup repairs, rewinding and making whole new pickups! As well as history and the debunking of some industry bullshit ;-) 

normula1

Oooooh looking forward to the book coming out. I will at some point cobble together a winder when my son gets off his arse and recalibrates his 3D printer so that it becomes more than a dust gathering object d'art

TTony

OilCityPickups said

 Those who have come to my workshop have had a ring binder version that has been gradually expanding, but a properly published version is coming.

Depends on what you have in mind @OilCityPickups - but a few years ago I self-published a book.

It was only intended as a business-promotion thing, but ~200 A4 pages (IIRC), correctly laid out, text & graphics, colour, properly printed & bound. 

Wasn't ridiculously expensive or difficult to do, even as a small run.  I never intended to sell it, but with no overheads/cuts to be taken, any revenue would have been straight to me.

PhilKing

Perhaps you can crowd fund it here.  I would happily prepay for a copy or two, and you can include enough in the cost to cover your overheads

Roland

I guess that a significant number of us would buy a copy, and even help fund the cost through pre-orders

OilCityPickups

TTony said:

OilCityPickups said

 Those who have come to my workshop have had a ring binder version that has been gradually expanding, but a properly published version is coming.

Depends on what you have in mind @OilCityPickups - but a few years ago I self-published a book.

It was only intended as a business-promotion thing, but ~200 A4 pages (IIRC), correctly laid out, text & graphics, colour, properly printed & bound. 

Wasn't ridiculously expensive or difficult to do, even as a small run.  I never intended to sell it, but with no overheads/cuts to be taken, any revenue would have been straight to me.

I have a few options Tony ... I have self published before with quite successful results and I may go down that route. I share my works building with a publisher ... that's the other route ... and crowd funding is another ... the book is more or less there ... it just needs some whipping into shape.