Testing the Sound
Part 6/6 all about casting my own aluminum pickups
🎵 On repeat: the piano Ghibli collection
🎸You can find part one of the series here: Why cast your own pickups
⚙️Part two here: Mold making and preparation
🔥Part three here: Casting and Results
✨Part four here: Cleaning, polishing, finishing
🔌Part five here: The Insides: Time to Make it Sing
The pickup that started as molten aluminum is now ready for its ultimate test. All the careful casting, patient polishing, precise winding, and meticulous assembly comes down to this: how does it sound?
I have to know. And today I am sharing that moment with you.
Finalizing the Pieces
First, I set the covers in their places and then add the pole pieces in their holes. At this point they are pretty much ready pickups and they'll make a sound but you may want to solidify the insides a bit. This means using wax or some other material to protect the internals and possibly dampen some unwanted vibrations.
Most of the modern day pickups you find are quite heavily potted to avoid the vibrations and possible microphonics on high-gain situations. I also pot my pickups, but only lightly. Just to protect the outer coil and seal the cover on its place.
And why don’t I pot my pickups like ones you normally get? Because it gives the pickups airier as well as more woody sounding characteristics, like the ones my pickups are based on. They just sound more open and even acoustic, picking up the sounds of the wood too, not just the disturbances on the magnetic field. And that's where I like them to be.
Perfect for old fashioned tunes from the 50's and so. From swing to hot rockabilly!
The Test Guitar
With the potting complete, it's time for the real test. I have a dedicated test franken-guitar named Clunkerson II for this that I've wired specifically for pickup testing. Nothing fancy, but it's honest. The wood won't flatter a bad pickup, and it won't hide the character of a good one.
Installing the pickup is straightforward now because I have created a place to slide the pickups in and out, but today I have to confess that my test guitar wasn’t up for playing. So what you see below is a guitar I made for Tonefest 2024 in Helsinki, Finland and the pickup I had installed there earlier.
The First Test
I plug the guitar into my test amp, a Supro Delta King 10. It is not my dream amp but is inspiring and my son loves to adjust the settings while we play with it.
I first run through a simple set of my favourite themes, making sure my guitar is tuned and ready to test something a bit more complex. Even in these first tests, however, I can hear whether things are as I want them to be or not.
Finding Its Voice
But the real test isn't in gentle chords. I start exploring what the pickups can do. Single notes up the neck to check where the poles need to be adjusted. Bends to see how it responds to string tension changes. Palm-muted low notes to test the bass response.
I run through different playing styles just to make sure it fits the music like I want it to. That's the sign of a well-balanced pickup. You can see a sample below.
Finalizing the Project
The pickup that began as an idea about making everything in-house has become a component worthy of the instruments I build.
Obviously, in this case, I still have to work on the kinks in my tester guitar before sending this series of pickups to new homes. Still, I am excited to see where they end up and how guitarists use them to translate musical ideas. That's my optimal goal, not to create a beautiful object for display, but to make something that serves the music.
And I'm already thinking about the next casting project. The workshop is never done teaching me new things.
✨ What's inspiring me: I’m inspired about seeing and hearing where all the hours of work have gone. It inspiring to be able to put the final screws in their places and clean the pickups after potting. To have them ready to finally plug in, to test and either solder in or post them forward.
Next week: I will share other things I cast by hand just to give you an overview of how diverse this type of project can be.
That concludes our six-part pickup casting series! What questions do you have about pickup testing? Have you experimented with pickup heights and positions? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments.