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Lindy Fralin Pickup Phase — What’s the Deal?

lindy fralin pickup phaseIf you’ve just installed a Lindy Fralin pickup, but the sound you’re getting is not quite what you expected, the problem could be with your pickup’s phase.

Why are my Lindy Fralin Pickups out of phase?

Is your newly installed Lindy Fralin pickup phase giving you problems? One of the most common problems a guitarist faces when purchasing new pups is getting the phase right. Continue reading “Lindy Fralin Pickup Phase — What’s the Deal?”

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Making Double Coil Guitar Pickups: Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 4

making double coil guitar pickupsBuild your own double coil guitar pickup.

In the last article we talked about building our own single coil pickup, so this time, we’ll talk about making double coil guitar pickups. If you missed the single coil article, you can check it out here: Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 3. Continue reading “Making Double Coil Guitar Pickups: Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 4”

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Making Single Coil Guitar Pickups – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part IV

making single coil guitar pickupsMaking single coil guitar pickups can be a very rewarding experience; in addition to being easily accomplished, it requires items that can be easily acquired.

Making Single Guitar Pickups

In this article, we’re going to talk about making single guitar pickups, and how building them from scratch can be such a rewarding and worthwhile experience. The design is simple and the steps easy to follow. Another benefit of the design is that winding the coil by hand offers the opportunity of having your pickup sound just as good as, if not better than, the same coil wound by a machine. Continue reading “Making Single Coil Guitar Pickups – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part IV”

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Push-Pull Pot FAQ – Coil-Splitting a Humbucker Pickup

push-pull pot faqIf you’ve ever thought of using a push-pull pot to split a humbucker pickup, you may have a few questions; here are the are the most often asked push-pull pot FAQs.

Push-pull pot FAQ: What is a coil-split pickup?

Push-pull pot FAQ often include inquiries into coil-splitting a humbucker pickup. A coil-split pickup is a humbucker that is split in such a way that it only uses one of its two coils. This is useful to guitarists who use humbuckers but occasionally want a single-coil sound.

Continue reading “Push-Pull Pot FAQ – Coil-Splitting a Humbucker Pickup”

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Pickup Parts Needed – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 3

pickup partsLearn about all of the tools and parts you’ll need to build your own electric guitar pickup

Hello again, and welcome to our ongoing series of articles discussing how guitar pickups work and how you can build your own. In the last article we discussed how the magnets and coil work, and how they work together to create the sound that you hear. This time around, we are going to look at the tools, pickup parts, and other things that you will need to build your project from scratch.
Continue reading “Pickup Parts Needed – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 3”

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Windings and How They Affect Tone & Output – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 2

windingsLearn how windings change string vibrations, thereby affecting the tone and output of a guitar pickup.

In the last article we discussed all of the different guitar pickups available to the guitar player. So, we should now have a good idea why we would use each type and we should also have a rough idea of how each type works. And from that last article, we probably also remember that the most popular kind of guitar pickup is the passive type, and that it uses a magnet and the windings of a wire coil to create your sound. Continue reading “Windings and How They Affect Tone & Output – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 2”

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Understanding How Pickups Work – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 1

how pickups workIf you would like to learn more about guitar pickups, what the different types are, how they are created, how they work, and even how to build your own, then this is the place to get started.

This is the first in a series of articles in which we will detail every aspect of the guitar pickup. We’ll discuss, with as much detail as possible, how pickups work, the different types, and when to use each. So, let’s get started. Continue reading “Understanding How Pickups Work – Building Your Own Electric Guitar Pickups – Part 1”

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Modifying Your Tele for Nashville Style Wiring

nashville style wiringIf you’d like to add a dash of “Strat” tone to your Tele, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’ll talk about how to set up your Tele for Nashville Style wiring.

So, first things first. What is the Nashville Style Tele, how is it wired, and can you can modify your Telecaster so it produces its tone?

A Nashville Style Tele is just a Standard Telecaster with three pickups instead of two, and a five-way selector switch instead of a three-way selector switch. This Mod was created by Tele players looking to coax some Strat style tones out of their Telecaster while still retaining that crucial Neck + Bridge pickup combination not found on the Strat.

Continue reading “Modifying Your Tele for Nashville Style Wiring”

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The Seven-Sound Strat Modification

seven-sound strat modificationDo you want to add a “Tele” sound to your Strat? How about all three pickups at once? Try this Seven-Sound Stratocaster Modification.

The Seven-Sound Strat Modification is an easy mod that you can make to your guitar to give you more tone versatility, and despite its name, you can make this mod on any type of guitar that has three pickups and a five-way switch.

The five-way switch gives Strat players plenty of versatility in tone. Position 1 is the Bridge pickup, Position 2 is Bridge + Middle, Position 3 is just the Middle pickup, Position 4 is Middle + Neck, and Position 5 is Neck. What the five-way switch does not provide is a way to select the Bridge + Neck pickup, or a way to select all three pickups at once. This is exactly what the Seven-Sound Strat Mod (also sometimes referred to as the Gilmour mod) provides for us.

Continue reading “The Seven-Sound Strat Modification”

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Guitar Pickup Wiring: Phase, Series, and Parallel

guitar pickup wiringHere’s a look at guitar wiring, and how to make sure your pickups are in-phase with each other. Here, also, is an examination of polarity and how to wire pickups in series, or parallel.

So we’ll start with the basics of guitar pickup wiring by examining what it means when guitar pickups are wired in-phase, out-of-phase, series, or parallel. The first thing we’ll need to do is understand a little about how our pickups are made and how they work.

Continue reading “Guitar Pickup Wiring: Phase, Series, and Parallel”