EMG Active Pickup Circuit?

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 02 Oct 2009, 20:52

i dont' have a coil winder you interested in a custom project???????

Sorry - no time at present.
You do not need a coil winder - I use a variable speed electric drill clamped in a woodworking vice and hand guide and lightly tension my wire from the spool sitting on the ground immediately below. Not very elegant I know, but this is DIY and I have made some very nice sounding pickups using this method (and rewound many Gibsons, Fenders, and Hofners etc.)

Stewart McDonalds sell humbucker and single coil pickup kits ( and 42 and 43 guage wire)
cheers
bajaman

SPeter · Post by **SPeter** » 03 Oct 2009, 01:20

bajaman wrote:
i dont' have a coil winder you interested in a custom project???????
Sorry - no time at present.
You do not need a coil winder - I use a variable speed electric drill clamped in a woodworking vice and hand guide and lightly tension my wire from the spool sitting on the ground immediately below. Not very elegant I know, but this is DIY and I have made some very nice sounding pickups using this method (and rewound many Gibsons, Fenders, and Hofners etc.)
Stewart McDonalds sell humbucker and single coil pickup kits ( and 42 and 43 guage wire)
cheers
bajaman

But how do you count the windings that way? Without counter It is almost nightmare to count 8000 turns per coil!

Cheers!

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 03 Oct 2009, 04:24

But how do you count the windings that way?

By measuring the dc resistance of the winding

bajaman

ansil · Post by **ansil** » 03 Oct 2009, 07:04

ok well we get three pay checks this month guess its time to build the coil winder and start practiciing.

updated ha i completely forgot my old mentor had wound stuff on a sewing machine and had amazing luck with it and guess what i forgot i still had. yep my sewing machine

alright

SPeter · Post by **SPeter** » 03 Oct 2009, 09:48

Aha, I see!Thanks!
It Is realy possible to wind two coils with the same resistance without using counter!

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 03 Oct 2009, 10:22

It Is realy possible to wind two coils with the same resistance without using counter!

Yes with lots of practice

BUT - it really does not matter as much as some folks would have you believe - honestly

Near enough is good enough

bajaman

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 03 Oct 2009, 10:33

Here are some hybrid boards I etched tonight - I cut the legs off the DIP8 opamp and treated it like a surface mount component (same with the IN914 diode

)
I had plenty of 0805 smd resistors, so I used them, and I could not get any 22n capacitors in the 1206 size so i used some 0805 types

.The 1uf 50v ceramic and the 10n are both 1206 and much easier to work with.
I do not think i will be using any 0603 types though

- way too small!!
The board took surprisingly little time to assemble and like all things - practice makes perfect.
The trick in using smd stuff is to hold the component in place with a toothpick and tack one end. Then you can solder the other end very easily and after waiting a couple of seconds, reflow the solder on the first tack joint. OR - you could always glue it in place first, and then solder it.

Here is some pictures:
members/bajaman/Baja/Active%20preamp%20 ... 20AHP1.jpg
members/bajaman/Baja/Active%20preamp%20 ... 20AHP2.jpg
members/bajaman/Baja/Active%20preamp%20 ... 20AHP3.jpg
members/bajaman/Baja/Active%20preamp%20 ... 20AHP4.jpg

The 105 (1M resistor) to the right of the opamp is stacked on top of another 105 - this gives the correct 500k feedback resistor value

cheers
bajaman

SPeter · Post by **SPeter** » 03 Oct 2009, 10:56

ansil wrote:ok well we get three pay checks this month guess its time to build the coil winder and start practiciing.

updated ha i completely forgot my old mentor had wound stuff on a sewing machine and had amazing luck with it and guess what i forgot i still had. yep my sewing machine

alright

I've no experience with a sewing machine itself but a sewing machine motor is a good choice! I have one fitted in my pickup coil winder!One drawback is that with the supplied pedal for controlling the speed of the same is rather difficult to work! I have electronic speed controller before it and use the pedal almost as a switch! It allows me to smoothly start and stop winding !

Here you can see the pickups I've built for my resent work - 8 - String Guitar:
https://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t2/ ... umbuckers/

Cheers!

chicago_mike · Post by **chicago_mike** » 07 Oct 2009, 01:18

CROOKED! ALL THOSE RESISTORS ARE CROOKED!

I'm teasing

I did the same thing a few times while being trained on smt. Luckily I was trained on metcal stations...yummy!

ansil · Post by **ansil** » 21 Oct 2009, 06:40

funny i thought i would ask emg if i could purchase two of their coils. since i have a bricked 81 at the shop. told them would be happy to purchase them the gent on the other side of the email said unfortunately they don't' sell the parts to their pickups but he had one in his desk that i could have. well how nice.

seems like i find some nice honest people once in a while.

ed

Aharon · Post by **Aharon** » 24 Oct 2009, 00:10

Hi guys.
I have a question,I was going to start a new thread but htis is perfect.
I set up my strat like guitar with 3 sc pasive shielded pups,they came from a Charvelle,they seem like they might be made by EMG but they are old,maybe 20 yrs.Anywho,I have a beautiful clean sound,piano like,perfect definition,clean sweat,etc.(no noise either)
VEry happy with that but the distortion sucks a bit and the pups are a little low output.Coil Z around 5.5K
I could put a hb in the bridge but if I wanted to keep it as is ,would one of these BAJA pres be ok to beef up the signal or what would you guys recommend?
Thanks
Aharon

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 24 Oct 2009, 07:56

Hi Aharon
You cannot use the differential preamp discussed in this thread - unless you have TWO coils. For single coil pickups it is very hard to completely eliminate noise - you can shield them in foil, but 50 or 60 cycle hum will always be there too.
If you are looking for a suitable preamp for your single coil pickups, i would suggest you check out the MusicMan bass (and guitar!) preamp thread.
cheers
bajaman

Aharon · Post by **Aharon** » 24 Oct 2009, 13:57

Thanks BAJA,going to check the music man as you suggested.
BAJA man rocks ,this site rocks.
Aharon

ansil · Post by **ansil** » 27 Oct 2009, 20:15

got my emg over the weekend

Ben N · Post by **Ben N** » 27 Oct 2009, 21:39

bajaman wrote:Hi Aharon
You cannot use the differential preamp discussed in this thread - unless you have TWO coils. For single coil pickups it is very hard to completely eliminate noise - you can shield them in foil, but 50 or 60 cycle hum will always be there too.
If you are looking for a suitable preamp for your single coil pickups, i would suggest you check out the MusicMan bass (and guitar!) preamp thread.
cheers
bajaman

+1, generally. I did not even think of going active with a Strat until I switched to noiseless pups (Bill Lawrence L280s). Now I have two Strats: The Hwy-1 with the maple neck is pure, pristine single coil goodness (GFS vintage alnico staggered, way better than the stock pups, BTW), complete with the hum. The other, a Squier Pro Tone, has the BLs, which sound great but not quite 100% Stratty, with the preamp, which seems to sit well with the rosewood neck. They complement each other nicely.

Tube2stomp · Post by **Tube2stomp** » 10 Nov 2009, 17:49

Baja,

Isn't .050 wire like 44AWG?
I'm not into humbuckers at all and havn't heard the pickup you made, but parallel coils with 44 wire? doesn't seem like a path for traditional HB sound, which is what you said you want.
Can you measure the inductance?
EMG parallel their coils in order to get their signature sound (parallel coils that don't load each other), kinda humbucked single coilish thing which can only be had with actively isolated coils. the diff' amp is just a cheap way to have two buffers with a bonus mixer for a single amp... it's not the magic ingredient.
For traditional HB sound you should go "series", which means there's no need for a diff' amp.
I guess you could still use the 44 wire (never tried it) if you wind to get the inductance right (DCR means nothing)... AND series the coils.

Which in other words means... a normal regular HB with a buffer

And here is a tip:
The "magic" for pickups sound is in the loading, both for active and passive setups

(EMG stuff sounds like crap for clean and blues tones because the coils there don't see reactive loads to "fight" with)

EddieTavares · Post by **EddieTavares** » 12 Jan 2010, 18:11

Hi, I'm from Brasil and I joined in these forum today to show some tests that I did with similar diy device, forgive-me because my poor english writing and re-open this forum.

Months ago I made a preamp very similar to the baja preamp with some diferences: I wanted to use a single preamp to all pickups using the origianl 5-way switch drives each input (inverter/non-iverter) by each side of the switch so I put a 470k resistor between each input capacitor and ground to avoid scratchs, other difference is the two 330k bias resistors was replaced by two 100k resistors and a 150k resistor (like several guitar pedal):

Test:
I tested this preamp in a cheap eagle strato that I bougth by R$ 100 (around U$ 40) and some extra pickups that I have: jb duncan design on the bridge, old japanese fender alnico single coil (midle) and a dimazio virtual vintage (neck).

Wiring:
- The JB had the central tap (red + white wires) conected to the ground, the green wire was conected trough the switch to the inverter input and the black wire was conected trough the switch to the non-inverter input.

- The old single had the the negative wire folows to the inverter input and the positive to the non-inverter.

- The Virtual vintage had the central tap (grey + white wires) grounded and the green wire was conected trough the switch to the inverter input, the red wire was conected trough the switch to the non-inverter input.

Results:
As I wanted the switch had no scratch. All positions sounded a bit compressed and the positions 2 and 5 totally unusual.
The JB sounded very cool! No noise with more definitiom and punch, great!
The old single... nothing special, I prefer the normal use of this pickup, no noise canceling and almost no sound diference.
The Virtual vintage was the most diferent result if you compare with the stock wiring, like a P90 without noise.

If I have time I'll try the midle pickup with just a buffer to improve the positions 2 and 4 where the pickups are mixed.

Aharon wrote:Hi guys.
I have a question,I was going to start a new thread but htis is perfect.
I set up my strat like guitar with 3 sc pasive shielded pups,they came from a Charvelle,they seem like they might be made by EMG but they are old,maybe 20 yrs.Anywho,I have a beautiful clean sound,piano like,perfect definition,clean sweat,etc.(no noise either)
VEry happy with that but the distortion sucks a bit and the pups are a little low output.Coil Z around 5.5K
I could put a hb in the bridge but if I wanted to keep it as is ,would one of these BAJA pres be ok to beef up the signal or what would you guys recommend?
Thanks
Aharon

If you use a dummy coil conected to the -input and the switch conected to the +input of this preamp probably will work. You can use an extra pickup like the neck pickup to replace the midle pickup and have all pickups oriented to the same magnet flow, use the original midle pickup as a dummy coil finding a space inside your guitar to this extra coil, this configuration could work like I found with the Virtual vintage. If I have time to do I'll try this!

Probably if you avoid a 33k input resistor of the +input and find a lower value to the 150k bias resistor will work better with single coil, diferent values to these resistors will give you diferent flavors.

Thanks

ubaid88 · Post by **ubaid88** » 14 Jan 2010, 21:34

hi i need to ask. How much is difference is in da level of gain after installing this emg type active preamp in any passive humbucker?
Thanks

Btw, great work guys

ansil · Post by **ansil** » 15 Jan 2010, 07:12

the basic schematic is labeled as a 5x gain amplifier

bajaman · Post by **bajaman** » 15 Jan 2010, 07:38

Because it is a differential amplifier the overall gain is only slightly higher than a passive humbucker.

bajaman