Solution Audio

Wanna know a secret of the great pickup manufacturers? Repeatability. If you can make that one magic sounding pickup every single time, that’s manufacturing happiness for players and listeners far and wide. I learned this from the pickup guru Carey Nordstrand. I get repeatability by using the Tonewinder pickup winder and documenting every process for every pickup. On my hand winds, I have sheets of paper with wind patterns documented for every 600 winds. There’s an entire file cabinet in the shop with all the specs for every pickup I make so I can reference the original magic pickup in the future. Using high quality parts and tools makes everything consistent and predictable. That Stewmac screwdriver set is a game changer for humbucker manufacturing. Philadelphia luthier parts fuels the process too. Quality ingredients and disciplined focus on the small tasks make quality pickups.

Obscura MFG absolutely kills it again! Their enclosure services are top notch. Colors on point, holes drilled to specs, good communication.

Prototypes arrived! These are smaller versions of the large Big Box of Chicken compressor. The changes are the power supply has been redesigned, the bypass switch is now controlled by a soft switch and a relay (still true bypass) and of course it’s SMD based. Otherwise the controls remain the same and the components directly related to tone and compression are the same. I had to dig through a lot of data sheets to match up some of the components to the hand soldered version. We will see if I made mistake in the design or layout when the potentiometers arrive tomorrow!

Sometimes you win, and sometimes you drop a big ol’ spool of 42 gauge magnet wire and crack the spool. I had to peel off about a pound or so to get past the crack and be able to wind again.

Today is a very special day! FFoF Day! First Flannel of Fall 🍂Bring on the cool mornings 🍁🍃

I still get excited every time I get some new lumber! Check out the figure on that walnut. Those dang Wenge splinters are terrible!

Up to my old ways. Working on another circuitboard design.

Lightning hit the shop the other day and fried the motherboard of my laser etcher. It usuallg gets unplugged when I’m not using it, but i just forgot that day.

That machine is 22 years old and parts are not easy to find! I looked all over every web site that could possibly have parts. I called everyone I knew in the laser repair business from California to Illinois. I finally found one donor machine in Louisiana and one in Ohio. I went with the one in Ohio as it was coming from a reputable shop that was able to test it.

I was able to do the swap myself and through the help of Epilog support, load my original settings into the donor board.

Back up and running thanks to Steve at Airway Laser in Ohio!

The struggles of using ancient machines ⚙️⚙️⚙️

Ripping some Indian Rosewood from with a little help from 36-725 T2 tablesaw discord bluetooth hearing protection Grr-Ripper while listening to new single King Of Fools (Thanks for the shirt!!!)

I’m loving this machine for humbucker bobbins. It really has increased productivity and does a great job every wind. I’ve always been proud of my humbuckers and this has stepped up my game.

This weekend I wound up a handful of Tele style pickups. Each one of these is made from beginning to end by me only. I enjoy having control over everything from choosing the vulcanized fiber I cut to the wax blend I use. I’ve been winding for 13 years now and I make each one of these pickups to be the best one I’ve ever made. My volume is low, but my quality is high. These will go into high end custom guitars and maybe a few will be sold to people looking to upgrade their current guitar. What are some things you might look for in a pickup upgrade in your daily driver guitar?