April 18, 2014
3D printing makes it possible to manufacture 'impossible' shapes, so it is not a surprise that 3D printing has made its way to musical instruments.
Polish maker "Rob" Klaczynski, the creator of notorious "pills bisector", together with his friend, guitarist Martin Kubacki has used 3D printing to create a guitar pickup.
For those who do not know, a few words about what a guitar pickup is: it's an essential element mounted on electric guitars used to capture the vibrations of the strings and convert them into electric signals that go to the amplifier and speaker. It is placed under the strings at the height of the playing hand. Pickup consists of a coil and magnetic core which can turn electrical energy into motion. The number of cores is usually 6, which corresponds to the number of strings. The coil is a copper wire with a thickness of 0.06 mm. The magnet is wrapped with as many as 7,000 turns of fine wire. Number of turns affects the resistance - that is, the sound would appear to guitar.
Standard pickups by Leo Fender are in the range of 5.8 - 6.2 coma resistance. The pickup made by Martin and Robert is approximately 9000 turns, which gives 6.8 coma, making the guitar sound - as described by Robert - "more severe and metallic."
Martin and Robert printed the guitar pickup on a 3D printer, and uploaded the project instruction and files to Thingiverse, where you can also find a photo gallery of the various stages of assembly. The Pickup was made for Ibanez RG270 guitar.
Martin is very much into heavy sound. To demonstrate the full capabilities of the pickup, Martin has recorded a great cover of the legendary band Bad Religion's "Them and Us", which is to demonstrate the guitar sound with customizeble 3D prinded single coil pickup.
Below is the details about the home made single-coil guitar pickup with 3D-printed bobbins and AlNiCo5 magnets.
Here is Bad Religion performing 'Them And Us' from The Gray Race in 2006.
Source: Centrumdruku3d
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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@Joan McGill you're an idiot.
Joel Fremen wrote at 4/22/2014 5:27:49 AM:
I like to see these articles. 3D printing is a great field to get into, but it helps to know the range of applications. Not everything needs to be some super-exciting NASA project
Joan McGill wrote at 4/19/2014 1:38:12 AM:
All these 'first 3d-printed this and that' are just annoying. It doesn't make really any sense to 'print' a guitar pickup - seriously, as much sense as 3d-printing a tooth-brush. Exciting!!!
Don Stratton wrote at 4/18/2014 10:22:06 PM:
There is nothing "impossible" about the shape of a pickup bobbin, so the lead paragraph is needlessly sensational.
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