Winding the pickups
Since the Shark bass is custom made, the electronics should also be made at Fablab!
We started working with the Jazz Bass Pickup kit from Stewart MacDonald and the instructions.
According to Vintage Guitars Info, the wire specs differ per type of pickup. Since we wanted to create a Fender Jazz-like sound, the specs for a vintage Fender Jazz pickup were used: an average of 9000 windings of 42' Gauge wire (also from Stewart MacDonald).
To precisely measure the number of windings, we used an old milling machine. The revolutions of this milling machine were counted by using a Hall sensor connected to an Arduino, by using this tutorial: http://www.zipfelmaus.com/blog/arduino-with-hall-sensor/. Below you can see the Hall sensor connected to the Arduino UNO.
A magnet was attached to the rotating head of the machine. The Hall sensor sensed when the magnet was close and this way, the Arduino counted the number of windings of the pickup.You can see the setup below.
After winding, the resistance was measured to check if the wire was not broken and sanded properly.
According to the instructions from StewMax, the resistance of each pickup should be around 8kΩ.
The pickups were put in there casing and they were ready for use. When the bassmodel is done, it is time to install the electronics. I wonder what it will sound like!
