Pickup building video #5, 6 min 26 sec, 74.7 MB flash video
small-screen version available on YouTube
complete “pickups for the electric hammered dulcimer” series on a YouTube Playlist
In the Fall of 2008, I took the first coils and made the first pickups. This video cover the details of making pickups, and what I tried with them, what the issues were, and the intital results. While the story is covered in detail in the pickups section of the main website, there is something in seeing the process, the tips and tricks, and seeing, and hearing, the first time something absoluitely new is heard in the world. With video, you can be there with me when I plug them in and turn on the amp for the first time. It was so great, I eneded up just standing their playing, listening to that sound , for a couple hours. You get to see a few seconds, but well, you are there.
Its also easy to see the main issues I was dealing with of pickup placement and string alignment, and of course, how that effects the sound. I have to have every string pass through the field of a coil, while baancing the volume of the strings. Either every string has to pass through an equal sum of fields and coils, or use proximity, or even variable volume and tone controls for different pickups to achive that balance. It is not nearly so easy as an electric guitar. This is just the beginning. But the most important test ws whether they would work at all, are wound pickups even practically useful or is this a dead end. I answered that question for sure, they work