Man, the original are ridiculously expensive. Thanks for doing this, you got a new subscriber.

Thank you for busting these stupid audiophile myths and generally inspiring people to make gear with their own hands. I've had some battles with the elitists about what is acceptable (everything that works) and what is not (huge price markups on musical equipment), and built my fair share of homemade pickups and guitar bodies... I do not plan on stopping. It is great that I have discovered one more of our kind. Maybe we could talk one day, you look like an interesting person to share some stories with.

This is the perfect blend of interesting content and entertaining content. Great work dude, great channel.

It always sounds better when you've made it yourself. I built an EL84 amp, and I thought it sounded brilliant. No doubt other people wouldn't love it an a blind test, but just knowing that I had done my first soldering on it I thought it sang. DIY is the way to go.

Your sustain comments and then test/demonstration around 4:50 had me rolling. First time on your channel, but won't be the last. I've made a bass, and a guitar, but want to make my own pickups, and this video helped. Thanks

Thank you for sharing this!👍 I used a flattened copper pipe, 12 volt coil, shielded wires, and a Strong neodymium. I can't believe how full and solid it sounds. I just wish the coil would fit in the guitar;)

Dude, you're my new favorite guitar DIY channel. You're doing exactly the things I've always wanted to do but never could. Subscribed!

I think that the copper part resembles a short circuit terminated transmission line, which you can manipulate it's dimensions to get either a coil or a cap with different output phases and impedences

Great work! I'm really inspired to make some pickups again, made one for my bass long ago also using those bad neodymium magnets. I watched several of your videos and I just love your no nonsense style and the humor. Keep doing your thing, there's never enough unorthodox minds in the world!

Thanks Clementine! I wedged a horseshoe of copper wire into a strat pickup cover, placed a 60mm neodymium underneath a layer of plastic, and used a 12v wall wart. It sounds great so far. Super clean! Now to see if I can get it to work with a 5v transformer. This pickup style is def now going into my homemade lap steel.

I've learned more from you about pickups in a couple of days than I had my whole life. I wonder how would this sound on a bass guitar.

Wow, I knew they were a relatively simple design, but that is ridiculously easy!! Thanks for sharing, I will definitely be experimenting with this

Sounds pretty great actually. Didn't expect that.

Everyone that says that the Alumitones must be cheap to build is ignoring the fact that a conventional single coil pickup typically uses less than $2 worth of copper wire (at U.S. retail prices) and is very simple to manufacture. The wire is wound around a bobbin, often by automated machinery. Even if you're hand scatter winding, like with my Mojotone pickup winder, it just takes minutes to wind a pickup. The magnets are then pressed into the middle of the bobbin or attached below the coil, and the coil is soldered to the leads. That's about it. Lace Alumitones are more than just a loop of aluminum, some magnets and an off-the-shelf transformer, and the manufacturing process has a lot more steps. The aluminum is waterjet cut, formed, and then finished with anodizing or plating. The coils are wound on tiny, custom bobbins whose injection molds likely cost tens of thousands of dollars to have made. Assembly is more complicated than with a conventional pickup as well. The steel cores that inductively link the aluminum to the coils need to be glued in, attaching the coils as well, and the coils need to be soldered to the leads. The technology behind single coil current transformer pickups isn't complicated, I've made a DIY version myself, but none of the homebrew Alumitones that I've seen are very practical. All of them use off the shelf transformers that are pretty bulky and won't fit into a standard pickup rout. Not only did Lace spend time and money developing something that worked, they came up with an elegant, compact solution that will just drop into an existing rout. I don't quite get it. Lace comes up with one of the few original pickup designs of the last 60 years that saves resources (and reduces the weight of pickups significantly) and sounds great and people rag on them because they think, mistakenly, that they are cheap to build.

I just love to hear what you play. Everything about this channel is awesome, but the playing is really cool.

I built a standard coil style pickup using some cobalt drill bits, some small round neodymium magnets and some magnet wire, with some plexiglass to hold the cobalt rods in place. It did work but my magnet wire was too heavy with too few wraps so it wasn’t very sensitive.

Cool Beans. Keep up the good work.

There you go again, man. Doing crazy stuff that proves the marketing world is CRAZY! Very very cool.

I wasn’t expecting much, but that’s really cool………thanks for posting!

I'm just an electronics nerd. Anyone that sets the elitist audiophile's straight is okay in my book!

Loved it. I saw your video on using a cassette machine to create vintage sound processing. I hack tape machines, build a few audio fx, mixers and PA. I'm turning my attention to electro acoustic instruments and this is gold. I've subscribed and I'm going to check the other pick up vids. Top work. Keep me coming.

I wonder what a bent copper pipe in place of the copper sheet would sound like.

The resistence difference between the different coil materials does have different frequency responses to the primary side and does "voice" the coil differently. Lace says that aluminum sounds better (different) than copper.

Man every pickup I've seen you make sounds really really good. I wish I could get one of your creations into one of my guitars.

You're an absolute champ for doing this. You inspire me to tinker.

I'm starting my own diy guitar journey and your videos have been so incredibly helpful!

Awesome would love to see you make another alumitone style pickup with the small transformer in the back of the pickup

Another GREAT project. You've been listening to Bill Kirchen & Hot Rod Lincoln - good choice for the "Tele" sound. I'm super pumped to get out some copper foil, and maybe take a little speaker transformer out of a broken radio sitting in the Work-Mess. It's an impedance transformer, but a rough guess is that the # of winds on each side will do the same as what you've got there. Small enough to tuck into a control cavity, too. I'm thinking that maybe a piece cut from an aluminum can might also be something to try. Another way to connect wires might be to use a nut & bolt with a star washer (the pointy kind) between the wire and the Aluminum. They coat the inside of pop cans with a plastic film, so that would have to be sanded off. It's pretty thin. Thanks for all your videos. I'd actually made some Strat pickups that used Neodymium rod magnets in place of the Alnico slugs (had to wrap some tape around them for fit, but that's OK) and they sounded really good. Put a blank cover over it so the tape-roll magnets aren't visible - people said "it sounds great." And I chuckled to myself with an evil grin. Another thing that just occurred to me is that somewhere around 2010-2011, I saw an article about using a little low-noise JFET transistor (J201 maybe?) for boosting very small signals. The beauty of that one was that the output side was high impedance, just like a regular pickup. I forget what the original use in a guitar was, but I'm willing to bet it would work here. Very low power - a small battery would probably run it for months. I'll just have to find the article again (might have been in Premier Guitar - not sure). I wish I could remember what the "original" use was. The thing only had about 5 parts, 2 resistors, 2 cheap caps, and one 50-cent JFet. I wired it up by taking a piece of cereal box cardboard, poking pin-holes through, then pushing the wires from the parts through those and soldering on the 'underside.' Wasn't pretty, but it worked. I'm just not remembering what it was originally for - if I do, I'll add a note here so you can have a look. Thanks for another very entertaining project and video!

This is freaking awesome! I've got loads of walwarts, two of which are variable voltage output, all the way down to 3v, I never considered there being transformers inside of them(not sure how I thought they worked!). Thanks so very much for sharing this, dude!

What a day. In the morning i build my first cassete delay. Midified. Then i decided to start that platereverb, got all the parts kikin round. Was thinking about doing something with that broken powerdrill and those tiny neomags on my desklamp… but it sounds so nothing like alnico 9,35, and the winding… dude. Your channel feels like quiting scientology after having almost sold my last kidney for that last final woo-titaneth0antest. Thank you. The spell of my luthier is broken. Would be great if you could make a vid with all those pickups through som nice amp simulation. Just get some neural dsp for trial 30 days… go against some emgs… invader… custom aged scatterwound pafcrap. Got some ambers myself. Their sweet. Came with the guitar. More power to you sir!

Can't remember if you've done a Sustainiac type thing yet. But that would be cool to see.

Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen !!!! Good one ! Shared to a friend and subbed.

This is my new favorite channel! I COULD NOT SMASH SUBSCRIBE HARD ENOUGH!

The basic concept is correct, but the actual alumitones are made in such a way that the aluminum body is actually the entire closed loop of wire for the primary of the transformer, and the secondary is hidden under/inside the pickup structure. That means there's almost no loss of signal in the primary, and it can be grounded at any point without issues. It's a very clever piece of tech.

Recognized the little red flux pot on yr bench is the same one I got with a HF soldering gun 30 yrs ago, I'm still using lol. Uber-cool channel. Now I know what I'm going to do with these faulty chargers I've been saving too.

interesting ----- has a nice subdued sound ---- subscribed

Great channel. ! I'm an experimenter too and it's wonderful to see these kind of things.

I think it has a nice tone. The high frequency roll off sounds, hm, natural.

It actually sounds cool!

Why didn't i found this channel earlier 😳

What is amazing is how wide the frequency response is with just one loop of wire. All the pickup myths are gone. And Les Paul liw impedance pickup were the same design in the late 50s

Hi! I put neodimiun pole pieces into a chinese made Wilkinson P-Bass pick up in my Bass Guitar. Easy mode got more punch, no problem. Here in buenos aires there is a small magnet maker, the pole pieces fit perfectly in diametre butbare more longer than a fender standard. So, im note afraid of neodimiun myths! Thanks for debunkin...i learned a lot today,

This would be so much fun to combine with my other odd experiments... Especially a baritone/semi hollow. Might be nutty as an acoustic sim type thing in a SH

thank you for making (imo) the best DIY audio/guitar(eventhoIdontplayguitarIstillloveandfindursplaininguseful)/infotaining/soulreviving videos ive ever witnessed this year(today)

Interesting video, but I really like the sound of Alumitone pickups.

Interesting, and the usage of a transformer is OK but I'm curious if a opamp as a voltage follower would sound as good.

Dude your awesome and saving me hundreds on pickups for my bass and fender .

Keep it coming dude, all this is food for thought and cool to experiment with, you are "Unique".

This video and channel are great! Keep’em coming!

Great work, the real wonder to me is that such a crude device is working. The downside of such a cheap pickup is the transformer, I have seen you used an audio transformer and not one of an old power supply. BTW.: Twisting the cables from the 'pickup' to the transformer might help suppressing the hum.

Oh also .. I'd love it if you'd make a video about different pots and capacitors and how they change the tone of the same pickup. Thanks a lot bro. Again, love your stuff.

Brilliant! Newly subbed, currently bingeing all your uploads!!! 🇬🇧👍

Sounds like it would make a great steel guitar.

This is a marvellous video about a great experiment. Thank you very much.

"It is the greatest invention since the vagina" is my new favorite one-liner.

Gomer Pyle would be proud of you

Great video 🙏

Always impressed, I lovehow you take it to the beginning Fezzini, I need basic, now I can experiment too!

Great job! 😆👍 Here's an idea or two for you. Is it workable to just wind a strip of copper tape of appropriate thickness around a bobbin once or twice (keeping the backing, or else also adding electrical tape), stick a magnet in, add a transformer, and get something similar? Also, I happen to like the sound of parallel HB coils, so I'd be curious as to what your flashing mockup (or my idea, if it's workable) sounds like in that configuration. And also also, what would a difference in the size of the flashing piece make on the sound? For example, could one that's massive, like between the neck and bridge, or two that add up to that size, get interesting sounds? I'm sharing these with you (and the rest of the internet) cuz you (or y'all) are far more likely to get to do them than I am. That said, this looks super-easy to make, and all I'd need to do is find a small enough transformer for the job, kinda like the tiny ones on the Alumitones. Last thought: did you see the Dylan Talks Tone video on Alumitones?

Thanks a lot!!! You did a great job, very interesting content, please continue👍 Спасибо🤘

Love your channel. Keep em coming.

I tried making one myself using 5 magnets from cheapo strat pickups in my junk bin then wrapped one turn of a copper magnet wire and connected it to a filament transformer. I connected it to the 6.3 volt and center tap wires instead of using the full 12.6 volt winding in hopes of a better ratio and then connected the 120 winding to my interface with an amp sim. Unfortunately it had extremely weak output, on a preset that should've been a chugging metal to it was super clean and quiet. I'm not sure if I need a different transformer or maybe I could try doing more turns of wire or different magnets maybe? I would've thought 5 magnets would be more than enough and 6.3 to 120 I thought would be a decent ratio so maybe I'll try adding turns?

Some MIT level students did a study for their professor that proved "sustain" comes from the hardness of the bridge pieces that touch the string. Harder == longer sustain. regardless of material or MASS ( weight ).

Not all wall warts have transformers, some are charge pumps. Theyre usually the smaller ones.

My absolutely FAVOURITE channel!! (Does it buzz when you STOP touching the strings?) have you tried the RubberMagnets?

Very interesting.

This is awesome! How do Alumitones work without a transformer? Does the thicker chunk of Aluminium give them more resistance or something? Please explain as you would to a small child...

Very cool sound. Would probably be great in a Bass VI.

Hey Clementine- awesome channel man, I love this MacGyver stuff. Thanks for such interesting and informative content- instant Sub! 😊👍 I was going to start experimenting with winding pickups for a frankenBass I’ve built from recycled pine pallets and this video got me thinking - could you use the same transformer trick with a traditional single coil pickup design that has fewer turns (eg 100-300) to boost the output to a usable level? Coiling wire long enough to do the thousands of turns needed for guitar pickups is a lot more expensive and harder to find where I live and I’m not going for a specific tone given I’ve already got a set of J-Bass pickups installed. From what I can make out in the video you’re using an audio transformer with 4ohm/7K ohm windings? Any comments on how a transformer scavenged from a wall wart affects the output- I assume they’re designed for 50/60hz so I’m guessing you might lose some high end? Anyway, keep up the great work and thanks again 🤘

Loved it. Would it cancel the hum if it was a humbucker setup? I'm thinking about doing it here at home. Will save me a shit ton of copper wire (people around are stealing copper straight out of the telephone line on a daily basis).

Thank you for this! Would it be possible to put just the sheet and wire strand over the top of any existing (unconnected) pickup, using the magnet and polepieces instead? Would it also be possible to wind an unwound pickup to act as a transformer? Or is that what a pickup does naturally?

Or you can use a printed circuit board, "printing" the coil. It'd look dope!

Son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that Hot.....Rod.....Lincoln

Que maravilla de pastilla Que gran aporte a la sociedad de musicos con pocos recursos Bendiciones para ti

Extremely interesting video! Would a humbucker version require a second transformer to make it work?

Thanks for sharing this. Sounds good... But, it's not very handy to have a bulky transformer around... And definitely not commercial... Would change the sound using just a single loop of a common copper wire?

Now this experiment fascinates me. Do you think it's possible to reduce the microphonics, or is that just something that this type pick up can not avoid. I was excited when you said it had great Low response but it seemed that when played it seemed to distort the very low freq - maybe that was due to bigger vibration inducing micro phonic or maybe it didn't come through on KZfaq very well. I would envisage winding a step up transformer on a toroidal former underneath the pick up -. My thinking to use the plate above as a shield from hum. So , a very interesting pick up experiment. One I would love to add to some time in future.

I sincerely enjoy your experiments. I would sincerely enjoy them even more if you bought a tuner tho.

thanks what i really needed is a bunch more insane ideas for how to modify my working guitars into unholy audio messes

Great content! It’d be cool to see you break down the Charlie Christian pick up. That one is hard get info on. Either way, I always enjoy your vids!!

Wow, that sounds really good. Cool cool video. Thanks!

Very inspiring - thanks! I was thinking of buying an Alumitone, but now I'm going to try your method. Which way is the magnet orientated : NtoS lengthways, widthways or though thickness? Or doesn't it matter?!

Great video, i'm definatly gonna build one of these, if you cant hook them up in series like a standard humbucker, could you hook another coil in paraellel? Just wondering if you had tried that? Thanks for the video!

Well that was just about damnedest thins I’ve ever seen!! And totally killer!! Here I am trying to rewire a friends Jackson Guitar when all I really need to do is build him some new pick ups LOL. Once again Clementine, very impressive!!! Shhhhh I’m kinda need in’ help with my rewire!! A tone pot, a volume and its 3 position switch!! I start on it tomorrow morning!! By the way you do play really well!!

You and Jim Lill taking down corporate shills and corks sniffers one video at a time

Guitar MacGyver. You are my hero

Grat video, you should have wayyy more subs, planning on building a guitar soon to make my own music sound unique even though im just an intermediate, this video is going to save me loads of money, and help me have a great tone, thanks!

Thank you. Nothing wrong with that pickup. Inspiring video.

Can’t get away from copper winds, this just moves them. 😂

I've been wondering if you could remote-mount the transformer, making a flat pickup. This is exactly the confirmation I've been looking for! I've got access to a CNC laser, so cutting the single "coil" would be super easy and precise, once I think of an interesting enough design.

I'm currently having a play around with this idea, I have a 230v to 6v transformer a copper u shape and some neodymium magnets and I'm getting very little output, but it is working, I'm going to try and unwind some of the coils to increase the ratio I hope it works

Greatest Invention since " The Va J-J " 🤣🤣🤣.

Would a transformer work to step up the output of for example vintage pickups with few winds? Or just increase the output of regular pickups in general?

You are JJ Cale levels of cool. Dig your stuff, brother! Keep doing what you do. It's amazing!

Great stuff! As a fellow D.I.Y.'er, I love the ingenuity. Consider me subscribed.👍

No contact of wires shown besides the pickup contact points. No idea how to use the wall wart as well. Help.

This thing is really interesting, i can think of some useful applications for this

This is great :D Tried to build this but I think whatever circuit I got out of my power adapter was not a step up transformer or it entailed one but it was soldered on a circuit board and I couldn't get it off. And I used a normal magnet, but ordered a neodymium magnet to test this out. Also it seems like I have to destroy some more power adapters

Like Rico's but I built two into plastic humbucker covers. My layout is upside down with the magnet closest to the strings. Almost blew out the windows!!

I have made a search on the internet and I have found that there is a very small adapter. It is the Innergie Power Travel Kit USB Wall Mains adapter. This brings the voltage from 240 to 5. This could be used as a transformer and it is really small. Give it a try.