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Diy Rhodes - Pickup dimensions

Started by Malte.Entzmin, June 13, 2024, 04:18:30 PM

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Malte.Entzmin

Hello
My name is Martin and I am new in this forum. Hope this thread is in the right category.
I am in the process of building my own Rhodes. I gathered lots of information from the internet and took lots of measurements from my brothers 73 stage piano. Dean Coyles (DrPepper) gave me the confidence that it could be possible and his videos provided me with lots of great tips and ideas.

At the moment I am finishing the keybed. I have already made some prototypes for the tines and tonebars which are working quite well. And I also build a winding machine with a stepper motor for the pickups. My problem is that I can't measure a bobbin since my brother doesn't have any spare parts and I can't unwind a pickup. At the moment my pickups have 0.1mm wire and 2900 wraps. but they have something like 220 Ohms and they are too wide to fit next to each other.

Could anyone help and measure a Pickup bobbin for me? I need to know the diameter and the length of the round part where the wire is wrapped around. That would be great.

And here are some pictures of my build for the ones who are interested.
Martin



sean

#1
Here are dimensions of the regular 3" pickup.  Sorry about the cardboard box background.

One drawing in kilometers, one drawing in units related to the length of the king's big toe. 

Note that the electircal terminals have been cut off of this pickup.

Sean


sean



The wire used to wrap the pickups is very thin "enameled" wire... something like 36AWG or 38AWG.
I don't believe you can get wire with old-fashioned enamel, now they use polyurethane (and it is 100% just great).  I assume that's what you have.  That small-gauge wire is only 0.004 inches or 0.005 inches in diameter...  that would be right about 0.1mm in diameter (not in cross-sectional area).  You need really thin insulation to give you enough space to wind enough turns to get the pickup up to 180Ω.