Making Pickups

Has anyone ever done it? Always something i've wanted to do, but never really known how.

Has anyone had any real success with it? I think it would be quite interesting to experiment with a few things, seems like a lot involved, just wondered if anyone with experience would reccomend doing it or not.

Thanks,
Tom.

I was going to make a pickup-winder out of an old sewingmachine motor but I never got round to it.
Stewmac have a book on pickups by Mario Milan. It tells you everything you need to know about pickup windings and magnetics. I eventually bought some Kinmans for my strat and they were fantastic.

I once ended up making a pickup of sorts when I was trying to work out how and Ebow works and used an energised coil round an iron core, which became magnetised and then worked as a pickup, but nothing serious.

Anyone know how an Ebow does work, by the way? This was nearly 30 years ago and not knowing is till driving me nuts!

I remember reading a wikihow on how to make a very simple pickup, that probably wouldn't sound very nice (but then again could contribute to some serious individuality in tone) the process didn't actually seem complicated at all, and I'm sure if you swapped the suggested materials in the article (cheap copper wire, ice-lolly sticks etc) for some more decent materials an alright job could be made of it. Hmm. This has got me thinking... Well anyway there's a wikihow out there somewhere, that uses ice-lolly sticks on the bottom and the top end of the coil, that's all I can remember of it

Oh and screaming dave, as far as I know (although I could be totaly wrong) an E-bow quiet simply generates lots of fast and frequent mini vibrations through the neck of the guitar, or so I've been told