# DIY Fanned Fret Pickups - How to slant most passive pickups for multiscale guitars



## Hywel (Jan 15, 2016)

The is a little project I've been working on while I'm in between builds. I built this multiscale 8 string last year to try out fanned frets and 8 strings to see if I liked them. Since I wasn't sure I would, I only put in a set of RG8 stock pickups. The bridge sounded pretty good but with a slightly low output and I wasn't a fan of the neck which got "tubby" under high gain. Turns out a 1" fan is basically unnoticeable and 8 strings are pretty fun so I thought it deserved an upgrade. 







2 problems however...

1.) Upgrades are limited to pretty much just the Lace bars and actives

2.) I don't want to pay Lace or Fishman prices

So I bought some 5 string bass soapbar covers from China and got drawing in Adobe Illustrator. I ended up with this.






Not exactly exciting but it's a baseplate that fits in a soapbar cover and allows the coils to be offset from each other.

The drawing can be sent to Razorlab (in the UK), Ponoko (US/NZ) or any other laser cutter to be cut from any material you fancy (within reason). I got mine done in 1.4mm mount-board because it's a prototype and that was the cheapest option. Acrylic, MDF or Plywood would probably work well. Here's a link to the .svg file for the 8 string, soapbar cover version. If you're in the UK and would like some ready cut with a cover, PM me!

I haven't drawn any 7 string or non-soapbar versions yet but I'll add them if I do.

Before I go any further I'd like to thank BlackMastodon for being awesome and supplying the D Activators I used, and say that I don't really know what I'm doing so if anyone spots any obvious mistakes please let me know!

*The tutorial bit

**Things you'll need*



Screwdrivers/hex keys (depending on the pickup you're about to brutalise)
A soldering iron
A drill and drill bits to suit your pole screws
Sandpaper
A replacement baseplate

A suitable sized cover
Some M3 (and maybe some M4) washers

*Things that you might need/are handy to have*


Thin tool razor blades
Hot air gun/hair dryer
Callipers
Copper foil
A compass
Hot glue (to stress relieve the lead wires)

*The step-by-step*


(This is for the DiMarzio 8's I had. There shouldn't be much difference for other brands or string numbers)*
*


I received these D Activators in the post in a very un-fanned state. Let's fix that.






*Step 1 - *Remove the backplate carefully to expose the 80mm ceramic magnet. Some heat may help if it's stubborn but don't go overboard. The stock 80mm magnet was fine for my 11° slant but it's worth checking if it'll reach all the poles if you have an extreme fan.






*Step 2 *- De-solder the ground wire and remove the magnet. For some reason, DiMarzio decided to glue the damn thing to the baseplate. All that white gloop around the magnet is glue and it doesn't melt so we'll have to cut it off. Use a *thin* razor blade to cut off the excess and then slide and cut under the magnet to separate it from the base. Be careful as too much twisting or bending is likely to snap the brittle ceramic. Other brands are likely to have wax rather than glue which you should be able to soften and remove with careful use of heat.










*
Step 3* - Separate out the the coils and the magnet and put them to one side. Make a note of the magnet polarity if you don't have a compass. Prepare your plastic soapbar covers for the transplant by sanding and scraping the insides down. The wall thickness of mine started at ~1.5mm and needed to come down to ~0.8mm for a good fit. If it's a very tight squeeze you could consider very carefully sanding the edges of the bobbins but only if the coils are a good distance away and you don't mind running the risk of killing the pickup.





*
Step 4 - *Work out your required angle/slant for the pickups and tape them together so they stay at the required angle. Remove all the adjustable pole pieces and put them somewhere safe. Put the empty, taped together bobbins in the plastic cover (make sure everything's the right way round!) and position them in the middle. Take a drill bit smaller than the pole screws (4.5mm for these D Activators), put it in each pole screw hole and give it a tap with something. This should leave a nice dent in the centre of where you need to drill to expose the pole screws. When you're ready, remove the bobbins and drill the holes with a bit slightly larger than the poles (5mm for me). Brad point wood bits work well on the plastic covers.
















*Step 5* - Put the pole pieces back in but make sure they're flush with the top of the bobbin. Now put the bobbins in the cover and then screw the poles through the top of the cover to make them flush with the top. Alternatively just get the bobbins back in there somehow. I don't really care how. Add the magnet and spacer back in. Make sure the magnet is the correct way around. The tops of the covers are about 4mm thick so make sure the pole pieces still reach the magnet. The DiMarzio poles were fine when flush with the cover but only have 1mm or so adjustment towards the strings before they loose good contact. If you don't drill holes for the poles the mod will still work but you'll never be able to get the ideal distance from the strings. 

(No pics. My bad)

*Step 6* - Find your replacement baseplate and if you have some, cover one side in the copper foil. Solder the bare ground wire from the pickup to the copper foil and screw the baseplate onto the bobbins using the original screws and the washers to make sure the screw head is wide enough to cover the big gaps. Add a label if you like.
















*Step 7* - Bask in the glory that is your new DIY fanned pickup!










*

Semi optional step 8* - Pot them in wax





*
Step 9* - Install them!






I hope that was helpful and if you actually do this I'd love to see the result.


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## juankyman (Jan 15, 2016)

very cool!


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## mr coffee (Jan 16, 2016)

I like!

-m


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## jeremyb (Jan 16, 2016)

Nice work man!


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## jarledge (Jan 16, 2016)

I was about to do the exact same thing with Dean RC7X. I took the 707s out but like an idiot i forgot that the active route is smaller than a standard dimarzio 7 string pickup. Plus the neck pickup is cocked to accommodate the larger deeper lower cutaway. I ended up clipping the dog ears and drilling new mounting holes which works, but the neck pickup doesn't line up obviously. I just lined up one set of pole pieces then split the different left and right. 

So the pickups are in but look bad because of the extra space around them. I dont know if i should modify and install pickup rings or just do pickup covers. 

anyone looking to try this can get the plastic covers here 

2-Hole Mount Soapbar Bass Neck Pickup Cover Black (4 String)

4 string should fit 7 string and 5 string should fit 8 string.


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## cult (Jan 16, 2016)

great stuff right there!


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## BlackMastodon (Jan 16, 2016)

Glad to help out and see these pickups go to a use in a really cool way! Great work, man!


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## TheRileyOBrien (Jan 16, 2016)

I have done that without the plastic covers. Just made new holes on the backplate and slid the coils and screwed them back on. Surprising how much people pay to have specially made pickups for multiscale when it is this easy to mod any standard pickup.


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## Hywel (Jan 16, 2016)

Thanks everyone!

I edited the first post to include the potting and installation just to keep it tidy.


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## Hollowway (Jan 16, 2016)

TheRileyOBrien said:


> Surprising how much people pay to have specially made pickups for multiscale when it is this easy to mod any standard pickup.



Yes, but for larger fans this isn't possible because the slanting brings the pole pieces closer together than the strings are. So for larger r fans you're stuck with either blade pups or customs. Hence my having so many Lace bars. 

Anyway, great work, man! You could really provide this as a service, if you wanted. I'd bet people would buy these things.


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## lewis (Jan 17, 2016)

Hywel said:


> The is a little project I've been working on while I'm in between builds. I built this multiscale 8 string last year to try out fanned frets and 8 strings to see if I liked them. Since I wasn't sure I would, I only put in a set of RG8 stock pickups. The bridge sounded pretty good but with a slightly low output and I wasn't a fan of the neck which got "tubby" under high gain. Turns out a 1" fan is basically unnoticeable and 8 strings are pretty fun so I thought it deserved an upgrade.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Would you offer this as a service? incredibly cool mod


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## Hywel (Jan 17, 2016)

Hollowway said:


> Yes, but for larger fans this isn't possible because the slanting brings the pole pieces closer together than the strings are. So for larger r fans you're stuck with either blade pups or customs. Hence my having so many Lace bars.
> 
> Anyway, great work, man! You could really provide this as a service, if you wanted. I'd bet people would buy these things.



That's true. The magnet size and the space inside the cover also limit it slightly. I think you can get a maximum of about 17° of slant but I'm not sure how the poles would line up at that angle. It should be enough for Strandbergs and Ibanez though hopefully.



lewis said:


> Would you offer this as a service? incredibly cool mod



Just as Hollowway predicted!

Not at the moment I'm afraid mate but if you like I can send you all the parts you need to do it yourself since I over ordered on the covers and baseplates. PM me if you're interested.


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## Vrollin (Jan 17, 2016)

Sick work there mate, love it when people take matters into their own hands and dive in like this!
Not trying to be a dick here but shouldnt the nut also be slanted otherwise it kind of nulls half the point of a fanned neck in that the tensions and intonation arent effected in the manner a fanned neck is intended for...?


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## Hywel (Jan 17, 2016)

Vrollin said:


> Sick work there mate, love it when people take matters into their own hands and dive in like this!
> Not trying to be a dick here but shouldnt the nut also be slanted otherwise it kind of nulls half the point of a fanned neck in that the tensions and intonation arent effected in the manner a fanned neck is intended for...?



There's a stainless steel 0 fret. Ideally the string guide behind it would follow behind the fret but I didn't fancy doing a compound angle for the headstock. It works alright but if I do it again I'd probably just man up and do the twisted headstock/nut thing instead.


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## Vrollin (Jan 17, 2016)

Hywel said:


> There's a stainless steel 0 fret. Ideally the string guide behind it would follow behind the fret but I didn't fancy doing a compound angle for the headstock. It works alright but if I do it again I'd probably just man up and do the twisted headstock/nut thing instead.



I appreciate that there's a zero fret but my understanding of the whole fanned fret was that it was for "normalising" tension on the strings as you got into the extreme lows. Or am I way out in my understanding here?
I would have thought having a standard scale length bridge to nut and then fanned frets would be an intonation nightmare along the fretboard....?

Back on OT, I've never pulled a humbucker apart before. Is each coil separately wound and then joined together, or are both sets of magnets wound together as one giant coil?

Also there could be a bit of a growing niche market if you sold the covers pre drilled with the base plate pre cut as a package with a set of instructions... I reckon you would have a few customers on here straight away...


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## Hollowway (Jan 17, 2016)

Vrollin said:


> I appreciate that there's a zero fret but my understanding of the whole fanned fret was that it was for "normalising" tension on the strings as you got into the extreme lows. Or am I way out in my understanding here?
> I would have thought having a standard scale length bridge to nut and then fanned frets would be an intonation nightmare along the fretboard....?
> 
> Back on OT, I've never pulled a humbucker apart before. Is each coil separately wound and then joined together, or are both sets of magnets wound together as one giant coil?
> ...



Yeah, the nut doesn't make any difference when there's a zero fret. Think of it as a string guide. The zero fret works as the nut in the sense that it works when you play a string open.


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## Hywel (Jan 17, 2016)

Vrollin said:


> I appreciate that there's a zero fret but my understanding of the whole fanned fret was that it was for "normalising" tension on the strings as you got into the extreme lows. Or am I way out in my understanding here?
> I would have thought having a standard scale length bridge to nut and then fanned frets would be an intonation nightmare along the fretboard....?



The 0 fret acts as the nut so the scale length runs from fret 0 to the bridge saddle. The strings don't really touch the string guide behind the fret and it's only purpose is to hold the correct spacing. The tension should be identical to a guitar with a nut rather than a 0 fret.

As an aside, I didn't realise you couldn't do any spacing other than what fretfind2d calculates on multiscales so when I tried to do a compensated string space, the intonation was all out of whack since the strings were no longer centred over their correct place on the fret. I replaced the plastic compensated spacing string guide with a new ebony one with the original fretfind2d spacing and it intonates fine. lesson learned there!



Vrollin said:


> Back on OT, I've never pulled a humbucker apart before. Is each coil separately wound and then joined together, or are both sets of magnets wound together as one giant coil?



Each coil is wound separately and has a thicker gauge lead wire soldered onto the start and finish of each wind. In a 2 conductor pickup, 2 of these lead wires (normally the 2 finish ends from each coil) are soldered together in the pickup and the other 2 wires get soldered to the long wire that goes to the control cavity to give you your hot and ground. This kind of pickup can only be wired with the coils in series (i.e. 1 big wind) since you can't get at the wind finish lead wires in the pickup. 

A 4 conductor pickup solders each of the lead wires to its own longer wire that ends in the control cavity (the black, white, red, green, bare you normally see). This allows you to wire the coils however you want so they can act as 1 big wind (series), 2 coils in parallel, or split into single coils by sending one of the coils to ground. The diagram below might make a bit more sense than my rambling. 








Vrollin said:


> Also there could be a bit of a growing niche market if you sold the covers pre drilled with the base plate pre cut as a package with a set of instructions... I reckon you would have a few customers on here straight away...



If I can work out a way to speed up thinning down the cover walls I might put some sets together. (don't hold your breath though!)


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## Vrollin (Jan 17, 2016)

Hywel said:


> The 0 fret acts as the nut so the scale length runs from fret 0 to the bridge saddle. The strings don't really touch the string guide behind the fret and it's only purpose is to hold the correct spacing. The tension should be identical to a guitar with a nut rather than a 0 fret.
> 
> As an aside, I didn't realise you couldn't do any spacing other than what fretfind2d calculates on multiscales so when I tried to do a compensated string space, the intonation was all out of whack since the strings were no longer centred over their correct place on the fret. I replaced the plastic compensated spacing string guide with a new ebony one with the original fretfind2d spacing and it intonates fine. lesson learned there!
> 
> ...



Now that Im sober Im following the 0 fret now, kind of missed a crucial point in my head that obviously makes it work hahaha

Cheers for that, now I understand why theres the 4 wires and how splitting, phasing etc works, I never quite understood it but hadn't yet gone out of my way to learn exactly how it all works...

Maybe a rotary tool could help you if you had to do it again?


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## russmuller (Jan 22, 2016)

Dude, nice work!


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## migucis (Nov 10, 2016)

Dude, pics are gone, could you fix? I would like to try doing it! Thank you.


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## Hywel (Nov 10, 2016)

migucis said:


> Dude, pics are gone, could you fix? I would like to try doing it! Thank you.



Sadly I can't edit the posts to fix the pics but here's the imgur album where they live.

https://imgur.com/a/hxJw5

Let us know how you get on!


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## migucis (Nov 11, 2016)

Cool man, thx so much!


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