Pup Tester

Testing the magnetic pickups (pups) I've been making has been a pain in the butt, because I have been lazy and not created a method by which it could be easier.  I would wind the pup, attach lead wires from the pup to an output jack, fiddle around holding the jack to plug in an amp cord.  If I discovered a problem, I would need to unsolder  the leads, before I could proceed.

So, today I decided to build a pup tester, which eliminates the useless fooling around.

This photo is of the basic test platform with pup leads attached to 'ground' and 'positive' alligator clips near the bridge. (The pup is a creation from my friend Roger Berry, who taught me what I know about winding pickups, but not everything he knows ;-).

Leads from the clips are routed through the surface of the enclosure to the output jack, where the amp cord is inserted.

The dark lines on the test surface are the location markers for the pups in neck, mid, or bridge positions on a guitar, which produce different sound in each position.

The chrome bridge is a leftover item that I no longer had use for on a regular build, so it came in handy  here.

I decided to keep it as sanitary and simple as possible, and to make this tester in the shape of a guitar (you need to use your imagination here) with a standard 25.4-inch scale.  It has only base and treble strings, but that all I need to determine if the pup is working correctly and to hear how it sounds in operation.

 I'm using one of the CBAmps I build for the test.  It's a 9-volt battery

operated GuitarFuel harness with multiple output options, 

and it blows sound around big time.