How to turn old single coil pickup into sustainer for less than 10€

Sustainer is cool little device originally designed by Fernanes®. It works opposite from "normal" guitar pickup. Basically, active circuit amplifies signal from bridge pickup and sends it to driver which generates magnetic field causing strings to vibrate infinitely. Driver replaces neck pickup on guitar which limits guitar tonal variations in one way but gives completely new possibilities.

This photo shows Fernandes Sustainer kit which is cool but very expensive (above 200$). Fortunately, great guys from Project Guitar Forum (most of all Pete/psw and Col) developed DIY friendly project that costs much less than original but still sounds good. Also, I'd like to thank PSW Pete for sending me 0.2mm wire all the way from Australia at no cost.

If you do not have some old pickup to use for about 10€ you can order single coil pickup kit and pickup cover, StewMac carries both items.

	Step 1 Find old single coil pickup. Humbucker can work too, but it takes more space and one coil will be unused. Another thought is to turn one coil to sustainer and leave other as regular passive pickup coil. That way you can have both sustainer and pickup, but passive coil needs to be switched off while sustainer is running to avoid hum caused by magnetic field around sustainer. My unsuspecting victim is old pickup I got from a friend. Not how a part of plastic is missing; it was "sanded" away with strings. That means I'll have to buy pickup cover
	Step 2 Strip pickup and remove all wire. There's a lot of very thin wire there so cutting it instead of unwiding is the way to go. In this case, pickup was potted which made stripping wire even harder. Nice thing about this is that pole pieces can be adjusted, so if I end up with uneven sustain I'll be able to set poles higher or lower to compensate difference.
	Step 3 As Pete (psw from ProjectGuitar forum) suggested, the optimal coil height should be around 3mm. The pickup I cannibalized had 10mm high coil so something needs to be placed at ~3mm from top bobbin to limit coil height to around 3mm. I used thin (about 0.5mm) plastic which is used for packing stuff (mine was from guitar machine heads). Border of package was bended at 90 degrees, so I cut two L shaped pieces to put on both sides of pickup. It's glued to core with epoxy glue and pressed with rubber band to cure.
	This photo shows pickup after glue is cured.
	While I was gathering parts for first sustainer a friend gave me four more broken pickups to play with
	Step 4 Coil winding took about 15-20 minutes to complete. Using very nice online winding calculator (link is below) I calculated number of windings needed to get 8ohm coil with my pickup core. Each 20 or so windings I'd put a little glue on coil which should fill all gaps and keep windings tight in order to prevent microphonics. Glue I used is universal transparent glue that can be obtained in any office supply shop.
	Step 5 When winding is complete both ends of coil are soldered to hookup wire (I used wire from PC mouse cable) and joint is insulated with heat shrink tubing. To prevent any stress on thin winding wire I glued whole joint to bobbin with nice blob of glue. That will ensure that any force will be taken only to hookup wire which is much stronger. I left glue to cure over night and wrapped coil with insulating tape.
	Step 6 Next step is making sustainer circuit. For starters I decided to go with Fetzer/Ruby amp which is reported to give good results. I built it on perfboard and tried to keep it smaller because it will be placed inside guitar. I made perfboard layout for Fetzer/Ruby amp and you can find it in Layout Gallery

knifefighter: Wahhh, no schematic for the 5 watt SLO project
DLrocket89: For UBUNTU Users: Use the console, navigate to the directory it's in (I c/p from the DIYLC_beta window straight into the console) and then type in the console: java -jar diylc.jar You need to have java installed, and a file to make .jar work. Should be available from the updater (Adept in Kubuntu, which is what I have).
Martyn: Thanks for a brilliant site, donation sent
manu: Thanks, scondon. It's ok with Wine for me too.
scondon: scratch that, it's not working through wine either. sadface.
scondon: manu, the java version is not working for me in ubuntu 8.10 but the windows version DOES work through WINE
nike: Anyone have the cab dimension for Fender Princeton 5F2-A? Nice site
pls: Possible to export PNP to graphic with DIYLC2? I'm only able to print blank pages.
rebec: johnny , may be possible, but phasers and flangers are not small boards, youre going to be carving lots of wood for that project
johnny: hey im looking to put a pretty cool mod in my guitar, i want to install a phaser or a flanger type effect on a switch...is it possible??
manu: Hi! Does anyone have DIYLC working on Ubuntu? i've got Ubuntu 8.04 with java 6 installed. DIYLC start, the main windows is ok, but the library windows is always empty. thanks!
BypeAppelmZew: home loan political t shirt farm toy
TCDK: Where do I best buy chassis etc. for my pedals?
JackStriker: DIYsoftware is nice. useful !!! cheer.
bancika: mark, it's in parallel with output electrolyte, I forgot to put it on a schematic...
mark: Hi. where does the mylar cap go on the power box schematic. Thanks
ΓΚ°‘: crap.. error messege is all over the place. how can I fix it..
tfk: anybody got a schem for the preamp for a sustainiac
tfk: hello
remork: hi there! have you got a schem for the kalamazoo one? i'm planning on doing a similar thing to an old philips radio and it looks like it might have the same configuration- so extra info would be useful.. thanks!
bancika: Pete, diylc2 is very nice functionally but code is a mess, it would take more time to make it nice than do it from scratch. Also, new model will open new possibilities...
Pete: been looking at the diylc 3 code, very early stages, why not just release diylc 2 as open source and expand on that.... seems to be a good program
bancika: it's just like any other user rating system, doesn't have to mean anything but should give a picture.
bzja: no the ratings (thumbs up, thumbs down) are they a reflection of a working circuit?
bancika: you mean voltage readings?
bzja: Question about ratings, are they a reflection of successful completion of a working circuit, or just a "good job" posting this ?
bancika: not compatible at all. There's even newer version started development under open source licence. It's won't be compatible with either of them, but will be much cooler
Pete: yeah sorry. but damn i will say the new beta is very nice..... how imcompatible will files created in this version be with the final.... little reluctant to make to much in it if it wont open in new versions
bancika: We don't have to be rude here. That page is not updated for a long time, there's a new version out there...
Pete: maybe you should concentrate on making this program not so painfully slow with a full layout before the box layout is implemented
bancika: hmm, I never thought about that It shouldn't matter really, just imagine that board is transparent and it will be ok.
Si: may be a silly question but when you look at the layout are u looking at the copper side of the stripboard? which side are the components?