Pickup coil + trimmer?

[GambatoL]

Hi everyone, I am a complete disaster in electronics and related arguments and I hope someone can help me!
As a passion and hobby I (try to) build some instruments and I started also winding my own pickups; and speaking about single coil, humbacker and so called "normal pickups" no big problems so far.
Recently by request and curiosity I wired some pickups with a coil per string and even though I actually tried to change the amount of winding for every string the actual balance was not that consistent and it may change depending on the instrument and the player of course.
I was thinking then to add a small trimmer (like many piezo bridges have) to have the chance of fine tuning the output of every coil.
Is it possible to connect this electronic trimmers like a normal volume pot or do I need to solder some other component?
Thanks to everyone will be able to help, and I am not sure I explained perfectly the situation so for anything just ask!

Thanks guys!

/Luca

 

[sikamikanico]

Ovation Magnum basses have that. See here and here for some pics.

As per the patent, they added a small resistor to each pot so that you couldn't turn the pickup/coil completely off. I think this makes sense for a commercial product (to avoid panicked calls that the "pickup is dead"), but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

And there is a small resistor at the end to ensure an "acceptable input impedance to a tone control and amplifier, or other utilization circuit, to which the pickup is connected." I don't understand that part, but it sounds important...

 

[lz4005]

Hi everyone, I am a complete disaster in electronics and related arguments and I hope someone can help me!
As a passion and hobby I (try to) build some instruments and I started also winding my own pickups; and speaking about single coil, humbacker and so called "normal pickups" no big problems so far.
Recently by request and curiosity I wired some pickups with a coil per string and even though I actually tried to change the amount of winding for every string the actual balance was not that consistent and it may change depending on the instrument and the player of course.
I was thinking then to add a small trimmer (like many piezo bridges have) to have the chance of fine tuning the output of every coil.
Is it possible to connect this electronic trimmers like a normal volume pot or do I need to solder some other component?

You could use trim pots but wouldn't it be better to make the pickups correctly in the first place and not have to worry about that?

Another alternative is to adjust the height of each coil individually to fine tune the output.

 

[GambatoL]

Thanks man!

Ovation Magnum basses have that. See here and here for some pics.

As per the patent, they added a small resistor to each pot so that you couldn't turn the pickup/coil completely off. I think this makes sense for a commercial product (to avoid panicked calls that the "pickup is dead"), but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

And there is a small resistor at the end to ensure an "acceptable input impedance to a tone control and amplifier, or other utilization circuit, to which the pickup is connected." I don't understand that part, but it sounds important...

 

[GambatoL]

You could use trim pots but wouldn't it be better to make the pickups correctly in the first place and not have to worry about that?

Another alternative is to adjust the height of each coil individually to fine tune the output.

Off course it would be better to make it right in the first place, the point is to make some fine adjustments that can vary from strings and player (for example every 6 strings bass I play I never get to make sound consistent the high c string). This pickups I’m making are placed under a finger ramp so it’s not that easy to make adjustments and I’m a hobbyist, so make a design to have the possibility to adjust then every single coil in the pickup is quite difficult. It was actually my first idea but almost impossible to realize so I came up with this other “trimmer” idea!