Ever wondered how pickups work? Here’s a brief explanation:
About MrGlyn’s Pickups
MrGlyn’s Pickups is based near Auckland, New Zealand.
My name is Glyn Evans. I have been a full time pickup winder and luthier since 1995.
I wound my first pickup under the guidance of legendary guitar repairer Ted Lee while studying guitar making/repair under him at City of Leeds College of Music in the North of England.
There’s something about the physics that really appealed to me. I went straight home, built my own winding machine, bought some wire and started experimenting.
In those pre-internet days there just wasn’t any information available on how to make good pickups. I made pickup after pickup, I wound and I listened. I made notes of every variation both good and bad so I could learn what was happening.
Looking back I think that time was invaluable for developing an intuition for making pickups. Whenever I came across a result I didn’t understand I swatted up on the physics; there’s a lot to learn. I wrote all the experiments down in a notebook, I still have the notebook and I’m still adding to it.
I love hearing my pickups played live or on recordings; it feels good to have played a very small part in that sound. My day to day work has always been in guitar repair so I’ve been privileged to be able to study first hand some of the great vintage (and modern) pickups.
I have re-wound and repaired countless faulty pickups to either restore them to their original state or to improve them. This is how you learn and I think I will always be learning.
In 2012 I had the idea for my own range of pickups. In 2020 MrGlyn’s Pickups website went live. I’ve been lucky enough to know many professional players who’ve given their time and expertise to help me. Every pickup design I make has been tested both by me and some of these “test pilots”. They’ve been in and out of numerous guitars, recorded, gigged, analyzed and altered more times than I can remember.
I am really happy with the results, I hope you will be too.