The Advanced Guitar Pickup Building Class is a deep-dive, hands-on workshop for builders who want to move beyond fundamentals and into intentional pickup design. This course focuses on fine control, repeatability, and purposeful variation — including traditional hand winding, advanced winding strategies, and the nuanced decisions that separate good pickups from exceptional ones.

Designed as a continuation of our introductory workshop (or for experienced builders with prior pickup knowledge), this advanced class emphasizes how and why pickups behave the way they do — and how to shape that behavior through technique rather than formulas alone.

Hand Winding & Advanced Winding Strategies

Students may choose to wind pickups using manual hand-guided techniques or advanced automated systems — or compare both directly.

You’ll work with professional-grade equipment, including:

• Tonewinder (TW) 1.3 with Automatic Tension Control (ATC)

• Mojotone winder upgraded with the TW Traverse system

For those opting into hand winding, we focus on:

• Controlled scatter vs uniform layering

• Traverse speed, hand motion, and coil shape

• Tension consistency without automation

• Listening for feel as well as measuring results

We’ll discuss when hand winding introduces desirable complexity, when automation improves consistency, and how experienced builders intentionally use both approaches.

Advanced Pickup Design & Voicing

This class goes beyond “how to build a pickup” and into how to design one with intent.

Topics include:

• Advanced coil geometry and layering strategies

• Intentional asymmetry in humbuckers

• Output balancing vs dynamic response

• Magnet selection and degaussing concepts

• Fine-tuning pickups for specific guitars, scale lengths, and playing styles

• Managing microphonics without killing responsiveness

You’ll explore how small adjustments compound into audible differences — and how to predict outcomes before winding.

Build Sophisticated, Custom Pickups

Participants will build more advanced pickup designs than those covered in the introductory class. These are not kits or presets — they are purpose-built pickups, shaped by your design choices and refined through discussion, listening, and iteration.

Each student leaves with:

• A set of advanced, shop-built pickups

• A deeper understanding of pickup voicing and diagnostics

• The confidence to experiment and refine designs independently

Who This Advanced Class Is For

• Builders who have completed the Introductory class

• Pickup winders looking to refine technique

• Luthiers and serious DIY guitar builders

• Anyone ready to move from copying specs to designing tone

This is a hands-on, discussion-heavy workshop with a strong emphasis on problem-solving, listening, and technique refinement.