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THE ELECTRIC GUITAR PICKUP

1 / 2 · mockup · study-dark

THE ELECTRIC GUITAR PICKUP

one coil or two · six builds · where it sits along the string, and how high above it

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Premium$2.50

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
music · beginners · memo · music room

The pickup diagrams show how each one is built — coils and poles — not the dimensions of any housing. Positions along the string are fractions of its length from the bridge: the points at which the rule is shown, not measurements of any one guitar.

CLOSER IS NOT LOUDER

A pickup is a magnet, and raised too close it pulls the string towards itself. The string then travels in an ellipse rather than a circle: the note goes dull, and on the bass strings it wavers as well.

So height is set by a gap measured with the string held down at the last fret. For a Stratocaster, Fender specifies 2.8 mm on the bass side at the neck and 1.6 mm on the treble side at the bridge.

In practice: if raising a pickup for volume left you with a wobbling sustain, lower it again rather than change the strings.

On the sheet

  • The pickup diagrams show how each one is built — coils and poles — not the dimensions of any housing. Positions along the string are fractions of its length from the bridge: the points at which the rule is shown, not measurements of any one guitar.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 11 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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