About the Company

Melodic Transducers is a small producer of hand wound pickups.

It's basically me, working out of my workshop in North London. Over the past 8 years I've been learning and building components partly out of curiosity for how things work and enjoying the process of trying, failing, swearing, and trying again.

I've been interested in the mechanics of electric guitars since I got a hard tail 1979 USA Stratocaster at the age of 15. After years of playing it and buying and selling other models, I became more interested in the design and how materials changed the sound, so in 2017 I began building my own guitars.



I'm a Travis Bean fanboy, so a few years ago I bought a block of aluminium and carved a neck by hand. It took several months using hand tools, but the process and learning about quality of finish and the effect the material had on the sound, was invaluable. I did another, again in aluminium, and then moved onto wood - whatever I could lay my hands on. Hornbeam laminated with rubber wood, 100 year old pine floorboards, Richlite fingerboards, Oak, Sapele. I bought tools and books, watched videos, sketched, trawled forums on woodworking. It was like the dullest training montage ever, I had a great time.



I used Lace Alumitones, swapping them between builds, but I really wanted something with a bit more character. I dug out an old Arduino, bought a small motor and PWM controller, IR counter module for the the Arduino and built a pickup winder. I started making my own bobbins, bought fibreboard to cut flatwork and wound pickups.



I realised I needed a test guitar, where you can slide new ones in and out easily for wiring. I planed up some old pine, glued it all up for a body. The neck would be Maple with a Richlite fingerboard, compound radius and stainless steel frets. 


I really like old pine for guitar bodies, it's light, bright sounding and easy to work with. 


I got flatwork laser cut, experimented with different type of stainless steel, magnets, winding and wire gauges. I built, measured, listened, iterated. I ended up with a single coil design that has some old ideas (flatwork as a supporting element, coils wound on magnets) and some new ones (stainless steel flatwork, earthed chassis, partially potted with varnish).


I'm currently prototyping humbucker, P90 and Jazzmaster type designs. My aim is to build interesting and distinct pickups that are well made and great sounding, without any BS.