First I made a coil winding machine, after lots of late night research. I bought an old sewing machine and took it to pieces for the main components. After my first build I improved my machine with some 3d printed parts.
Then there is the process of choosing and sourcing the components, coils, wire magnets, wax...
Then the actual process of getting the winding done...lots of broken wires later...my tele has an awesome set of pickups which sound so clear. The neck pickup is very non standard, more like a strat pickup.
What a stupid hobby!
Making your own is the obvious solution!
I have 2 strat projects I needed pickups for too, so it will begin to pay off. I reckon I broke even in equipment (but not time) after one pickup.
I think it's a super fun hobby, I really loved the process of choosing tone and options and learning what affects what. It made my guitar feel like a real players' instrument, like I made my own tool. I'll almost certainly do it again--maybe yeah make my own pickups, but what you did is next level haha.
The guitar I put them in...I made that too. To be fair I got some of the parts from a kit (cheap way to get some parts), but I modified it in a number of ways, and changed all of the hardware. It is a lot of fun. I did think about blogging about it, but I didn't think anyone would care
I found my fuzz face recently that I spent forever characterising AC128 germanium transistors to get that magic combination...it still sounds completely mental!
http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html
Edited to add: Also check out Lindsey's teacher, Mary Timony (fronted Helium before becoming a solo act).
Note that these are also tuned down a half step from how the songs on their first self titled LP (not to be confused with their second or third self titled LP) were originally recorded due to Mike’s vocal range changing over 20 years.
When Stills' played in EEEEBE tuning (which he apparently learned from Palmer) it almost doesn't sound like a 6-string.
If anyone knew weird minor chords… It was Joni.
I think he did it to make it easier to play+sing his songs solo, is all I can figure. Heavy use of multiple open tunings. He'll use like half a dozen tunings on one album, plays on stage with a rack of guitars so he can swap between songs.