pickups

Now that I hear that the tone is going to be good, I start to proceed with a number of other tangents which were effectively waiting to see if it passed the first test.  One of these, is design of the pickups.  The whole reason I have used the strings that I have, i.e., iron throughout, no brass, is so that I can use an electromagnetic pickup with this instrument.  Which may not even sound good, it's an experimental idea.  (Possibly, "acoustic guitar" style piezo pickups would capture a more natural image of the sound; however, I want (or think I want) that "electric guitar" sound.  Perhaps both types of pickups will be useful.)

I took a first concrete step: ordered a 1/2 pound roll (2430 feet) of 32-guage magnet wire, from All Electronics (.com).  I will have to experiment with magnets and pole-pieces (nails or screws?), and see if I can come up with an easy-to-execute design.  I'll probably build some kind of jig to help me wind the coils; whether there will be a coil-per-note, or longer "rectangular" coils around groups of polepieces, like in some guitar pickups: I don't know.  And initially, I was picturing making something akin to a really wide single-coil guitar pickup, regardless of the number of coils.  But I suspect a "humbucker" would make a lot more sense, since guitars with single-coil pickups are already invariably a hum problem, and this will have 10 times the "antenna" size.  Getting a *usable* signal may be quite a challenge.