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InspirationÂ
I really wanted to build some full fledged, full powered, Charlie Christian pickups, with 38 gauge wire of course. I knew the challenges that entailed, in that I had to fabricate the entire pickup. No buying a pre-made bobbin, and frame; they are not available. Everything had to be hand crafted by me, including the steel pole pieces and the flatwork. This is such a creative process and gives me full control over the design of these pickups, including the accurately balanced pole stagger.Â
I then needed a guitar to put these pickups in. So the logical conclusion is to make a Gibson-style hollow or semi hollow guitar. I had built the Gibson Les Paul 14" wide body style for many years and really liked this body, due to its traditional and historic look and feel. I actually had planned to make another ZLP14 and had the body wood set aside for a several years but never got around to it. Some jigs had to be first made for its semi-hollow construction. This was the perfect opportunity. I had always planned on it being a semi-hollow. Unlike what someone with poor taste and historic ignorance would do, this is the appropriate style of guitar to put Charlie Christina pickups into.Â
The body is two pieces of Korina and the top is a actually Gibson veneer (from the same supplier Gibson uses). The look of this top veneer should be recognizable as how Gibson tops look, even its figure. The Gibson veneer is glued onto Birch plywood under it. This results in a 4 ply top (while Gibson uses a 3 ply), the same thickness as on a Gibson ES175, ES335 or any other ES guitar. The suitable neck I had in stock was a Mahogany with Pau Ferro fingerboard but slightly longer than Gibson, at 25" scale.
It all came together very nicely.  All done by hand.   As precise as any of your CNC guitars.Â
The pickups make this guitar even more unique. It takes me most of a day to make one of these Charlie Christian pickups. I have to fabricate every single part of the pickups before I wind them. This includes the flatwork, and the beveled pole-pieces. Every part cut and shaped to size, drilled accurately and then assembled. Even the mounting screws had to be customized.
These are now full power "hot" Charlie Christian pickups. Actually the bridge needed to be overwound to balance with the neck pickup in volume. Traditionally Charlie Christian pickups were only used in the neck position. So to use them in the bridge position requires some modification. The reason to construct custom bobbins is to be able to increase the size of the bobbin, these are about double the depth a of a P90 pickup. Even so, the bridge pickup is wound to the maximum and is virtually overflowing the flatwork. Its the most wire I can get on these bobbins.
These pickups are powerful and very touch sensitive. They will actually go up against any high powered, heavy metal humbucker. These are big powerful single coils. Heavy pickups, with lots of copper wound around the steel poles. Copper wire is heavy and these pickups need a lot of copper. I used AlNiCo 2 and 3 magnets, to approximate the tone of the original Charlie Christian pickups. The flatwork used is the traditional and period-correct Gibson gloss black laminated plastic. The same material Gibson used for pickguards. In fact, Charlie Christian pickups were traditional made by the pickguard department at Gibson. My interpretation looks and sounds quite legit, I think.Â
All this results in a very unique and one of kind instrument, never to be exactly duplicated exactly.
Click the link to see the video of this guitar. 
Here is the completed wiring harness, which went into this guitar.
