can this be used in any kind of pedal?

[Ben Lyman]

here's a top and back picture. I tried googling all those numbers but I can't really get any idea of what it does or if I can put it to use.
thanks

[Kipper4]

Inductor or banjo pickup? 

[Jdansti]

Looks like some type of inductor. The P1408 designation is for the bobbin.

[bluebunny]

Inductor or banjo pickup? 

Pickup??  Banjos are quite loud enough already, thank you! 

[Jdansti]

Inductor or banjo pickup? 

Pickup??  Banjos are quite loud enough already, thank you! 

I apologize for this, but Marc made me do it.

[GibsonGM]

If you get a cheapo inductance meter (L-C-R) meter on Ebay for like $20, you can get a ballpark idea of what the inductance of those is.   Might prove useful in a wah or something....or maybe not.  Hard to say just looking...

[duck_arse]

maybe half a theremin right there.

on the left - standard P1408 potcores - TDK H6K - Manganese Zinc material - mu_i is 1800, A 160 shows Al of 160nH/T²

I don't recognise the branding of the other one.

[Ben Lyman]

they are two of the same thing, front and back views. I have a few of them so I just put them side by side for the pic

[wavley]

Well, when I see big copper coil things there is only one pedal I ever think about building 

[Hatredman]

Well, when I see big copper coil things there is only one pedal I ever think about building 

You are mean. And right   

[Ben Lyman]

HAHA! it is the first thing I thought of too 

[Quackzed]

  not to be a downer but over the years i've found various things that i thought i'd use in a pedal or project... hey this thing would make a cool x... but the reality is that theres so much time and energy and money and money involved in any build that the savings from the free found 'thing' dissapears pretty quickly...
you end up spending weeks and alotta dough and time to 'make use' of the free 'thing' and often end up with something you'll rarely even use...

if you can pop it into a wah you own to try it out, sure! that makes sense for the time money invested, but building something around the 'thing' is usually not worth it... just my 2c. sorry if its a downer, just  trying to save you time and money... i've been down that road many times and i wish i'd have taken this advice myself...

[Ben Lyman]

Thanks Quackzed, best advice ever. All future questions on the forum should be redirected to this one reply... and I mean that seriously, I'm not being sarcastic... maybe exaggerating a little bit but I'm serious... sage advice for all beginning builders out there 
However, since I am experimenting with my own ring mod/fuzz creation... I am curious about what these do... i.e. where in an Electra or LPB-1 could I place it to hear it do something? does that make sense at all 
thanks

[Jdansti]

But it can be fun. Does that make us sick in the head?

[garcho]

i.e. where in an Electra or LPB-1 could I place it to hear it do something? does that make sense at all

it makes sense technically but not practically.

inductors are primarily used in passive filters, alas, not so much in the filters we find useful for audio. here's a thread that will explain much

and yes, you could always build a burst box

[GibsonGM]

Every inductor like that I've measured came in WAY low in inductance...they are mainly for PC power supplies, it seems.

So, in order to even use them at audio frequencies, the other components become VERY cumbersome.  Plus, inductors are noisy, which is why they're not in more pedals.  Like they were saying above, they might be best tossed or becoming a 'parts box decoration'.  I have tons of them, and have never used even one!

[Ben Lyman]

Thanks Garcho and GibsonGM and et all. The link was helpful too Garcho, I still don't know how you guys can search for something on this, or any other, forum and find what you are looking for. Case sensitive search?!?! WTF?!?! Includes partial and extended words?!?! Rant over...
The link led me to a thread w/a link... led me to a thread w/a link... etc.
I read a lot, learned a lot but one post by Granny Gremlin intrigued me. Is this like a hum-canceling set up and would it work in a guitar with single coils?

Old post I know but I thought this would be relevant to the discussion.

The noise issues can be eliminated by making a humbucking inductor (2 series inductors, reverse wound to each other).  Gibson did this in the EB2, EB3 and Ripper basses.  In the EB basses, pre70-72 they also included faraday shields (part# GA-90C or GA-90-1C pre 72).  All basses after that (Ripper existed only after) had pretty much naked coils (part# 70-442).  The inductance of this part (series 1 of the EB3 and EB2 at least) was 15 H and was used in a passive second order high pass filter (along with a 0.02uF cap) to tame (some would say emasculate) the sub-woofing lows of the mudbucker Sidewinder bass pickup.  I had calculated the rolloff freq for this at one point but totally forget now what it was.

Pre-72 EB3:


Post 72 EB3:


Ripper:

[wavley]

With all of it's problems, if you have the right values for an inductor based eq or varitone inductors can be quite musical because of these imperfections.  The mid control of a few Ampeg amps is really great, Pultec style EQs sound great, varitones can be awesome, a big part of this is due to the imperfections of inductors.  Do they have problems?  From an engineering standpoint is it better and more reliable to use a gyrator?  Of course!

If it's not a value or construction that easily allows for one of the many very musical uses for inductors it's hard to justify their use.  When in the right circuit they can bring just the right kind of dirt or harmonic richness.

Take this from a grain of salt from a guy that enjoys the sound of pushing an inductor based EQ or the output transformer of a mic preamp a little too hard, to me it's the sound of the kind of rock and roll I enjoy, which is far from perfection, but human (or in this case inductor-y)

As far as the power filter aspect of inductors... there was a thread recently where RG went into great detail about that, so I certainly defer to that opinion.

The use of inductors in microwave design is really heavy and I work with those every day, of course in values of like 1nH and the low powers at which we work, things are a lot more repeatable and reliable and I have software that can model electromagnetics.  When doing GHz work I have to obsess about the inductance of EVERYTHING, a bond wire or trace that's a few thousandths too long or too short can be the deference between something being stable with the right high frequency response and input return loss, an oscillating mess, or the gain will roll off at too low of a frequency. 

[garcho]

I still don't know how you guys can search for something on this, or any other, forum

like this, on a bona fide search engine:

[your search terms] site:diystompboxes.com

here's an example:
germanium

[Ben Lyman]

I still don't know how you guys can search for something on this, or any other, forum

like this, on a bona fide search engine:

[your search terms] site:diystompboxes.com

here's an example:
germanium

Wow, thanks! I already found some links to an old thread with a post by Mark Hammer that holds clues to my Dyna Comp distortion problem... if only I didn't already tear it off the bb! 
But... what about that hum canceling idea using two inductors in a guitar with single coils? Bad idea... or good?