Surprisingly enough I am only now, after so many years of making my own random instruments, getting into making my own pick ups. These are by no means world changing or master level but they work great and sound pretty good as well. The one pictured was made from parts I salvaged from and old 12 volt wall adapter and parts I had around the apt. But in total if I were to buy all the parts it would probably cost me around ten or fifteen dollars. I look forward with expanding on this design and seeing where I can push these experiments. 

As you can see I attached this pick up to the Drawer instrument that I made for testing purposes (more about the Drawer can be found here). I will add more pictures as I make more pick ups. But here are a few audio samples I made for reference. The distortion is a built in double gain on the little Brownsville amp and I am using an old glass bottle slide I made a while back. Also, I did not set it up perfectly so you can hear the strings randomly come into contact with the pick up. I will soon make more better recordings but until then, this will do.