Mobius Winding Techniques...

[Rob S]

Has anyone got a machine (Wolfe?) capable of winding a mobius pattern on a pickup?

I've been curious about it for a while. Apparently the odd numbered turns start at the left (say) winding towards the right, even start at the right going towards the left and this reduces the inter-winding capacitance by half and increases the resonant frequency.

Anyone tried it and care to comment?

Rob.

[R.G.]

It sounds like the so-called self-supporting wave winding. The idea is to use a high-traverse winding for each turn to get parallel turns spaced widely apart and alternating layers crossing over at something not so much like parallel.

It cuts capacitance drastically, which is why it's used in RF coils a lot, or used to be anyway, haven't looked in the last decade.

It also eats up a lot of space for the same number of turns because adjacent turns are spaced apart laterally and succeeding layers are spaced upwards by the distributed turns, so the density of wires inside the coil is much lower. It's that spacing that lowers the capacitance.

[Rob S]

Yes, exactly that R.G.

I haven't the background to attempt to calculate distributed capacitance but would welcome a 'good guess' on the comparison between mobius winding, winding 2 or 3 separate wires together and connecting them start,finish,start.... etc and scatterwound.

Guesses are good.

Any ideas as a thought experiment amongst the experienced out there?

Rob.

[David Schwab]

This brings to mind something I have thought about... there's a lot of types of coil winding patterns that have not really been used for pickups... some might be interesting!

One of the most unusual pickups I ever saw was a Re-An humbucker in a Hayman guitar I had.

The two bobbins were ferrite rings, in the shape of a regular bobbin, but round in cross section, and about 1/4 in diameter. The magnet wire was cloth covered, and wound around the ferrite ring the way an AM radio antenna is made.

The pickup had regular screw pole pieces which passed up through the ferrite rings, and had a usual bar magnet (I think it was alnico... don't remember) in the usual place.

The pickups had a nice bright tone, and were pretty powerful. When I first got the guitar they sounded like mud, but I son realized the guitar had 100K pots. Changing them for 500K fixed that problem.

I've never read any info on these pickups, but they have intrigued me ever since.

[WolfeMacleod]

Don't know if mine can do that or not, but I don't see why not with the proper programming.