Anyone know anything about Bigsby pickups?

[EFK]

Was killing some time in a bookstore yesterday and leafing through "The Story of Paul Bigsby." Beautiful book, great photography. Anyway, I've never read much about him or his guitars and was not aware that he made his own pickups. Cast aluminum housings! There was a photo of a neat little homemade winder and a spool of wire, which I *think* was 38 gauge. Does anyone know anything about these pickups? All that was mentioned was that they were a relatively wide, flat single coil with either a single blade or later individual screw poles; because of the shielding provided by the cast aluminum, they were allegedly very quiet. Supposedly very full-range sound, wide spectrum and clear. Anyone?

[Mike Sulzer]

Originally Posted by EFK

Was killing some time in a bookstore yesterday and leafing through "The Story of Paul Bigsby." Beautiful book, great photography. Anyway, I've never read much about him or his guitars and was not aware that he made his own pickups. Cast aluminum housings! There was a photo of a neat little homemade winder and a spool of wire, which I *think* was 38 gauge. Does anyone know anything about these pickups? All that was mentioned was that they were a relatively wide, flat single coil with either a single blade or later individual screw poles; because of the shielding provided by the cast aluminum, they were allegedly very quiet. Supposedly very full-range sound, wide spectrum and clear. Anyone?

If they used larger than normal wire, one would expect a high resonant frequency, because you cannot get that much on the bobbin, and flat response through out the audio range, but low output. Aluminum is no better at shielding than other conductor because the conductance does not need to be particularly high, and so any will do. They could not have been low in hum unless they used a cancellation scheme to get rid of the hum from magnetic fields. A single coil pickup does not do that.

[David Schwab]

I seem to remember reading that they used aluminum bobbins!

That Paul Bigsby sure liked his aluminum.

[Possum]

If they used 38 gauge wire they would be bright. He liked aluminum because he was a motorcycle mechanic, they use alot of that in motors and covers for engines...