Another dumb idea - concentric/dual winds?

[j. pierce]

Okay, just thinking out loud, and I've got a curious idea. A bit of searching here and other places doesn't come up with any information about it being used with pickups.

I have no visions of grandeur, and I don't assume the idea is novel in any fashion, and it has probably been tried, somewhere by someone and discarded because it was non-functional, sounded awful, or any benefits of the design were outweighed by the problems in construction. Or perhaps the outcome is more efficiently created using "conventional" means.

But I'm curious, regardless about the feasibility and practicality of this:

What about winding two strands of wire on a single bobbin, to get the two coils needed for a humbucker? Not a "stacked" design, but winding from two spools simultaneously as you wind the bobbin? The two coils would exist in roughly the "same" space, intermingled.

Obviously this probably presents problems for execution, many of which I probably haven't thought of and probably won't unless I actually tried it. It seems a recipe for tangles and wire breakage, and there's probably some difficulty winding the two wires to similar tensions. You'd need a largish (P90 sized?) bobbin to get a decent amount of winds out of both wires.

Would it even work, or is there something really obvious I'm missing? Has it been tried before? What might it sound like? Is it physically possible using traditional winding gear?

[Magnut]

I have seen an interview with Duncan about this. He claims to have done it not only with same guage wire but with two gauges as well. I think he used 42 and 43 or a 42.5. He say it creates some interesting results. He did not say he employed it in any of the commercial models.

I think its worth a try. Its probably a cool mod. I think you would have to hand wind it. I'm sure its managable and if you use a smaller guage in conjunction you could make that the main coil and and add the second when desired. Heck what if you center tapped them and combined them at the halfway point for one sound?

I would be interested in the results!

[Sir Cuitous]

Hopefully someone can correct me if i'm wrong. Humbuckers have reverse magnet polarity as well as reverse winding.

Two coils on the same bobbin, interleaved or not, would have the same polarity. They could be wired in phase or out of phase to each other, but I don't think it will be humbucking.

[j. pierce]

Uhm, yeah. I spent so much time reading about stacked 'buckers and dummy coils that I forgot about the obvious things that apply with traditional coil/magnet placement...

I guess I need to think more before I post, or stop doing it from work where my mind is a bit scattered.

Thanks!

[Magnut]

Ahhhh... I missed the bucker part. Only saw what I wanted to see.
It would work for a single coil though.

[Possum]

...

there would be some undesirable effects probably, because each coil basically has another coil wrapped with it which would increase eddy currents for each coil, it could end up being real muddy. I've wound 2 coils on top of eachother before, not intermingled and it was really too dark to use for anything.

[GlennW]

The big Gibson bass pickup with the chrome cover and the poles across the middle is a sidewinder HB, both coils have the same polarity. The Gibson Ripper bass pickup is similar in construction, so your plan should work, don't know how well.

Edit: I forgot, I messed around making a sidewinder out of two Strat coils with three ceramic bar magnets stacked between the coils. A HB with both coils having the same polarity. It worked ok, it was on a bass though.

[SK66]

I have done something very similar. The main issue encountered was a serious loss of volume. I'm guessing because the signals were electrically out of phase AND nearly identical.

[belwar]

With two wires there, you would be moving away from the magnetic field twice as fast at you would be using just one wire.