Short?

[mick]

Just wound a strat pickup with 43 , 12000 turns but only 10ohm , also if I hook up my multimeter to the hot lead and touch one of the mags I get the same reading ,does this mean it's farked? checked it out with the extech and all seems ok ?

[Spence]

your coil wire is shorting on at least one magnet.

[mick]

Diolch Spence

[Possum]

use the Extech.....

Yes you have a coil short and a short to the pole, neither one is good. I think I told you this before but you need to learn this one: Once you have a good wind, no shorts etc. WRITE DOWN YOUR EXTECH READINGS, and keep them close at hand once your recipe is nailed down. What you're going to find is that your AC resistance readings (set your meter up to read out those in the upper right small numbers area) are suddenly going to almost double in value when you have a short in the coil. Your DC resistance (which the Extech DOES NOT read at all) may or may not change very much, a small change like you got is a warning to check the AC resistance.

You should write down the values from this bad wind and then wind again, and compare what you get with the good wind and you'll see what I mean. AC resistance readings suddenly jumping up in value is a bad sign. 10K for 12,000 winds isn't really way low but definitely suspiscious. You should tape your magnets or coat them real well with lacquer to insulate them from the coil wire. A coil short to a pole isn't a terribly awful thing, its not going to make your AC resistance readings go real high but its not a good thing either, though you'll find old Fender pickups that have these kind of short to poles happening. The worst thing about them is if you are using a fake reverse wind by just flipping the leads, a shorted pole if it hits the strings will shut the guitar off completely. I have an old customer who still has a set like that I did a long time ago and refuses to let me do it over, his reason is that he now uses it as a "trick" when he's playing he'll bounce the string off the pole for staccatto on-off type of thing :-) My old winder would only wind one direction back then.....

[mick]

The ACR was way low too so that threw me a bit , I keep records of all my pickups I heard yah Dave , I heard Yah and listened ,thanks , I might give the tape thing a go on high output pickups I would imagine that more winds would increase the chance of shorting against the magnets so anything that's going to guard against this would be good ,
Mick

[David Schwab]

10K for 12,000 winds isn't really way low but definitely suspiscious.

Actually he said 10 Ohms, didn't he? 10 Ohms is really low. Mick, did you mean 10 Ohms, or 10 K? 10 Ohms sounds like a short at the end of the coil?

[mick]

My stuffup I meant 10K ,
Mick

[corduroyew]

Actually he said 10 Ohms, didn't he? 10 Ohms is really low. Mick, did you mean 10 Ohms, or 10 K? 10 Ohms sounds like a short at the end of the coil?

are you saying 10ohms is low for 12000 winds or 10 Ohms is just low? I've never had a coil that read more than 10 Ohms, most were between 6 and 8 but I've never gone with 12000 winds either.

[David Schwab]

are you saying 10ohms is low for 12000 winds or 10 Ohms is just low? I've never had a coil that read more than 10 Ohms, most were between 6 and 8 but I've never gone with 12000 winds either.

You must mean 10k Ohms. An 8 Ohm speaker coil is about 6~8 Ohms. High impedance pickups generally start at about 6K (6,000 Ohms).

[Mark Hammer]

I'm beginning to think that my recommendation to use teflon plumbing tape on the outside of the coil before applying any finishing tape with adhesive might be profitably extended to running a turn or two of teflon tap around the raw polepieces themselves before applying wire turns, just to assure no shorts between the wire and polepieces.

Or are there downsides to that strategy that are not so readily apparent?

[Possum]

won't work

teflon tape is really soft, the pressure against the poles can be really high, teflon would be cut right through unless you put alot of it on there which would be counterproductive. The best tape to use is ordinary scotch types, its thin and tough...