44 AWG single FORMVAR or single film insulated..?

[mickmutante]

I looking for 44 AWG copper magnet wire.. and I found one spool of single FORMVAR, and another spool of single film insulated. Which of those work better for a pickup..? I mean I'm making a "hot" single coil pickup and a "hot" 7 string Humbucker, I have reduced space on the coil...
Or should I look for a 43 AWG..? I know they are differences on the design of the pickup.
Thanks.

[David Schwab]

Either one should work fine. 44 will let you get more wire on the bobbins if thats what you want. The Duncan JB uses 44.

[mickmutante]

Actually I'm trying to do a similar one to the D-Activator 7 strings from DiMarzio, it has 11.40K on DC resistance, and uses ceramic magnet.

[kevinT]

if your going to wind to a dcr of 11.4k ohm I would use 43 awg...you'll have better results.

using 44 awg, you'll hardly have any wire on the bobbins and this will affect the relationship between DCR and Inductance.

[mickmutante]

Thanks for the advise kevinT.
So.. a 42 AWG is used when you have 5000-5200 turns (aprox.) on a coil... 43 AWG is used when you have 5000-6000 turns (aprox.) on a coil... and 44 AWG is used when you have more than 6000 turns (aprox.) on a coil..?

[kevinT]

Thanks for the advise kevinT.
So.. a 42 AWG is used when you have 5000-5200 turns (aprox.) on a coil... 43 AWG is used when you have 5000-6000 turns (aprox.) on a coil... and 44 AWG is used when you have more than 6000 turns (aprox.) on a coil..?

Not necessarily. There are really no hard rules when it comes to winding. It all depends on your design and what you want to do.

Depending on the OD of the 42 AWG PE you can get up to 6300 per coil (at least I have) with tension tight and not much scatter/wide pitch. That will bring you into hot PAF range. ..around 9.2k-9.3k ohm range. I recently had a spool that said 42 awg but it really wound like 42.5 awg. and I could even put more on the bobbin. I have some 42 AWG SPN that has a smaller OD and I can put more on the bobbin and can wind it to roughly 11k Ohm dcr.

With 43 awg SPN, you can wind into the 8000 turn range if you wanted to.Generally for pickups in the 14k ohm range and above, you can use 44 AWG for humbuckers. But you can also use 43....it depends on your design and what you want the pickup to sound like.

However, for a humbucker at around 11k ohm with 44, you would really need to wind it and see what it sounds like. In theory, with less wire/metal in the unit, it will decrease inductance and make the pickup bright especially at such a low dc resistance.

Higher output pickups 10k to 18k ohm can generally be wound with 43 awg

I would generally start with 44 awg with any humbucker pickups at or above 14k ohm.

But this is my opinion, others folks might have a different viewpoint.