Any valuable info on Lane Poor MM pups?

[David Schwab]

I used to bug Lane about doing a radiused top pickup or about the overall length of his pickups which was often out of specification and wouldn't fit in my routs. He would tell be that the pickup casting had very little epoxy in it-that it was almost entirely filled with copper and magnets and that there was nothing we could do about the weight of them for that reason either (they were a lot heavier than Bartolinis). I deduce from that info they they were wound with heavier gauge wire, probably 42awg.

42 isn't any heavier than most pickups. Maybe he used 40? My pickups are pretty heavy, but they don't have more than usual windings or heavy wire. So he might have been using heavier wire.

Looking at the gauss levels above I also think it's likely that Lane used ceramic bar magnets but the only way I can think to test that would be to try to demagnetize a pickup and see what happens. Alnico will demagnetize easily, Ceramic won't. It's possible he was using rare earth magnets but that would have been very expensive in 1996 when he started.

I've heard it was ceramic. You wouldn't get that sort of tone from Alnico anyway.

I'm pretty sure that the HB pickups were split coils not dual coils. All the other pickups were dual coils...
Actually looking at the Audere data above I'm wondering if the HBs were actually stacked coils but I don't know how Audere would have known that... I guess I could ask him.

Looks like the plot of a pickup without a whole lot of wire wound on it.

The stuff you posted before with bottom coil and top coil looked like it was for a stacked pickup.

[David Schwab]

Where do you read that?

Bilateral twin coils?

Within the moving magnet variety there are four classes, single coil, humbuckers, stacked coil, and the bilateral twin coil. The bilateral has the advantage of hum cancelling, and still sounds like a single coil, the cleanest you can get.

There aren't any other humbucker configurations, and that's what a sidewinder sounds like since it samples a single narrow section of string.

[ModulusMK]

Pretty much of info here, very interesting I must say.
The process of assembling the pickup has many steps. I didn't guessed that they are machine wound.

So acording to David King the MM pickup is split coil? What type of magnets does MM have.. bars probably? Type of coil?

We still do not know the type of wire used... with thicker wire you get the wide frequency response but you can't get low number of turns and ~8K DCR both coils in series... I know that 'low number of turns' is not defined but I guess is not 5000+.

With 42AWG to get 4K on one coil you need over 5000 of turns... this is what I've tested practically and theoretically. I guess it might be 44AWG? In that case over 3000 turns are needed to get 4K on one coil... lower number of turns, smaller coil, higher peak (in freq), clearer sound?

Type of coil, wire and magnets is what we need to make the main thing.

[belwar]

There aren't any other humbucker configurations, and that's what a sidewinder sounds like since it samples a single narrow section of string.

I've never built this style of coil before, so I'm interested in how its sampling only a section of the string. If the coils were on the sides, there would be no poles directing the flux, so wouldnt they be wider, but with less strength? Perhaps this is the wide/narrow apeture difference that is being talked about...

Or maybe im blond.

[David King]

David,
I'll post some other plots, Bartoloni, Fender et al for comparison. None of them pop up at the treble end like that.

I disagree with your assertion that it looks like a lower turns pickup. lower turns and lower impedance would be a much flatter response graph as you have stated many times yourself. Something else going on here entirely.

LPs weren't particularly low output either. Maybe 3 dBs down from the typical Fender w alnico poles.

I totally misinterpreted some of the data I posted above, the numbers I thought referred to impedance measurements were actually scan id numbers.
Sorry about that too...

About gauge, I doubt very much that anything larger than 42 was used as the weight and physical size at those DCRs would balloon very quickly.

My dual coils with 42awg weigh in at a respectable 8oz each which is right in line with the LP weights.

[David King]

I've never built this style of coil before, so I'm interested in how its sampling only a section of the string. If the coils were on the sides, there would be no poles directing the flux, so wouldnt they be wider, but with less strength? Perhaps this is the wide/narrow aperture difference that is being talked about...

You are correct here, we'll need to look for poles of some kind or maybe the coils/magnets form a shallow inverted "V" that would tend to focus the field up the center? It might also explain why the poors did such a nice job picking up vertical axis string movement

Or maybe im blond.

Are you? or are you just canadian?

[David King]

Hah! I had the wrong scan above..
Here is a typical LP scan 4.0 hb at 1 meg input impedance, notice it dips down at 6 kHz before shooting up in a big hump.
Again all of this data is courtesy of David Meadows at Audere.

[David King]

here's a Fender J scan, much closer to the first scan I posted with a shallow bump up at the end.
Note the output is way up at -18dB

[belwar]

Are you? or are you just canadian?

what about blond and canadian. double whammy

[David King]

Here's a Bartolini CX scan, these are much lower DCR by the way..
Just one coil, which measures 2.08k Dcr.
Output here is around -35dB, much closer to our LP above.

I figured out the "top" and "bottom" coil mystery, NOT stacks just bridge and neck positions of the dual coils..

The LPs were internally wired in series (probably) hence the 7.5 K listed.

[ModulusMK]

Maybe if you use bilateral thin coil and bar magnets on both sides that distract themselves can get vertical string picking?

[David Schwab]

Here is a typical LP scan 4.0 hb at 1 meg input impedance, notice it dips down at 6 kHz before shooting up in a big hump.

Well.. that's not very flat at all.

[David Schwab]

Maybe if you use bilateral thin coil and bar magnets on both sides that distract themselves can get vertical string picking?

The outside magnets face with the same pole in, like on a P-90 type pickup.

I've made a few sidewinders, one of which is going to be a new model.

[David Schwab]

I've never built this style of coil before, so I'm interested in how its sampling only a section of the string. If the coils were on the sides, there would be no poles directing the flux, so wouldnt they be wider, but with less strength? Perhaps this is the wide/narrow apeture difference that is being talked about...

Or maybe im blond.

You know, I'm available for consulting work.

Here's a drawing from the patent for the Bill Lawrence Firebird and Thunderbird design. This will show what's going on.

This is a little different from the typical sidewinder though, as the coils are sitting between the magnetic poles. On a typical sidewinder, the magnets are in the coils, and the center is the poles.

[David Schwab]

I disagree with your assertion that it looks like a lower turns pickup. lower turns and lower impedance would be a much flatter response graph as you have stated many times yourself. Something else going on here entirely.

The figures I posted before were between 7.5 and 8K. What does a typical bass pickup read? Like 9 to 12K?

LPs weren't particularly low output either. Maybe 3 dBs down from the typical Fender w alnico poles.

You can get a good output without a tone of wire.

About gauge, I doubt very much that anything larger than 42 was used as the weight and physical size at those DCRs would balloon very quickly.

I agree... but then I can fit 4 coils of 42 in an EMG 40 case!

My dual coils with 42awg weigh in at a respectable 8oz each which is right in line with the LP weights.