Fender Electric XII pu

[ShepBush]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any info on the pu's on a Fender Electric XII.
I know they are available from a pu maker ( probably the cheapest route )...but I was thinking about winding my own.I've seen a few pics..with the extra long poles and I read this:
EX II 42 wire guage
Plain enamel wire
12500 turns.
Can anyone point me in the right direction( any kind of info)... I need some covers as well...Thanks Mike

[ShepBush]

Just wanted to say first of all how incredibly inspiring this site is..there's so much info and a really nice vibe,,,thanks.
Now to business heres a pic of the little monkey


and this is my interpretation of the flatwork

A couple of questions as I am a complete beginner :
Why are the magnets longer ?
In split coil designs is there anything special to think about ( polarity for example) or is it just two identical single coils.
Thanks Mike.

[Zhangliqun]

Look almost like mandolin pickups -- minus one pole.

[Peter Naglitsch]

I would imagine that one of the two coils in one pickup pair is RWRP so that one "complete pickup" is humbucking.

I have no more info on those pickup, but I think that the 12500 turns sound a bit too much. I'm suspecting that the one making that statement added the turn count of both coils, meaning that each coil shoul have 6250 turns of wire. That will also sound a bit more Fender-ish than 12000+ turns on each coil.

[David Schwab]

I would imagine that one of the two coils in one pickup pair is RWRP so that one "complete pickup" is humbucking.

Yes, just like a P bass. The magnets in one coil should be opposite polarity.

I have no more info on those pickup, but I think that the 12500 turns sound a bit too much. I'm suspecting that the one making that statement added the turn count of both coils, meaning that each coil shoul have 6250 turns of wire. That will also sound a bit more Fender-ish than 12000+ turns on each coil.

I used to think the same thing about P bass pickups... but they do have 10,000 turns per bobbin.

You have to think about the size of the bobbin, so 12,500 turns are that is not as much wire as it would be on a full size Strat coil. The bobbin is half the length, so you need twice the turns.

Most of the split coil designs are like this, such as Jazz bass pickups. They wind a lot more wire on them then they would a single bobbin.

[Peter Naglitsch]

On my split coil Strat pickups (full height bobbins compared to ordinary strat pickups) I have had as much as 9000 turns. And that coil was pretty full. Or to be precise: 9000turna was exactly wat fit inside the flatwork (It was for a rock sound, not very vintage at all). Without any measurements of the magnets and the distance between the flatwork I have a hard time imagining that they could get 12500turns on them.

The bobbin is half the length, so you need twice the turns.

What do you mean? You do not need twice the turn to get the same output just because the coil is half the lenght.

[David Schwab]

What do you mean? You do not need twice the turn to get the same output just because the coil is half the lenght.

If you were to measure how many feet of wire were on the coil, 6000 turns of a smaller coil is less than 6000 turns of a longer coil.

I've put 10,000 turns of 42 AWG on a very small coil, and it was only 2.5K! It seems like a lot of turns, but it is not a lot of wire.

[ShepBush]

This is where I saw the figure of 12,500http://www.provide.net/~cfh/pickups.html
Down the page a bit
Like you said the precision bass has 10,000 according to this.
Another question.. as this pu is from 1965 would it be A2 or might it be someting else as Eddie Cochran once said ?
Mike

[Peter Naglitsch]

If you were to measure how many feet of wire were on the coil, 6000 turns of a smaller coil is less than 6000 turns of a longer coil.

Yeah, well that’s pretty obvious. But what originally got me going was:

The bobbin is half the length, so you need twice the turns.

You do not need twice the turns to get the same output in a split coil pickup design compared to a same type but non-split coil design. You need twice the turn to get the same DCR on that particular coil (half-a-pickup), that is very true, but I think we have since long ago left behind us the idea that the DCR are the most important measurement in pickup. But of cause if you need say 8000 turns on one half of the pickup and 8000 turns on the other half. And if you add up that is indeed 16000 turns in total!

Don’t get me wrong David, I’m not picking a fight, I’m just curious of how you mean.

And BTW ShepBush, don’t put to much attention to that table of so called information on that web page. They claim that the earliest Tele pickups were done with Formvar insulated wire. EEEHHH wrong, they used PE insulated wire fro the first incarnations of the bridge and neck pickup, and the original telecaster/broadcaster bridge pickup has as much as 9000 turns of wire.

[David Schwab]

Peter, I don't make any split coil pickups, so I have no first hand experience with this. But from looking at the ones out there, they all seem to wind more wire on them than half of what a single coil would get. So I guess it must be for tonal reasons.

The extra long magnets on the pickup make me think they were doing that to compensate for extra turns, which may have been done so the pickup wasn't too shrill with a 12 string.

But I'm just guessing.

[Peter Naglitsch]

Ah, I see. As mentioned, just curious. I have a pickup that I call the SplitBucker (TM). When done to sound like a vintage strat (sound, not look like as it looks like a Fender XII pickup sans covers) i do them exactly the traditional turn count on each pickup half as the "normal" vintage pickup and I get a perfectly "vintage" sound without hum and no need to add any additional wire.

BTW the coil in the pic, is it for a WAL clone?

[David Schwab]

Ah, I see. As mentioned, just curious. I have a pickup that I call the SplitBucker (TM). When done to sound like a vintage strat (sound, not look like as it looks like a Fender XII pickup sans covers) i do them exactly the traditional turn count on each pickup half as the "normal" vintage pickup and I get a perfectly "vintage" sound without hum and no need to add any additional wire.

That's how I would have figured it too.

BTW the coil in the pic, is it for a WAL clone?

Yep.

[ShepBush]

Thanks Peter and David for the input...I'm learning all the time..Peter do you think the info on this site
Pickups specifications, Fender , Gibson, etc..
is more accurate..they are saying that all the sixties fenders were Alnico A5.
Thanks Mike

[Peter Naglitsch]

Steven (SK66 here on the forum) does have most of the facts down. Althou I'm not 100% sure about some things. Like the Telecaster neck (no mentioneing about the Poly sol they switched to) and the Telecaster humbucker (wide range humbucker) being only 5000 turns of ploysol (5000 turns make an excellent sounding pickup but it isnt enough to make them 10+Kohms as the originals were, sorry off topic) so like everything on the internet, please take everyting with a grain of salt. Crossrefference everything and in the end it is up to you to decide who and what to belive of the welth of "information" availible.

[ShepBush]

Still researching these pups...This may be a very silly question but if you look at this schematic

It looks like the pups in the top red circle are reversed and yet the ones in the lower red circle aren't. Can this just be a slip of the pencil or can they really be like this ?
What ya think?
Mike