Mr. Wipple, please don't squeeze the coils

[kevinT]

Are your coils hard as a rock or squishy or somewhere in between?

[belwar]

Rock hard. I try to wind as close to the wire breaking as possible @ 2000 RPM.

Thats just me though :> I get the sound I want with that.

[Possum]

....

Super tight coils don't work well in some kinds of pickups, to me they sound "hard" as well as being hard. Tight pickups add some capacitance and trim a bit of treble off, I did some testing to confirm that. Loose squishy coils don't work for everything either, they sound "soft." I think a medium tension is the best idea for general all around use. Use your LCR meter and wind two bucker coils, one tight ass and the other real loose and watch what happens on the meter. When I first started winding I wound everything really tight, I think I got 8K of 42 on a strat pickup, I remember Lollar asking me how I got that much 42 on the bobbin :-) Stretched the shit out of it is how, didn't sound too good either....

[soundmasterg]

Super tight coils don't work well in some kinds of pickups, to me they sound "hard" as well as being hard. Tight pickups add some capacitance and trim a bit of treble off, I did some testing to confirm that. Loose squishy coils don't work for everything either, they sound "soft." I think a medium tension is the best idea for general all around use. Use your LCR meter and wind two bucker coils, one tight ass and the other real loose and watch what happens on the meter. When I first started winding I wound everything really tight, I think I got 8K of 42 on a strat pickup, I remember Lollar asking me how I got that much 42 on the bobbin :-) Stretched the shit out of it is how, didn't sound too good either....

That 5/2 bridge Strat pickup that Wolfe did for me is about 8.5k of 42 gauge polysol, and it does sound good, so its possible to get a good pickup that way....though I think you're probably right that a medium tension works better more often than high tension. I can hear the treble roll off in the neck pickup on that same guitar because I had Wolfe wind as tight as he could and it is a little darker than most Strat pickups that are around 5.7k. Tight probably works better for a bridge pickup would be my guess.....


Greg

[Gollum]

But what about a loose and tight coil that read the same, at say 7k? Is the treble roll off from the tighter winding simply because you're getting more turns on the coil? Are really loose coils sounding soft because of the lower coil count, or maybe from getting farther away from the magnetic field?

Do these questions even have concrete answers?

[Possum]

....

You have to go by turn counts, not DC resistance. A tight coil that stretches wire will read higher DC resistance most likely, you are effectively reducing the diameter and gauge of the wire by stretching it. No there isn't any concrete answer, this is where measuring instruments are worthless. A tight coil is smaller so its closer into the hot zone of the magnetic flux, a loose coil is bigger so its not just getting the hot action. Looser coil is lower capacitance so brighter but then because its bigger it wants to be darker. A tight coil is brighter but then the wraps are real tight so the capacitance is higher which wants to make it darker. You just have to wind some one way and some the other way, keep the turns counts and use the exact same wire and see which one you like for which position.

[Mark Hammer]

8k+ of #42 on a Strat coil is no big whoop. All you have to do is not plan on being able to easily slide a pickup cover over top!