Mythbusters Vintage Magnet Wire.

[cryptozoo]

Wow Jon, that's great info, thanks for taking the time to share your findings.

[big_teee]

Not to be negative, but most of those wires are not available to the small winder.
The REA is not made anymore.
REA Small Wire division, was purchased by the Elektrisola Company.
I think the Elektrisola PE is smaller in diameter.
Have not seen any AWC Available. I think it is made to order in large Volume orders.
So What Possum said, is basically correct for the rest of us.
Unless someone has large stock piles of old Vintage wire like John does.
So John is it possible for you to include data on wire like the Elektrisola, that the rest of us can buy.
T

[JGundry]

Not to be negative, but most of those wires are not available to the small winder.
The REA is not made anymore.
REA Small Wire division, was purchased by the Elektrisola Company.
I think the Elektrisola PE is smaller in diameter.
Have not seen any AWC Available. I think it is made to order in large Volume orders.
So What Possum said, is basically correct for the rest of us.
Unless someone has large stock piles of old Vintage wire like John does.
So John is it possible for you to include data on wire like the Elektrisola, that the rest of us can buy.
T

The REA wire was MWS labeled. I bought it a few years ago. The AWC is available if you want to buy 100-200lbs at one time. In fact I know the first of the Elektrisola wire when they started back up was made by AWC. Not sure if or why the Elektrisola wire would vary from the REA wire I have if it is still made by the old REA division. Whatever the case you really cannot rely on any of these places to accurately sort the wire for you and supply the kind of variety you need. I lot of guys avoid the AWC wire because they don't want to deal with the variety in ohms per foot and O.D. readings. But I honestly think this is one of the big pluses of using it if you want vintage spec. variety.

The fact is the wire is available to vintage specs. but you have to get a large enough variety to sort. Expecting one two ore even five spools of wire to get you what you need is not going to happen unless you re extremely lucky. The claim that 50's vintage pickups wound with 42AWG PE is a higher ohms per foot than what you can get today is just not the case.

[big_teee]

The fact is the wire is available to vintage specs. but you have to get a large enough variety to sort. Expecting one two ore even five spools of wire to get you what you need is not going to happen unless you re extremely lucky. The claim that 50's vintage pickups wound with 42AWG PE is a higher ohms per foot than what you can get today is just not the case.

I missed that point, and That Sounds Right.
I just didn't want everyone to think that all these Options are Now readily available.
I have some REA wire in 42PE, and 43PE.
It is fine wire.
According to Diana, at MWS the Elektrisola is all that They Currently have.
For Most of us 5-10 lbs of wire is a large investment.
Buying it by the Hundred Pounds is not realistic for the most of us.
Thanks,
Terry

[Possum]

Jon, modern AWC, Essex, Elektrisola (MWS), and REA were all tested by Elektrisola in the tests they did for me. It was super important to include every modern sample I could so judge vintage wire against. I did this even though REA and Essex PE are no longer available. AWC quit most of their production around 2003 or so, but sporadically make wire now and then, there is some up on Ebay now, not sure when its from though.

This was done in a tightly controlled lab environment. Bare wire O.D. was also measured. They use laser measuring tools, impossible to match with hand mimcrometers. I don't think its possible to match what a lab can do at home. AWC was the closest as far as ohms per foot, but the problem with that wire is the insulation is way too thick, in fact all the modern wire had thicker insulation, AWC was radically so. Some will argue that the insulation has shrunk over time but there is no proof, its just a theory about as valid as shrinking butyrate is. I've actually found vintage PAF's with insulation that was never properly cured. Curing is a baking process, so anything volatile that could cause shrinking is already baked away. Almost every PAF wire I've ever measured the wire was very consistently one certain diameter, so shrinking insulation seems unlikely. Of course, there were a few with noticeably different diameters, but they were not common.

Now, back to ohms per foot, I had a '61 PAF in here that had one intact coil, it was of high interest because it measured 4.5K. Well, it had an intermittent connection to the start lead, so I decided to rewind it. I unwound that sucker from finish to start totally by hand mounted on an Adams Maxwell counter spare I use for counting winds. Luckily I was able to remove all the wire without losing the wire end. So I got an exact count. I also have a direct match in wire diameter so rewound the pickup the same as it was, same pattern etc. to same number of turns. The new coil was noticeably lower DCR and this was cool because now I had a direct wire to wire comparison of a full coil of same length to see what the difference in vintage vs. modern wire was. Probably some minor error in there but it was a dramatic difference enough to make note of, and something I had been wondering about for a long time.

Although they didn't burn the wire for copper analysis, and couldn't because there wasn't enough to do that, they did tell me vintage era magnet wire copper was less pure than what they are doing now. Also no dielectric tests for insulation materials were done or could be done, so there's a missing ingredient we can't really know for sure, especially since insulation makers won't tell you their recipes. Elektrisola said they "thought" that modern PE insulation is the same as vintage, but my experience in the art supplies field says different. There are just some materials that aren't available anymore or are made with different techniques, so I really doubt that PE insulation from 1959/early 60's/late 50's would be the same.

So, bottom line, is these guys claiming they had perfect "vintage wire" recreated, (probably by AWC) are full of it. Not possible. You would have to start with raw copper stock and process it the way they did back then for starters. Insulation, probably not possible to match. There are other things being done differently that I won't touch on, but the big picture is that the old wire is basically gone forever. Still, we are lucky that we can still even buy the stuff, Elektrisola told me that no one else uses it except pickup makers. Its good wire, and you just work with what it does.

[JGundry]

I missed that point, and That Sounds Right.
I just didn't want everyone to think that all these Options are Now readily available.
I have some REA wire in 42PE, and 43PE.
It is fine wire.
According to Diana, at MWS the Elektrisola is all that They Currently have.
For Most of us 5-10 lbs of wire is a large investment.
Buying it by the Hundred Pounds is not realistic for the most of us.
Thanks,
Terry

I think it is just a matter of whether the most current run tends to be higher or lower in ohms per foot. It is not a matter of a lost process. But if you don't have a buffer of wire varieties then yes you are at the mercy of current stock at MWS. But even with MWS you should at least get a 5 rolls of wire from different lots to see if you can get a handle on the variation and read the ohms per foot yourself. If I were buying in small quantities that's what I would do.

[JGundry]

So, bottom line, is these guys claiming they had perfect "vintage wire" recreated, (probably by AWC) are full of it. Not possible. You would have to start with raw copper stock and process it the way they did back then for starters. Insulation, probably not possible to match. There are other things being done differently that I won't touch on, but the big picture is that the old wire is basically gone forever. Still, we are lucky that we can still even buy the stuff, Elektrisola told me that no one else uses it except pickup makers. Its good wire, and you just work with what it does.

Dave you missed my point. The bottom line is I had no problem matching vintage resistance per foot and O.D. combinations with a modern PE wire. And significantly the resulting pickup wound with the modern equivalent was tonally a dead ringer for the vintage and the LCR readings were within 1% on all parameters between vintage and modern.

It seems reasonable to conclude that any variation in wire is simply part of the manufacturing tolerance for making PE since we still see equivalent variation with modern P.E. that you see with vintage P.E. wire. The LCR readings rule out I.D. differences or copper impurities with my test case 56' P-90. So I have to conclude that impurities, differences in coating and wire size or dielectric either are still baked into the wire being made today or it is just a non issue. Just on the most elementary of level the resistance conclusion you draw from the lab test results for ohms per foot just do not hold up against my readings with vintage and modern P.E.. With just 3 vintage wire samples I got ohm per foot and O.D. readings that pretty much covered the extremes of what I found with modern wire readings.

Claiming differences in dielectric and Copper purity sounds like speculation from what I'm hearing. I do know that I talked with an engineer at Essex in Indiana and he told me he could make the old coating formula and run 200-500lbs easily but I would have to get sales to tell him to make it. And unfortunately sales would not bite. That does not sound like a lost process to me.

In case you didn't know AWC seems to run wire every year or so. The AWC wire that matched my 56' P-90 was run in 2011.

[Possum]

But you're only reading overall O.D. You're missing bare wire size. And an LCR meter only reads to 1khz test signal. What is happening at peak resonance? Anyway, its splitting hairs. Copper purity was not speculation, Elektrisola gave me specs for purity back then. I am still quite skeptical that they can match the exact formula for insulation. I've been doing work with an ink maker who I convinced to replicate an ink made in the 70's, an ink no one has ever made its equal back then or now. Inks use related materials and they ran a production batch with modern stuff vs. some from the 90's and in just that small time gap one materials source disappeared that had existed in the 70's, and they couldn't replicate it. You would have to do research on actual recipes and then do research where the actual materials sources came from in the 50's. If the varnishes came from natural products, the plant world has changed since those days, you simple can't get wood for instance that matches that found in 50's Telecasters etc. So I remain skeptical on that subject. I had a guy from Gibson, an old timer who relayed to me that you could go buy ten penny nails and get the same stuff Gibson used to make slugs, well no you can't, those nails are made in China and are totally different than what old nails were made of. So, do I trust what some guy in some company tells me, no. Show me proof, hard data. The ink guys told me they could replicate that ink too, ooops.

Insulation material sure deserves a real close research effort, but if the original sources are gone or noticeably changed, what would be the point anyway. AWC's insulation I have on one spool from 2003 is literally flaking off the wire, I've never seen that in any vintage PE ever, and even bought a high power microscope so I could take a look ;-)

Now, if you actually take your vintage PE samples and get them analyzed etc. etc. and had a huge batch made you might not even like the wire. I have some wire from a small company few know about, it has nearly exactly the thin insulation old PE had, though its black formvar, dyed. Its definitely a dark sound and personally I prefer the modern PE to this stuff. There is kind of an "X" factor too in vintage PE I have no clue about. I have a '64 transitional strat pickup I unwound then rewound. Again this one had an intermittent connection. The original wire sounded fantastic, rewinding with with the same machine wind etc. same diameter modern wire, it just lost this magic thing it had going for it.

I just wish there were more sources for PE, way back in the beginning Guitar Jones was importing PE and it was amazing wire, real crude stuff, you couldn't wind it very tight or it would short out. AWC's insulation is too thick and no point in basing a product on it because you can't always get it. I think the thing to do is go to Korea, find someone making PE, try China, they do make it, but as of a couple years ago Tonerider told me its still almost unusable. Personally I like the wire I'm using now, REA's stuff was so inconsistent, the very last stuff they made was horrible, what Elektrisola makes now is very consistent and sounds great too.

[MrCandy]

Dave you missed my point. The bottom line is I had no problem matching vintage resistance per foot and O.D. combinations with a modern PE wire. And significantly the resulting pickup wound with the modern equivalent was tonally a dead ringer for the vintage and the LCR readings were within 1% on all parameters between vintage and modern.

It seems reasonable to conclude that any variation in wire is simply part of the manufacturing tolerance for making PE since we still see equivalent variation with modern P.E. that you see with vintage P.E. wire. The LCR readings rule out I.D. differences or copper impurities with my test case 56' P-90. So I have to conclude that impurities, differences in coating and wire size or dielectric either are still baked into the wire being made today or it is just a non issue. Just on the most elementary of level the resistance conclusion you draw from the lab test results for ohms per foot just do not hold up against my readings with vintage and modern P.E.. With just 3 vintage wire samples I got ohm per foot and O.D. readings that pretty much covered the extremes of what I found with modern wire readings.

Claiming differences in dielectric and Copper purity sounds like speculation from what I'm hearing. I do know that I talked with an engineer at Essex in Indiana and he told me he could make the old coating formula and run 200-500lbs easily but I would have to get sales to tell him to make it. And unfortunately sales would not bite. That does not sound like a lost process to me.

In case you didn't know AWC seems to run wire every year or so. The AWC wire that matched my 56' P-90 was run in 2011.

I agree with you, talk about the old wire is bollocks, and marketing.
But there is a caveat. We have no significant dependence of the capacitance and inductance coil.
You can follow any responses here. I can make a difference in RP 10 kHz ceteris paribus (any type of insulation),
but little change in inductance.
In any case, by means of an inductance is difficult to assess the frequency properties of the coil.
Type of insulation to use as a variable which is the last folly to do by the manufacturer.
That's what really matters is the insulation thickness and DCR / ft, which affects the Q-factor. Everything else can and should pick up winding.

[Possum]

The reason you don't see change in inductance is because the test frequency of most meters is only 1000 hertz. So you will see changes in the resonant peak but the inductance may stay virtually the same. I very rarely pay much attention to inductance, I use AC resistance changes much more logically, but still its only being seen at 1khz test signal from the Extech I use. Joe Gwinn says that at 10khz you can't get accurate inductance readings from pickup coils anyway, so some meters will read a 10khz test signal but the reading is meaningless. In a humbucker the resonant peak is usually around 4-5khz anyway, but you need a really expensive inductance meter that has test frequencies in those ranges.

Personally I do hear differences in insulation type. It most likely has to do with the dielectric of the insulation type. Most modern wire has pretty standard insulation thicknesses. There are other things that can have an effect from insulation type too, the poly wire insulation is a bit slippery so its easy to stretch alot as it slips over itself very easily and through wire guides too. PE has a more dry kind of texture and doesn't slip on itself as easy and can sometimes jitter thru wire guides. Formvar is probably somewhere inbetween those two. Some people hear these differences, some claim they don't, its an old argument ;-)

[big_teee]

I agree with you, talk about the old wire is bollocks, and marketing.
But there is a caveat. We have no significant dependence of the capacitance and inductance coil.
You can follow any responses here. I can make a difference in RP 10 kHz ceteris paribus (any type of insulation),
but little change in inductance.
In any case, by means of an inductance is difficult to assess the frequency properties of the coil.
Type of insulation to use as a variable which is the last folly to do by the manufacturer.
That's what really matters is the insulation thickness and DCR / ft, which affects the Q-factor. Everything else can and should pick up winding.

There is a reason for the old wire, In vintage Pickups.
But, It ends there.
These vintage guys want a vintage wire to go in a vintage style pickup.
Tonally with proper winding and adjustments, You can do the same with different wires.
T

[Joe Gwinn]

The reason you don't see change in inductance is because the test frequency of most meters is only 1000 hertz. So you will see changes in the resonant peak but the inductance may stay virtually the same. I very rarely pay much attention to inductance, I use AC resistance changes much more logically, but still its only being seen at 1khz test signal from the Extech I use. Joe Gwinn says that at 10khz you can't get accurate inductance readings from pickup coils anyway, so some meters will read a 10khz test signal but the reading is meaningless. In a humbucker the resonant peak is usually around 4-5khz anyway, but you need a really expensive inductance meter that has test frequencies in those ranges.

Yes. If one measures the properties of a coil above self-resonance, what you will see is a capacitance, not an inductance, and a single-frequency inductance meter will become quite confused.

This is an inherent property of RLC circuits. In general, below resonance the inductance dominates, above resonance the capacitance dominates, and at resonance, capacitance and inductance balance out, and the resistance dominates.

Given that most pickups resonate below 10 KHz, a $200 hendheld LCR meter using a 10 KHz test frequency will not be measuring the inductance of the coil. Testing at one tenth of resonance frequency allows one to measure coil inductance, and to detect changes in that inductance.

There are fancy ($5000 and above) multi-frequency LCR meters that can measure L, C, and R independently by taking data at many tens of frequencies and combining the results, and are not fooled by resonance, but these instruments are not being used here.

One may use a VI front end on a sound card and some software to emulate the fancy instrument.

Or, one may use a three-frequency handheld LCR meter and a bunch of math to estimate L, C, and R, but three fixed test frequencies are too few for accurate results in many cases. One dodge is to measure L and series Rac at 1 KHz, measure C (not L) and parallel Rac at 10 KHz, and fit the data to a RLC circuit. This ought to work reasonably well if the resonant frequency is in the 3 to 6 KHz region, but I have not yet tried it myself.

But there is the danger is that one will learn too much circuit theory.

[JGundry]

But you're only reading overall O.D. You're missing bare wire size. And an LCR meter only reads to 1khz test signal. What is happening at peak resonance?

If the varnishes came from natural products, the plant world has changed since those days, you simple can't get wood for instance that matches that found in 50's Telecasters etc.

Yes O.D. is all we can read outside of a lab. But the fact remains that if your premise is to believed then I should be seeing at the very least an inductance difference with any test pickups that use modern wire of the same O.D. diameter and per foot resistance as the vintage target wire and pickup. However matching inductance, capacitance and resistance was not a problem. As far as resonant peak goes I probably should unearth my BK signal generator and update my Faber Signal Scope software and load it on my new Mac but personally I find my ears more useful than a signal sweep.

With the varnish thing you honestly can't be serious that the plant word has changed since the 50's making PE varnish impossible to duplicate? I can assure you if the formula is know then it can be made. I have cooked my own violin varnish so I actually have a bit of experience with this. Again these are not lost processes they are merely obsolete to all but guitar pickup makers so the demand has shrunken and along with that so has the variety.

[big_teee]

I still contend that if the wire is the same size and same purity and alloy.
The insulation O.D. the same size, and all winding is the same, there will be no difference in the sound.
The catch is it is hard to meet the wire and insulation size, alloy and O.D. Criteria!
So IMO if you had just Elektrisola wire.
The wire should be the same wire.
Now if you use SPN, or PE, as long as the above critera is met, they should sound exactly the Same.
If Not, Your welcome to Prove Me Wrong!
B_T

[Possum]

Matching same number of turns, same OD as a real PAF coil with modern wire did not match at all in what I did with that one '61 coil, the PAF coil had noticeably higher DCR percentage. You can probably match closer by using more turns but then your identical match goes out the window because now your coil has stronger output and your peak resonance will change slightly. Sorry, Elektrisola told me the exact percentage that copper stock has improved since the 50's, its not much, but you add up alot of small things about vintage wire and everything matters.

Well heck yeah, the plant world has changed alot since the 50's. Global warming, pesticides, depleted soils, global air pollution, all have an effect on what exists in nature, and doubt anything has escaped un-altered. You can't even buy good sable brushes anymore because global warming over the last 20 years messed with the food supply the animals eat, good sable brushes are extinct.

Until someone takes a huge wad of vintage PE, recovers the resins and analyzes it, then tries to replicate it, thats the only thing I would put any faith in, these guys in industry will tell you anything to get the job, or they just don't have real indepth technical knowledge, ask them to prove it. Then I would want to see a dielectric test performed, that would be hard because getting the insulation off the vintage wire would probably alter it some. No one is making wire with thin insulation either, so there's a definite tonal effect when that changes due to increased capacitance; the wire I have proved that and it was one of the things that really jumped out at me from the lab sheets. Now I think of it I wished I had included the Korean PE in the samples to have it checked, I still have enough for a couple pickups. Anyway, bottom line is that current PE, AWC, Elektrisola, or Essex, none of them were vintage, and seriously doubt they could make it. I do know enough of things I'm not discussing here to have much closer wire made, but I think Elektrisola's minimum is 100 lbs. and there is a real big possibility it might not be anything special or desirable. Another point that may be that modern insulation is different is because I believe they were using benzene before most of them quit making it, due to environmental laws, so my guess is they are using something different now, so the process has changed.

You ought to grab one of these Syscomp devices, they are real easy to use, and you can really get a close up look at rez peak frequencies. I used it alot when I was making minor tweaks to my latest product. It works on a Mac fine once you figure out its quirks, plus you can print out the graphs. Ears can't hear details that fine, but overall I seldom use it at all unless I'm really trying to squeeze fine adjustments out of something.