Some people...

[madialex]

There is a guy on the TDPRI spewing information about winding is as easy as pie, anyone can do it. Turns count means nothing, DCR is the real number to watch etc... I tried to dispute it with him but there is no telling this guy a dam thing!! The problem is, he is making a lot of winders look really bad in the process. Telling people there is no real art to it, just wire and magnets. Gosh I am so irked with this dumb ass!!

BTW this happens to be one of the largest music related forums in the world.

If it were not posted there as saying, Tutorial on making your own pickups I would just say the post will die out soon enough but with that tag line, how many google hits will it get and who knows other search engines??

[copperheadroads]

i wish that guy come over here .but then he cant preach & tell noobies there's nothing to winding pickups blah blah blah . but i hope he shows up here someday
not to criticize him , but i think he would be a little less vocal

[Chuck H]

Post a link to the thread so we can all attack simutaneously. A barage of experienced winders asking him to back up his BS might make him think twice before trying to be a king among sheep again.

Chuck

[mort]

winding pickups - a pictorial - Telecaster Guitar Forum

[madialex]

Not trying to stir up things, It is just people like him irk the crap outta me when they go off half cocked blabbing BS like they know it all. He backs his up by saying he wound pickups a long time ago and there is nothing to it. He went on to tell one guy that winding a humbucker was no different than a single coil was..NOT!!! Now this guy is going to cause a few people to actually go out and buy his buddy's winder who he proudly boasted about and find out it isn't as simple as he said and the other thing is he is going to have a whole slew of members there believing winders are just con artists and we make stuff up. He has already made the comment about we use a lot of hype and smoke and mirrors and such. What a loser!!

[big_teee]

Unfortunately this is, and will be a very over saturated industry.
Stew Mac makes the same claims about their winder.
They say buy our winder and go out and make a pickup in a few minutes, and charge big money for the easy skill.
What the guy failed to tell, on the forum is the pounds of wire you have to wind to get pickups that sound worth a damn.
I still do that thing when I test a pickup. I say that sounds pretty good, but It needs a little more of this and a little less of that.
And here I go on a tangent making another one!
Not taking up for the guy, but some things he said I agree with.
You can make a basic pickup in a while of messing around with it.
You can get as simple or as deep into winding as you want to.
Just look at some of the posts on this forum.
We have engineers, that I don't know what they are talking about.
We have very basic questions just trying to get started.
Like I said at the beginning, there is going to more & more folks kinking 42-44ga wire!
Terry

[Ward]

Unfortunately this is, and will be a very over saturated industry.

I've been winding pickups for 5 years or so, I do it for myself as I have a heap of guitars. I don't make the best humbuckers in the world but I can clearly guarantee my strat singles are as good as anything.
In saying that, I have found that almost every guitar player I talk to thinks I'm full of sh#t. There may well be a lot of people buying or making winders and thinking they can make some dough but I've found it extremely hard to get people interested in anything that doesn't have a brand name on it. Being a lefty means that I need to get a righty guitar/s and put my pickups into it/them and drudge around demoing my pickups, if I could be bothered. My point is, many may make their own pickups, you still have to get past the brand syndrome IMO. Sorry, this is off topic a bit, I couldn't care less about some dude hawking his winder, there are so many would be's already, what's one more.

[Mark Hammer]

I've been making my own pickups for damn near 30 years, if not longer. And yes, there really IS "nothing to it", it ISN'T anything more than magnets and wires....if you're happy to live with what you come up with. The challenge is making something that aims for a tonal target and hits it every time, and sounds the same every time you make, such that a customer who says "I'd like to purchase THIS kind of pickup/tone, gentle Sir!" and plunks down their money gets exactly what you promised. THAT requires a great deal more than "nothing". Hit and miss, trial and error is something any doofus can do; I know because I've done it. The "art" is found in replicability.

[belwar]

... and repeatability. At least for me it's important to have the next set of pickups sound like one Im doing now.

[frankfalbo]

I think I helped fix it, we'll have to wait and see...

[Chuck H]

OK, I read the thread and I have to say that the guys work looks fine. He also stated that you should make your pickup as it was designed, as far as that goes. He did say there's nothing to it, which is true enough as making a simple transducer goes. Or even if your working with a good machine, have reasonable coordination, have purchaced the exact right materials for a specific design and have the info on how many turns to put on the bobbin. But there was an allusion that you can just 'wind 'em up' and they'll sound fine. Which IME isn't true. I will say that doing it that way I had to wind way off the mark to actually make a BAD sounding pickup. But in like manner I only ever made one great sounding pickup that way too. He does make it sound a little too "whatever" and that's not fair to guy's like you, here on this area of AMPAGE that take great pains to make something special.

I can tell you for certain that his electronic theory is for $h!t. To say that the "DC resistance is all that matters" demonstrates that. It's like saying with regard to cars that the air freshener is all that matters. The DC resistance of a pickup will float within a range depending on wire guage and turns but it's a pickups IMPEDANCE and INDUCTANCE that will really dictate it's output and tone (magnets aside for a moment). Resistance is an almost peripheral part of the formula to be calculated as a contributor to the final IMPEDANCE. There is NO DC being amplified so as long as there isn't so much DC resistance that it multiplies impedance (resistance to the actual signal to be amplified) it can be neglected. So that was at least one statement of his that was complete mis information and absolutely false.

He also neglected the importance of magnet type, care and handling. His whole 'Just charge 'em up and yer good to go' thing on magnets really rubbed me the wrong way. No reference to different magnet types (even within the alnico types) and no formula for charging consistently. As if it doesn't matter at all.

It's true enough that it's easy to make a magnetic transducer, but if it didn't matter how they were made then NASA would be using street bums instead of engineers to wind them for the space program. Extreme, yes, but it makes my point. There is art and sceince to this. It's not like nailing up fence boards. I agree with 80% of what was said in his OP but somehow his post and the responses to it really got my hackles up. Mostly because he seems smart enough to know that he doesn't really know what he's talking about and is actually trying to be a king among sheep. Otherwise he would have posted it here. It's not like he doesn't know we're here.

Chuck

[mort]

Sounds like Chuck be tellin' it like it is

[pupoholic]

Hi,
that's not good business to business practice making those outrageous statements like that, especially when they can easily be shot down...

if his statements were really true there would not be so many vintage reissue pickup makers in the world - cause we would all sound pretty much the same, and it would be like~ if all the automotive makers just made Mustangs~ and that was it!!.. we could not all exist as we all do today~ if his statements were really true.. nor would all the car makers~ if they all made a mustang and that was it..

- anyhow.. we all know, in the real world all these pickup customers use their ears! - not their eyes when it comes to pickups,

and so no matter what any maker claims or says, its always the customers ears that need fulfilled - not any words going to their brains via the eyes..etc.. as hes claiming/ accusing-most all vintage makers of doing to the customers..etc....

lastly the guys age shows he's 64... most of us know that age group can be very-very hard headed and heavily opinionated on the subject of vintage tone - its because they feel that hey lived thru it, and most of us did not... and they want to be the final word on that subject....

I've learned just to ditch em.. steer clear, and not engage in their game...

the guys probably a really good guy,, but we all step on our own tails sometimes.. were all human..

cheers
ME

[Magnut]

Anyone can make chocolate chip cookies too, but even using the same ingredients not everyone's turns out the same. Each person can also tweak the recipe and still have a good tasting cookie, or not. But someone will have the "best" tasting cookie to some other person.

It comes down to the art. Yes you can make it, but can you make it good? Can you keep making them time and time again? Do you understand why?

I agree that it's best not to engage since this persons mind won't be changed anyway.

[big_teee]

I think most of us originally started winding, not to make the worlds best pickup per say, but to make our own, and to SAVE MONEY!
I was looking for a tone, and it was costing too much money to find it.
I saw some tutorials of winding pickups with drills and winding with all sorts of things.
I thought, well I could do that.
Then when you make a good pickup, you think well I could sell that, and recoup some of my guitar expense.
Like Mark Hammer said in a post above. Anyone can do it, I'm living proof of that.
If I can do it anyone can. However some of us will be a lot better at it than others.
Mine probably aren't the best, but They are better than my guitar playing!!!
Which is mediocre at best!
Terry