practicality of the whole thing

[ludkokanta]

I'm on a quest.

Myth busting.

Some pickup winders claim that the "hand job" gives better results then machines, period. They encourage young players to send them their SDs and DMs etc.

Rewound pickup of an unknown "guru" does not have much resale value.

If a player knows what he is looking for he could trade for a different model of the same manufacturer at no expense.

I wonder and am going to put this to a test - if everything remains the same (wire thicknes, number of turns, magnet) how audible is the difference between machine and hand made pickups?

If we made the same pickup three times by three people and made recordings, would anyone be able to hear it?

Are there such clips on the Internet?

[Steve Conner]

I hope you brought your flameproof underwear, you're going to need it.

[big_teee]

I hope you brought your flameproof underwear, you're going to need it.

I agree with Steve!
Your in the Opinion, Smoke, & Mirror Area with that one.
So what's the point!
Terry

[Mark Hammer]

I wonder and am going to put this to a test - if everything remains the same (wire thicknes, number of turns, magnet) how audible is the difference between machine and hand made pickups? If we made the same pickup three times by three people and made recordings, would anyone be able to hear it?

Are there such clips on the Internet?

1) Do NOT rely on internet clips for anything that is supposed to demonstrate nuance. If you want to know THAT it is a fuzz, fine. If you want to know whether fuzz A sounds distinctively different from fuzz B, forget it. You will be at the mercy of underspecified settings, pickup height adjustments, string gauges, mic-ing, amp settings, choices in audio resolution, etc.

2) There is a distinction to be made between audible differences, and consistently audible differences. Could those three pickups sound different? Sure, why not. Would they sound more different from each other, and consistently so, then three different pickups from the same person?

3) Even live, where one person is doing the testing and pickup replacement, having full knowledge and control over all equipment adjustments, with no web-based crap to get in the way, some things will sound absolutely no different under set-of-conditions A, but audibly (though not remarkably so) different under set-of-conditions B.

4) If it were the case that we all played clean, through pristine clean amplifiers, with perfectly flat speaker response, that would be one thing. But the contemporary client for a pickup tends to introduce many different sources of coloration to their sound. I'm not going to sit here and say that one pickup is as good as another (because any one of these guys could find out where I live, come to my house, and hurt me! ), but I will say that us guitar players do an awful lot of things that make it difficult to offer objective assessments of what is "better". All we can do is say what we like more in our circumstance. Sometimes the pickup alone does that. Sometimes its the pickup, plus what it's in, plus a bunch of kob twiddling.

I make all my pickups for myself completely by hand. Some are keepers, and a joy to play, and some make me think "Well THAT's 2 hrs of my life I'm never getting back".

So, all told, given current gas prices, I say let your quest end here. It's not going to take you anywhere particularly productive.

[Steve Conner]

Well, that was possibly the most good natured flame ever, Mark.

Again, pretty pointless to come to a forum full of guys who sell handwound pickups, asking whether handwound pickups are any good. What kind of answers do you think you're going to get?!

[ken]

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I smell a troll.

I don't know anyone who would take working SD or other pickups, simply rewind them, and claim they are any better just because they are 'handwound'. Like Mark, I not only wind my pickups 'by hand' but I make all the parts of my single coil pickups myself, and I'm trying to make all my humbucker parts myself too. I do this because I believe that you get what you pay for, my customers deserve this, and there are those who can still appreciate the artisan quality parts and personalized service I give my customers as well as the 'machine made' pickup.

For example, my wife and I also microbrew beer. Is it worth it to roast the barley by ourselves, choose the specific type of hops, yeast and water we use, and then go through a monthlong process of brewing, fermenting and bottling just for a beer when I can just go to the gas station and buy a sixpack of Bud right now instead? It is to us because we care, and we will go long lengths to use the best possible ingredients to make our beer, just like we do when we make our pickups. It's all in what you value, I guess. Some people are happy wearing Tshirts from Walmart 24/7/365, and others (like me) appreciate a quality custom made suit.

Do NOT rely on internet clips for anything that is supposed to demonstrate nuance. If you want to know THAT it is a fuzz, fine. If you want to know whether fuzz A sounds distinctively different from fuzz B, forget it. You will be at the mercy of underspecified settings, pickup height adjustments, string gauges, mic-ing, amp settings, choices in audio resolution, etc.]

And people wonder why I don't have many soundclips on my website! 99% of the potential customers out there probably don't listen to music through a good set of cans anyway, they use the teeny tiny speakers their computer came with. I have had customers actually tell me they made guitar buying decisions based on their laptop's speakers! Not to mention compression schemes, the noise of the room they're in, etc.

In a nutshell, are handwound pickups worth it? They are to me... and my friends (customers) love 'em too.

ken

[Mark Hammer]

Nah, no troll. You have to keep reminding yourself that the web is open and accessible to the entire world. And, as such, every minute there is another person who gets interested in any particular topic (such as pickups), based on what they've heard from a friend, or had miscommunicated to them by a music-store employee who, themselves, is relying on what they've heard 3rd hand. They're keenly interested, which is great, BUT have the misfortune to join a conversation that has been in progress for some time. They may be at where the other conversants were maybe 20 years ago. I don't fault them for that.

I taught university for 12-13 years, and one of the toughest lessons I had to learn was that THIS year's class has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what LAST year's class knew when they finished. It happens. I accept it.

I'm just trying to save the OP some unnecessary aggravation. I hope I accomplished that.

[big_teee]

Nah, no troll. You have to keep reminding yourself that the web is open and accessible to the entire world. And, as such, every minute there is another person who gets interested in any particular topic (such as pickups), based on what they've heard from a friend, or had miscommunicated to them by a music-store employee who, themselves, is relying on what they've heard 3rd hand. They're keenly interested, which is great, BUT have the misfortune to join a conversation that has been in progress for some time. They may be at where the other conversants were maybe 20 years ago. I don't fault them for that.

I taught university for 12-13 years, and one of the toughest lessons I had to learn was that THIS year's class has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what LAST year's class knew when they finished. It happens. I accept it.

I'm just trying to save the OP some unnecessary aggravation. I hope I accomplished that.

In the OP's defense, He is making a valid point, about all the hype out there being spread by some.
I've read a lot of that same hype on some of the hand winders web site.
Talking about magic and voodoo.
Bottom line there is just so much you can do with a given design.
I am surprised and I have noticed that most rewinds do sound better than the factory stuff. That's strictly IMO. That surprises me considering that a factory has all the tools, and resources to do, and get it right. Does anyone else agree with my observation? From the very first StewMac Humbucker kit I built, I was very surprised how good it sounded compared to some of the name brand factory stuff.
So That's my question, is how come the Factories don't do a better job, when they have all the resources?
BigT

[ken]

In the OP's defense, He is making a valid point, about all the hype out there being spread by some.
I've read a lot of that same hype on some of the hand winders web site.
Talking about magic and voodoo.
Bottom line there is just so much you can do with a given design.

I apologize for the troll comment.

I have had three people contact me in the last two weeks about 'why should I buy your pickups when I can get XYZ pickups from Hostilistan at $39.95 a set?' One of these was kind of brittle and made the same type of comments about handwinding and booteek parts in general as the OP, so I guess I was already sorta punchy from that.

There seem to be more winders out there every day, and for sure many of them seem to be trying to outdo each other in the 'hype' department. I've actually begun to collect webshots of some of the more funny/strange/implausible ads I've seen.

So That's my question, is how come the Factories don't do a better job, when they have all the resources?

This one's easy, many don't have to because they are only working to a price point. If you're an accountant, which is more important to you - sourcing and paying for vintage correct stuff like having your humbucker bobbins made of real butyrate with all the holes in the right places, or just stompin' 'em out of old plastic model cars or whatever and hiring some college marketing major to hype your product instead? They have the resources to do a good job for two reasons...

1) They made their pickup 'product' as cheaply as they could so they could sell them in volume.

2) They sold lots of 'product' in the past because they had effective marketing departments.

If you're making a pickup to sell at GC for $49.95 retail, would you going to put lots of expensive and unnecessary details in it? Probably not.

Ok, Flame on...

ken

[ludkokanta]

I don't know anyone who would take working SD or other pickups, simply rewind them, and claim they are any better just because they are 'handwound'.

Well, we have one in a Croatian forum, he is particularly bad mouthing Dimarzio saying they use wire of lower quality.

If I'd ask him what kind of copper is a good kind he'd call me stupid, lol!

If someone knows what he is after, I am all for rewinding, especially if you have some generic budget pickups.
But if a kid wants a different sound and has no clue what he needs he should probably look up a few things about the construction of a pickup, resonant peak, wire thickness, magnets and coil turns etc. Not sending a perfectly good Dimarzio or SD to a guru.

He actually provides a consulting service wrapped in guru mystic. Its the bad mouthing that sucks.

I guess we will not know how important are the stories about distributed capacitance or skin effect by themselves until we hear clips production vs same coil handwound.

[salvarsan]

I have had three people contact me in the last two weeks about 'why should I buy your pickups when I can get XYZ pickups from Hostilistan at $39.95 a set?' One of these was kind of brittle and made the same type of comments about handwinding and booteek parts in general as the OP, so I guess I was already sorta punchy from that.

Ignorant consumers are a fact of life in a mass-produced commodity culture,
although they aren't always ignorant or ignorant of everything.

If you've ever had pride in your craft, you understand this:

• Mass-produced goods are built to a price point.
• Boutique goods are built to a quality point.

The banal trinity of good/fast/cheap doesn't begin to cover the standards of uniqueness, aptness to purpose, customer satifaction that a boutique product is held to.

[David Schwab]

Some pickup winders claim that the "hand job" gives better results then machines, period.

In my opinion, no. They might sound different, but "better" is subjective. All pickups are wound on machines, but some are hand guided. You can program the machine to do the same thing. And humbuckers were always machine wound.

If we made the same pickup three times by three people and made recordings, would anyone be able to hear it?

Maybe. I'm leaning towards yes. Everyone does things slightly differently, even within the same parameters.