Multigauge winding

[JacksonRR]

Anyone ever try using two gauges in a humbucker before? What I'm thinking is, say a quarter full of 42 to start, half of 43 or 44, and then finish off with a quarter of 42. The high end loss would be affected much less and you'd still end up around 15-16K. As far as I've been reading the high end loss is associated with those frequencies riding the outside of the wire instead of flowing through and scatter winding makes the coil more of a "whole." It makes sense in my head that the high end would be retained(reabsorbed by the thicker gauge "bread") or at least a lot of it compared to an entire bobbin full of 44. I've seen a lot of posts about having to solder the wire back together after an accidental breakage mid wind, so that's what sparked this.

Anyone ever tried this or heard of a manufacturer doing it? Anyone have any theory to back up or shoot down my thoughts? I'm very interested. Thanks.

[big_teee]

Anyone ever try using two gauges in a humbucker before? What I'm thinking is, say a quarter full of 42 to start, half of 43 or 44, and then finish off with a quarter of 42. The high end loss would be affected much less and you'd still end up around 15-16K. As far as I've been reading the high end loss is associated with those frequencies riding the outside of the wire instead of flowing through and scatter winding makes the coil more of a "whole." It makes sense in my head that the high end would be retained(reabsorbed by the thicker gauge "bread") or at least a lot of it compared to an entire bobbin full of 44. I've seen a lot of posts about having to solder the wire back together after an accidental breakage mid wind, so that's what sparked this.

Anyone ever tried this or heard of a manufacturer doing it? Anyone have any theory to back up or shoot down my thoughts? I'm very interested. Thanks.

I wound one bobbin with 43ga. and one with 42 ga.
That's about it.
Good Luck,
Terry

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I wouldn't expect it to make enough of a difference to warrant the experiment, but if it was me, I'd use dramatically different gauges. Say, 45 awg and 38 awg. That seems like it would be a better test of your hypothesis. My guess is that with gauges closer to one another, the net result would be something like if you used a wire with the weighted average diameter of each wire used.

[JacksonRR]

So then how do the high frequencies leave? Is it that they are easily attracted to the baseplate and grounded off or just never able to be passed or what? Is this even something that's essential or would focus be better applied to implementing the correct buffer circuit?

[mondo]

I'd like to try winding some very fine wire to start like 45awg, then finish the coil with something heavy like 41 awg. Having more windings closer to the magnets could make a difference here and the bulk of the outer windings in 41 could reduce the overall inductance and capacitance.
Has anyone tried winding multiple strands of wire in a coil? They would have two or more parallel circuits in one coil. WIERD but you never know until you try.

[David Schwab]

Harvey Citron (Harvey Citron Enterprises) does this with his "Citron custom blended humbuckers." He uses 42 & 44.

Peavey also has a patent on it.

It's been something I have been meaning to try. I currently make some pickups with a different gauge on each coil, but not two gauges on the same coil.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

David - as I recall you have some pretty extreme wire sizes on hand, right? Give it a whirl!

[David Schwab]

David - as I recall you have some pretty extreme wire sizes on hand, right? Give it a whirl!

I have 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, and 46AWG, and a roll of 28.