Man vs. Machine Distributed Capacitance

[Spence]

That's the beauty of these wonderful winding machines. So much better than a human brain controlling a human hand. So sensitive compared to the human hand.

My opinion: I'd love a machine to do all my work for me. Imagine all that consistency; humbuckers done and dusted in 13 minutes etc. It would be so sweet.

So what would you suggest has happened to Fender and Gibson pickups since 1964? Something has gone wrong hasn't it? If not, what makes you think you can make a better pickup?

Nothing against your machine. like I said, I'd love to replace my input with all that automation but I know I'd be turning out inferior pickups.

[Possum]

Kevin T

What kind of winder do you have? Curious...

The thing about using a machine controlled wind is you basically have to throw everything you thought you knew about winding out the window and start over. The very first pickup I wound with a single speed traverse was a P90, I was able to get a brighter tone out of it than I ever could doing hand winding. It sounded great and is still in my guitar. I was able to hit a spec that old P90s I've measured have, so I was a happy camper. You can get a handwound tone from a machine but no one is going to tell you how to do it and you'll burn alot of wire figuring it out, and what you come up with will be different than everyone else, so again it will have your touch. there are things you can do with a machine that will create a true random scatter, but I'm gonna shut up now, the rest you have to do your own work :-) Don't want to start a heated debate about what is "better" either. I remember reading that Suhr has this "secret" programmed wind that would do a hand wind, what a crock of shit, marketing horseshit. The real bottom line is how your pickups sound, not how they were made. And yes I agree, the true real deal PAF tone should be done by a machine wind. Well, til I find evidence for real that they were hand wound. could happen....

[JGundry]

That's the beauty of these wonderful winding machines. So much better than a human brain controlling a human hand. So sensitive compared to the human hand.

My opinion: I'd love a machine to do all my work for me. Imagine all that consistency; humbuckers done and dusted in 13 minutes etc. It would be so sweet.

So what would you suggest has happened to Fender and Gibson pickups since 1964? Something has gone wrong hasn't it? If not, what makes you think you can make a better pickup?

Nothing against your machine. like I said, I'd love to replace my input with all that automation but I know I'd be turning out inferior pickups.

Ah yes, the feeling of being a hand guided winding genius. I've been there. There is more control over both complex and simple tasks with a computerized winder. But I'm going to shut up about this now. Frankly the fewer people that have a computerized winder the better as far as I'm concerned.

What has gone wrong since 1964? The same thing that goes wrong with most businesses. You start with a good design. People like it. The company has a mindset that profit must grow at a specific rate. They then start to systematically destroy the very product that people liked to begin with in order to meet an arbitrary financial goal. They change suppliers and manufacturing methods. Then the guy that created the great product gets fed up with the company and leaves. Said company then thinks that the product must be "improved" to increase slumping sales. This further destroys the product. Finally in 30 years nostalgia catches up with the company and they realized there is money in reproducing what they made 30 years prior. But alas they fall on their ass with this task as they only want to recreate it at the cheapest possible price. In the end they miss the boat as far as the nostalgia market is concerned. And on and on..... So all you really need to do is be more detail oriented than a CFO. How hard could that be!

[Possum]

classic example....

I just got a guitar and it has 57 classics in it, Gibson. these are Gibson's current take on recreating their old PAFs. they are not bad pickups, yet they are not good either. They potted the fucking things, now how stupid do you have to be, you recreate (supposedly) a classic design then choke it up with melted wax so it will NEVER sound like the originals. If they didn't pot them they might actually be good. Its like Jon says, profit over intelligent design, there are a few idiots who will think their classic 57's are "defective" because played through a 100 watt Marshall, standing directly in front of the speaker with 3 gain pedals and the amp on 10 you might get a whistle out of the pickups, so the solution is to destroy one of the very things that made those pickups great, (no wax) in order to satisfy the majority of untalented Guitar Center players who will buy them. Well, I guess its good, because then they find US guys who know better and make better pickups than these things are.....

[David Schwab]

We all know that the main purpose/benefit of scatter winding (spacing between each turn and layer of wire) is to reduce the distributed capacitance of the coil, which generally results in a better sounding pickup (warmer, more balanced).

You know, if you lower the capacitance, the pickup should be brighter, not warmer. You can demonstrate that with different value caps on your tone control. The larger the value, the more high end is rolled off. This is also true of you have the cap in series with the signal.. the larger the cap, the more lows that are passed.

There is probably other things going on as well, such as self inductance (and mutual inductance), which should change the resonant peak frequency.

I've always thought of scatter wound pickups being brighter sounding (like the new scatter wound Ric toasters).

What's everyone's view here on this? Do you find your scatters brighter or warmer?

Another question to the people with automatic winding machines... what machine do you have? (we've seen Wolfe's machine)

[kevinT]

What's everyone's view here on this? Do you find your scatters brighter or warmer?

I should have said more dynamic with some warmth thrown in.

Another question to the people with automatic winding machines... what machine do you have? (we've seen Wolfe's machine)

It's coming. My brother has my camera doing ebay stuff.

[madialex]

You know, if you lower the capacitance, the pickup should be brighter, not warmer. You can demonstrate that with different value caps on your tone control. The larger the value, the more high end is rolled off. This is also true of you have the cap in series with the signal.. the larger the cap, the more lows that are passed.

There is probably other things going on as well, such as self inductance (and mutual inductance), which should change the resonant peak frequency.

I've always thought of scatter wound pickups being brighter sounding (like the new scatter wound Ric toasters).

What's everyone's view here on this? Do you find your scatters brighter or warmer?

Another question to the people with automatic winding machines... what machine do you have? (we've seen Wolfe's machine)

It's a toss up with me David, Tighter scatter seems to give me a brighter pickup where as more scatter does boost the highs a bit it also seem to round out the tone more and give me a better bass. Like I was talking to Wolfe about, more scatter makes a larger coil and less output and a tighter scatter is more dense and smaller with more power. I may have it all backwards but I believe it to be right, to my ears anyway.

[madialex]

I just got a guitar and it has 57 classics in it, Gibson. these are Gibson's current take on recreating their old PAFs. they are not bad pickups, yet they are not good either. They potted the fucking things, now how stupid do you have to be, you recreate (supposedly) a classic design then choke it up with melted wax so it will NEVER sound like the originals. If they didn't pot them they might actually be good. Its like Jon says, profit over intelligent design, there are a few idiots who will think their classic 57's are "defective" because played through a 100 watt Marshall, standing directly in front of the speaker with 3 gain pedals and the amp on 10 you might get a whistle out of the pickups, so the solution is to destroy one of the very things that made those pickups great, (no wax) in order to satisfy the majority of untalented Guitar Center players who will buy them. Well, I guess its good, because then they find US guys who know better and make better pickups than these things are.....

To be honest, the Burstbuckers are the closest I have heard to a PAF and they are unpotted, at least the #1 and 2 I think the #3 uses A5 and is potted, I may be wrong about the potted part. I played a 58 LP reissue at Alpha Music here and it had BB's 1 and 2 in it and it was really pretty sweet and sounded damn good through the Orange amp they had there, I forget the model.

[madialex]

OH and it was a 2005 model so it was full weight. The new ones have been weight relieved and in my opinion have lost some tone. So get your 2005 or priors.

[David Schwab]

Like I was talking to Wolfe about, more scatter makes a larger coil and less output and a tighter scatter is more dense and smaller with more power. I may have it all backwards but I believe it to be right, to my ears anyway.

That makes sense... look at a Jazz Master pickup. The coil is wide, so the outsides of the wrap are farther away from the magnets. It's got that mellow tone, compared to a Strat.

It's all very fascinating!

[Possum]

scatter

Brighter or darker where scatter is concerned is not a linear thing once you machine control your traverse to a constant speed/turns per layer. I didn't get my point across well enough. As you put less turns per layer on in descending numbers you will hit some where instead of getting brighter it gets darker. Thats why I said you'll have to throw away everything you think you know if you get into machine winding. With hand winding there is so much mix of scatters in one pass that generally going faster WILL make it brighter, but if you put a ridiculous few turns per layer you lose output and get a dull lifeless kind of tone that sucks.

[ken]

Dave,

You are probably the only one I ever met that likes New Coke.

I had a very interesting argument a week ago with somebody who said all PAF's should sound loud and distorted. I told him that if he wanted to hear his PAF's the way Les Paul and Seth Lover intended, they should play through a Gibson amp with very low gain - they were supposed to sound much like Leo's single coils, and the only advantage they had over 'other pickups' was the noise cancelling feature.

I get a good laugh from the pickups I pull out of the Epi LP's I buy, they all say 'double wax potted' on the tearoff plastic labels Epi puts on the pickup covers to keep them from being scratched.

I never gave my scatter much thought, it 'is wut it is'. However, I am working on a CNC winder myself so I will have to give these things some thought. I guess your 'hand scatter' is kinda like a fingerprint, as none of us would do the same thing exactly the same way.

Ken

[ken]

One more thing...

What is wrong with modern factory supplied pickups is that they are so different than the 'original parts'.

For example, I bought a nice looking MexiPbass at a music store for $160.00 USD. I couldn't figure out why it was so cheap until I got it home, and the first thing I wondered when I finally played it was whether I could get my money back. The tone was horrible, no treble or mids at all. The action was OK, but the pickups were angled so high in the middle that the screws were bent.

The originally supplied pickups were cast plastic, with cheap steel poles and big ceramic mags rubberglued to the bobbins. The coil bobbin space was twice as tall as it should have been, and what wire was there was 42ga modern pink solderon insulated wire.

I put a pair of my own pickups in it, and the difference was night and day.
That bass sells a set or two of pickups a week for me without ever leaving my shop.

The moral of the story? Today, guitar makers seem to be trading on their past reputations. Modern pickups are made purely to a price point, tone be damned. It is only the most expensive guitars that get the best quality parts,
and the others are just that... others. Thank God for that, because for every
$2500+ Fender sold, they sell a hundred of lesser quality - and the first thing
most players replace is the pickups. This is a very good thing, because if makers put proper pickups in their instruments, there wouldn't be such a market for us. It isn't that these designs are 'new' or 'bad', but frankly cheap is cheap.

Rant over...

ken

[Sweetfinger]

Gibson knows....

To be honest, the Burstbuckers are the closest I have heard to a PAF and they are unpotted, at least the #1 and 2 I think the #3 uses A5 and is potted, I may be wrong about the potted part. I played a 58 LP reissue at Alpha Music here and it had BB's 1 and 2 in it and it was really pretty sweet and sounded damn good through the Orange amp they had there, I forget the model.

The 'pro' guitarists out there need wax potting, so the original Burstbuckers were unpotted, but the BB Pro series ARE potted.

BTW I LOVE the paragraph a bit earlier about CFO's destroying the very things that made a company good in the first place.

"Here at Progressive Innovations, Incorporated, our research and design engineers work tirelessly to make things as good as they used to be."

[Spence]

Quote:

"Here at Progressive Innovations, Incorporated, our research and design engineers work tirelessly to make things as good as they used to be."

This statement actually tells it as it is because the definition of 'tireless' is :

Having or showing a capacity for prolonged and laborious effort without becoming tired

This is inhuman so either the workers are robots or they didn't work hard enough.

Personally, I have fallen asleep at my winder or research books on more than one ocassion.