Man vs. Machine Distributed Capacitance

[Spence]

"I agree with whoever said “the wire doesn’t care if it’s machine wound or hand wound”. There is no mojo that makes pickups sound good just because you did it by hand. If you have a machine that makes an exact replica of a pickup that was hand wound then it would sound exactly the same. I know that I would never make a machine that could that, but if somebody else thinks they have created something that gets the hand wound sound, and if their customers think that the pickups have a hand wound sound, then who are we to say that they didn’t succeed? "

The wire doesn't care? Neither do any of the other components. This is a typically diabolical response to physical reality. No disrespect but it's just a meaningless answer to a question that requires a scientific answer.

The sum of the component parts is the bulk of what makes a PAF sound like it does. Maybe handwinding a PAF with a so-called scatter pattern will not have as much effect as it does on a Strat bobbin because of the limited traverse but I believe that the difference will be significant in allowing the pickup more openness than machinewound. in any case, unless you were present at the Gibson factory when PAFs were made, you can only really rely on other people's accounts whether they be right or wrong. It's a bit of a pointless argument. Best just get on and make your PAFs to your own special recipe and stop talking bollocks about it....especially those who don't make humbuckers. Never mind how good your ears are; that's your opinion anyway, not everyone else's.

Perhaps, those of us who can, will post some sound clips on the new Les Paul Forum as Possum has suggested. Personally, I don't have a way of doing that yet.

[NightWinder]

Slapping the Bitch in the face after she shits on the floor is only going to train her to not shit there! Changing the enviroment (materials), manipulate the wind, make your nitch" and press on.

[soundmasterg]

So how come his ( duncs )bobbins are nearly always flared then? seems to me that it's not working for him.... mine aren't flared but then again I hand wind....?and would this be someone who machine winds commenting about the so called positives of it ? seems to me it's just another comment to justify a chosen direction . Maybe if you go along to his factory you could point out where he's going wrong with regards to bobbins flaring etc , being as you have seen and been told so much that you have such a good grasp of it .

Mick

You know I've got at least ten Duncan humbuckers and not one of them has flared bobbins...maybe some of the ones you've seen do though. Seymour machine winds some pickups and hand winds others, depending on what the design calls for and how you have to wind it. I doubt if you could reliably wind a bobbinless air coil like the Burns Tri-Sonics without a machine of some sort, and you'd need a collapsible assembly to hold it all in place until it's taped. I can do without the sarcasm Mick. You are at the same level as I am regarding your opinions on machine winding since you've never done it either, so no one can take you seriously when you talk about it either. We both have a different opinion about machine winding, and neither one will change the other's mind about it. I plan to try both approaches when I start winding myself so that I can say for sure which is better or worse. Looking at it from my perspective of not having used either method, I can see some advantages and disadvantages to each, and I'm keeping an open mind about each. Once I try it, I'll know for sure. I urge you to try it yourself before you condemn it as not being as good...you may surprise yourself.

Greg

[mick]

You know I've got at least ten Duncan humbuckers and not one of them has flared bobbins...maybe some of the ones you've seen do though. Seymour machine winds some pickups and hand winds others, depending on what the design calls for and how you have to wind it. I doubt if you could reliably wind a bobbinless air coil like the Burns Tri-Sonics without a machine of some sort, and you'd need a collapsible assembly to hold it all in place until it's taped. I can do without the sarcasm Mick. You are at the same level as I am regarding your opinions on machine winding since you've never done it either, so no one can take you seriously when you talk about it either. We both have a different opinion about machine winding, and neither one will change the other's mind about it. I plan to try both approaches when I start winding myself so that I can say for sure which is better or worse. Looking at it from my perspective of not having used either method, I can see some advantages and disadvantages to each, and I'm keeping an open mind about each. Once I try it, I'll know for sure. I urge you to try it yourself before you condemn it as not being as good...you may surprise yourself.

Greg


well I have around 20 duncans sitting here and 15 have flared bobbins , so do all the gibson pickups I have , I doubt I would want to wind a bobbinless air coil full stop , but sorry if I seem a little confused but I don't recall this being under discussion , as for the sarcasm , it wasn't meant to be sarcastic and that you took it that way is up to you really , sorry you feel that way over a forum discussion in which someone has disagreed with your second hand opinion , you don't have ANY of the facts yourself , only what you have observed , or been told , so you are even more narrow minded than you seem to think I am... Go figure, I am not at the same level as you are because you have no practical experience at all , , I may only have my biased half side of the story , but at least it is my side and not someone else's..

Mick

[mick]

" Not really. You are biased saying that what you actually do is better than something you have never done. Thats like saying vanilla is better than chocolate when you have never tried chocolate."

Are we actually making the chocolate ourselves or is it just being churned out by a factory machine ? because we all know that hand made chocolates are far better tasting than machine made chocolates.. as for vanilla? Can't stand the synthetic stuff but real vanilla...ahhhhhhhhh

Mick

[ken]

Isn't artificial vanilla toxic in large doses?

I read somewhere it was...
Ken

[Sock Puppet]

PI

Nobody knows if the digits of irrational numbers like Pi are random, but it seems unlikely. Not that anyone has cracked the code.

What is an irrational number? One that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two perhaps large numbers. Common examples are Pi, e (the base of the natural logarithms), and the square root of two.

I just read this article on PI and random numbers:

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever...chbach.pi.html

Doesn't explain the random-topic posts in threads though

S.

[Joe Gwinn]

I just read this article on PI and random numbers:

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever...chbach.pi.html

What they didn't explain is why they were so fascinated with taking groups N of numbers (n-tuples) from the generator under test and plotting them as points in an N-dimensional space, and then looking for patterns. A couple of years ago, someone discovered that the output from "mixed congruential pseudorandom number generators" (which are very widely used in computers) fall into stacks of parallel planes when so plotted. This had totally escaped notice for many decades because to see the planes you have to look from almost exactly the correct location, such that the planes are almost edge-on, and people were very surprised.

Doesn't explain the random-topic posts in threads though

Random people with random thoughts?

[NightWinder]

Dr's are having tuning issues right now. I know they were 2 months ago, that came from experience and a notice from factory personel.
Reminds me, boomers had a similiar issue in the 95'-earlie96'error, high e's and b's were breaking all the time.
MACHINE VERSE HANDWOUND : Ah, the rageing debate that will never be answered!! Simply put. Handwinding is repeatable. Knowing how to control tension, rpm, counting visually with your counter, and continuous depth checking v ersus any nuber of turn to the distance to the bobbin edge. Yes, everone will be ever so slightly different, but should fall in a common catagory for which your pickup is described. I once was facing an issue of getting more mids out of a high humbucker, and was recommended to load the bobbin, but in truth, I was looking for it in the wind, not the metal. I finally got the frequency needed without loading, but not on the expense of time and lots of experience, and wasted wire. But its there now, and repeatable because of the highly detailed notes and simply....Time. Handwinding is really an hands on approach. Time doing it, and concentrating on technic and how you are doing it is a hard lesson to learn in itself. Simply concentrating on how you are making a coil is a battle, and hard to leard how to do. Each person has their own way too. I like unorthidox shit, things that people would say can't or shpould'nt be do.....Don't ever say that to me, I'll do it!!
In all Honesty.....I say Handwinding is Superior. I have done both, and the amount of work to get things perfect with a machine (obsolete in handwinding) verus having a set formula is almost equal. Well almost. I have spent over a yr perfecting a formula, but think if you had a machine winder.....Whoa....the time. Just setting up the tension and getting it on the bobbin. I think if you make your designs handwinding, and then shun them over to a machine, it simply will not be equal, or the same.
It does seem funny that people handwinding originally, then getting a machine seems crazy, but at the same time logical. Old timers like Dave can't wind all day long, and may have some business to keep up with. Dave, do you initially record your specs and research using a handwinder, as I assume you would know when it gets to the machine, things will need fine tuned. I only ask in regards to developement and a possible acceptance of using a machine tensioner.
Handwinding vs machine???

[soundmasterg]

Well Mick, I may not have any experience of winding coils myself, but that doesn't mean I know nothing about the subject. Joe Gwinn doesn't wind anything himself, (at least I don't think he does) but he is a valuable resource here nonetheless. I have been gathering information on winding pickups for about 10 years because I'm interested in the subject and plan to do it myself one day. I haven't started yet because I've been very distracted working on tube amps and learning about them, and that is where my money has been going. In the next year or two I do plan to build a winder for myself and to begin winding coils to further my knowledge. I don't really intend to ever try to produce and sell pickups myself though unless they are an original design of my own. I don't want to try reproducing vintage style pickups unless its for my own personal use as that has already been done before.

If you object to me saying anything on the subject of hand-winding vs machine winding because I've never wound anything and in your eyes that makes me not able to have anything meaningful to contribute, then I don't really care, because you haven't done one half of those methods, and your opinion isn't valid either as a result. I objected to your argument that hand-winding is superior on that basis alone. I wasn't using someone else's side here either....I'm just saying that the opinion of Possum or Wolfe or Jason or JGundry on hand winding vs machine winding may have more validity than yours because they've tried both methods and have some real experience with both to base their opinions on. You shouldn't knock something unless you've tried it yourself. Keep an open mind about machine winding and it's possibilites until you can refute what some of these guys are saying by your first hand knowledge and you won't have an issue with me. I'm keeping an open mind about all of it myself so that I won't restrict myself when I first get started.

Greg

[Zhangliqun]

What is random vs. non-random -- maybe we're getting a little too philosophical here because intent does not lie with the wire in the bobbin; there is only wire in there. The pattern (or lack thereof) of the wind is what it is, regardless of what was intended.

Dave's example of throwing paint against a canvas is a good one. It's random, but now you can take photographs of it and duplicate it pretty much exactly -- on a screen printer or a website or a billboard or just on another canvas. We perceive intent and pattern because we see it copied over and over but the texture and relative position of the colors on each copy has not changed a bit.

Likewise the pickup is going to function the same whether it is a dead-ringer copy of an original with a truly random wind or the original itself. It neither knows nor cares whether it's the original or not.

So I guess I'm trying to say that maybe we can agree that when we as winders say random, it really means there is no recognizable pattern to the wind, whether every turn was given millenia of forethought or not -- even if it is a copy of a random wind so eerily accurate that it is the crop circle of pickups. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...

[ken]

I have been thinking about this for a long time, and I think Possum may be right when he said that certain types of pickups may benefit from the specific effects that different styles of winding may have. For example, it may be possible that the distributed capacitance effects that neatly machine wound coils have may actually be a part of a PAF pickup's 'tone'. I know from long experience that very neatly wound single coils IMHO sound to me relatively flat and lifeless.

Which is 'better' - handwinding or machine winding? Neither is better one way or the other, it doesn't really matter how pickups are made as long as people like how they sound. The listening public doesn't care much what method was used to wind the pickups, they only want to dance.

One more thing...

/snip
Yesterday 09:25 PM
mick " Not really. You are biased saying that what you actually do is better than something you have never done. Thats like saying vanilla is better than chocolate when you have never tried chocolate."

Are we actually making the chocolate ourselves or is it just being churned out by a factory machine ? because we all know that hand made chocolates are far better tasting than machine made chocolates.. as for vanilla? Can't stand the synthetic stuff but real vanilla...ahhhhhhhhh

Mick
-------------------------------------------------
Mr Gwinn, I rejumped into this thread at this point about six posts back when Mick was discussing the finer points of 'real' vanilla food flavor. In an attempt to add some levity, I posted my own reply to him. There was nothing random about my post, and I resent any implication that I am a 'random person with random thoughts?' per your own post, as if I don't belong here. I have been a member here awhile too.

Instead of pontificating about things like groups of numbers as patterns in N-dimensional space, I spend my time winding pickups and making machine tools for my own factory, like an injection molder and converting the 1946? Geo. Stevens mechanical coil winder in the photo below to CNC operation. This is an early photo - the mechanical and electronic parts of this winder are now done and I am now using VB6 on an old Compaq laptop to write the driver program.

Anyone who would like to learn about how to do this themselves may email me offgroup. Even Spence and Mick.

If it sounds good, it is good.
Ken

[ken]

For some reason my winder photo didn't attach to the post I just sent.

If you're interested, here it is.

Ken

[Possum]

.......

being an old timer has nothing really to do with repetitive stress, some people are prone to it and others not. I had major problems with the first computers back in the 80s, wrecked my shoulder from mouse useage so bad for a year I couldn't lift my arm over shoulder height, that was 27 years ago.

I think that some think handwinding is superior because you have more immediate direct control over what you want to wind instead of making the jump to learning how to do that via a machine and programming. When I built my machine I didn't make it wind like a machine, I made it wind like I do by hand and those are the results I got with it. Its only through using the machine that I now know for instance if you want to boost the midrange do more random passes at different speeds and you'll get a more midrangey sounding pickup. You can't really figure stuff out like that unless you also have experience with a machine set to do one speed traverse passes which gives you something to compare against. I use the machine as a robot to do what I did by hand and it can do more than I could do by hand. Neither is better, I like the option of having more control over the outcome and I don't like living with constant tennis elbow :-(

[Spence]

Ken said "Instead of pontificating about things like groups of numbers as patterns in N-dimensional space, I spend my time winding pickups and making machine tools for my own factory, like an injection molder and converting the 1946? Geo. Stevens mechanical coil winder in the photo below to CNC operation. This is an early photo - the mechanical and electronic parts of this winder are now done and I am now using VB6 on an old Compaq laptop to write the driver program.

Anyone who would like to learn about how to do this themselves may email me offgroup. Even Spence and Mick. "

That's very kind of you to offer Ken.

I don't have a CNC controlled machine but that is through choice. I could make one with my background in control engineering without too much trouble. I have seen Possum's machine too which is quite ingenious.