New Mojotone Butyrate humbucker bobbins. How accurate are they ?

[MrCandy]

StewMac bobbins are a Japanese design, they are made in Japan, its a Japanese idea of a humbucker coil design. I don't like the way they sound, its a real "white bread" sound made by that particular coil height, coil core and core length, I find it boring and don't offer anything using it. If you like it, use it like everyone else does. I used them when I was a beginner and loved them, but the tones just didn't get close to where I wanted to eventually go.

I think that bobbin design is not the basis in sound modelling. If winding method is constant, then tone will be a little different in comparison.
But we can use different winding tech to modulate sound we want to get where common in size bobbins design dont really matter.
For example we can take Mojo and StewMac bobbins. Under equal number of wire turns and wire gauge it is possible to make one coil with RP 8kHz and another with 15kHz and vice versa.

With all due respect
MrCandy

[Possum]

Wolfe sometimes I try to challenge people to THINK about what they are doing and people get pissed off rather than try to start asking new questions they could learn something new from. I don't believe in just telling how something works just giving it away because no one learns anything that way, get someone to ask the right questions and go in their shop and make something to try it out and they'll never forget the knowledge. I respect all the winders here, seriously I do. David makes some seriously original designs for instance, I have high respect for anyone who looks under the hood and is never satisfied and always keeps looking and trying new things you can't buy prepackaged from StewMac ;-) I never said those pickups weren't good, I just find them boring and there is nothing wrong with that, its my opinion and having made the same things when I started out I was glad to get away from those restrictions. I outfitted a complete small machine shop of my own so I can make anything I want to pretty much, there is such freedom in that and it teaches you about pickup design. If you want to know what something does or how it works, make it radically different and see what happens. Anyway, I apologize if you're taking this the wrong way. No, I'm not going to take some tone challenge, I can only make judgements on something I play in my guitar thru my amp because everything else is completely alien to my own reference points, if you're talking about the 1018 vs. 1215 slugs comparison yes I can hear in experiments. There is also the fact that any steel stock you buy from different companies doesn't all sound the same, I have same alloy in at least 4 radically different sounding batches, I know quite a bit about steel, magnetics and tone having spent about 7 years at it and also tutored by a top guy in that field. Its also why I don't have the stuff made for me, and make it myself so I have complete control over what goes out to customers. I've experimented with about four different alloys, one of them some really expensive electrical steel and several others. It gets really freaking complex when you are mixing 3 different alloys in a humbucker and start swapping things around, the combinations are almost endless and mind numbing trying to decide what sounds the best, not to mention that swapping anything around takes about a week to settle in and stabilize tonally. I have some other alloys I have yet to try in stock as well. Since I'm done with the PAF trip I'm starting to do new pickup designs so am getting back into it, mostly non-buckers for now......

[Possum]

Capt. Koolaid welcome to 'da jungle!! How is the Gorman treating you these days? That thing is a serious advantage in making humbuckers, machine winding buckers is the only way to go and sets you apart from the pack. Not to mention that sucker is FAST?

[Possum]

Wolfe I forgot to mention that I'm an ornery old bastard too, LOL. Not that I'm not the only here but it would be inapropriate to mention RedHouse, so I won't... ;-)

[RedHouse]

....There seems to be this common concept that all humbucker bobbins sound alike....far from it!! ...

Wow, that was a quick turn around from yesterday's "Allparts and Stew-Mac bobbins sound like Japan Rock pickups".

Don't you get whiplash from back-pedaling so fast?

[captcoolaid]

I agree CoolAid with what you said, but not the way you said it.
There should be room on here for differences in Opinions.
Yes You still have time to Edit Your Post.
Peace!
B_T

I edited it for bad form on this forum. Sorry for the name calling.

[copperheadroads]

I love the smell of sour milk bobbins in the morning

[the great waldo]

Hi All

As I started this thread, I was wondering how long Gibson left their P.A.F.´s to tonally stabilize in the 50´s I´m still winding by hand and would be well happy if all the stewmac coils I wound sounded the same. Winding by hand can make them sound totally different which is why i´m making an elepro cnc winder and possibly a Lollar style winder to try and get some regularity. It´s a bugger winding a good pickup and then not being able to reproduce it. One thing I have noticed is that any pickup that has come back to me from a customer has usually been taken by another customer and gladly so. Musicians have different tastes and styles (thank god) I think the main point to remember is that the pickup is just a link in the whole musical chain and I would say that the player has at least 80% of the tone and the rest is hardware. Everybody is always looking for the magic tone, mostly this involved good players who also played tube amps and loud. the guys from the 50-70´s used what amps were available (tube) I was brought up in London on these sounds and it´s hard to really reproduce a good live sound at low volume on a transistor amp. Always nice to see pistols at dawn on the forum it adds a bit of Vindaloo to the site !!!!! Ps the mojo bobbins arrived to Austria via Australia (thank you usps.) and look very nice. I only wanted to know if there was a difference to the originals as one pays a premium over the normal style bobbins. Now if only someone can come up with 49.2 base plates with threaded screw holes. But thats another can of worms.

Cheers all

Andrew

[big_teee]

Hi All

As I started this thread, I was wondering how long Gibson left their P.A.F.´s to tonally stabilize in the 50´s I´m still winding by hand and would be well happy if all the stewmac coils I wound sounded the same. Winding by hand can make them sound totally different which is why i´m making an elepro cnc winder and possibly a Lollar style winder to try and get some regularity. It´s a bugger winding a good pickup and then not being able to reproduce it. One thing I have noticed is that any pickup that has come back to me from a customer has usually been taken by another customer and gladly so. Musicians have different tastes and styles (thank god) I think the main point to remember is that the pickup is just a link in the whole musical chain and I would say that the player has at least 80% of the tone and the rest is hardware. Everybody is always looking for the magic tone, mostly this involved good players who also played tube amps and loud. the guys from the 50-70´s used what amps were available (tube) I was brought up in London on these sounds and it´s hard to really reproduce a good live sound at low volume on a transistor amp. Always nice to see pistols at dawn on the forum it adds a bit of Vindaloo to the site !!!!! Ps the mojo bobbins arrived to Austria via Australia (thank you usps.) and look very nice. I only wanted to know if there was a difference to the originals as one pays a premium over the normal style bobbins. Now if only someone can come up with 49.2 base plates with threaded screw holes. But thats another can of worms.

Cheers all

Andrew

I agree completely.
If your trying to get wonderful tone.
Then the best place to start is with a wonderful sounding amp.
Then go from there with looking for the Holy Grail Pickups.
Glad the Bobbins made it to you in good Shape.
Terry

[David Schwab]

Hi All

As I started this thread, I was wondering how long Gibson left their P.A.F.´s to tonally stabilize in the 50´s I´m still winding by hand and would be well happy if all the stewmac coils I wound sounded the same. Winding by hand can make them sound totally different which is why i´m making an elepro cnc winder and possibly a Lollar style winder to try and get some regularity.

Tonally stabilize? Gibson wound them until the bobbins were full, and that's all folks! Then they likely went onto a cart to get installed. PAFs all sound different too. Some of them suck, and others sound great. As long as they were in spec, or close to it, that was good enough.

A lot of overanalyzing goes on now, with people thinking that Gibson agonized over minutiae on bobbin shapes or materials or even colors. Hog wash! They designed a pickup and started winding them. They used commonly available screws for the poles and what ever alnico magnets they could get cheap. They used butyrate because that was a common plastic to use. They picked about 5,000 turns per coil because it was half of the 10,000 turns on a P-90. The finished product wasn't even what Seth Lover had intended; the adjustable poles were added by the marketing department! That was because Fender didn't have adjustable poles. it was like the guitar cold war. Fender had single coils that hummed and was selling a bunch of solid bodies. Gibson had to one-up them. Theres nothing mystical about PAFs.

Later the pickup winding was more automated because production had ramped up. But the early ones were very haphazardly wound.

You shouldn't have any problem hand winding them and having them sound consistent. Just wind neatly and keep track of your turn count.

But I'm also building the Elepro CNC winder, but thats to speed things up a bit. Plus winding all day can get monotonous...

[RedHouse]

Here is an interesting bit of insight from a guy who knows good tone.

Check this video out, the interesting opinion about how much pickups contribute to the tone of a guitar, it's a Dicky Betts interview on the Gibson site:

The quote in question is at 5:06 -> 6:04

http://video.gibson.com.s3.amazonaws...key-Betts2.mp4

Says he put (real) PAFs into a brand new Les Paul and it didn't make it sound any better. Then said he put a new pickup in his Gold top and it didn't change the sound any.

I totally agree with what he's saying, and IMHO, if it ain't in the wood to start with, the pickups aint gonna get it there. Pickups can help, or hinder, but don't "make" the sound.

Now where's that asbestos overcoat, it's gonna get hot in here!

[RedHouse]

Tonally stabilize? Gibson wound them until the bobbins were full, and that's all folks! Then they likely went onto a cart to get installed. PAFs all sound different too. Some of them suck, and others sound great. As long as they were in spec, or close to it, that was good enough.

A lot of overanalyzing goes on now, with people thinking that Gibson agonized over minutiae on bobbin shapes or materials or even colors. Hog wash! They designed a pickup and started winding them. They used commonly available screws for the poles and what ever alnico magnets they could get cheap. They used butyrate because that was a common plastic to use. They picked about 5,000 turns per coil because it was half of the 10,000 turns on a P-90. The finished product wasn't even what Seth Lover had intended; the adjustable poles were added by the marketing department! That was because Fender didn't have adjustable poles. it was like the guitar cold war. Fender had single coils that hummed and was selling a bunch of solid bodies. Gibson had to one-up them. Theres nothing mystical about PAFs.

Later the pickup winding was more automated because production had ramped up. But the early ones were very haphazardly wound.

You shouldn't have any problem hand winding them and having them sound consistent. Just wind neatly and keep track of your turn count.

But I'm also building the Elepro CNC winder, but thats to speed things up a bit. Plus winding all day can get monotonous...

I agree 100%, specially the part about the way and the materials were used and chosen.

Some PAFs sound great, most sound just like any other humbucker (even Japanese rock pickups), and some sound downright shitty. It is, what it is, and nothing more.

I'm not saying we (anyone here, or elsewhere) aren't doing good work, it's just that pickup makers tend to completely over-hype their stuff, sure, to try for market share, but still, it's way over the top.

[David Schwab]

Says he put (real) PAFs into a brand new Les Paul and it didn't make it sound any better. Then said he put a new pickup in his Gold top and it didn't change the sound any.

I think the whole PAF thing has gotten blown out of proportion because 99% of players have never heard one, and have no idea what they sound like. But they think they need it, and their tone sucks with new pickups, etc. So to the age old question; "what does a real PAF sound like", the answer is "yes". (The answer makes about as much sense as the question!)

A good sounding guitar is a good sounding guitar.

[big_teee]

Didn't they have just anyone handy run the Pickup winding machines?
They were to turn them off when they got full?
Probably had the Floor Sweeper doing it.
Same with Fender, Cheap was the game.
Terry

[RedHouse]

...They were to turn them off when they got full?...

I think that was the Fender story.