Time to Come Clean

[salvarsan]

Fieldwrangler,

If you want to make 100's of pickups instead of 10's, and your coil-building firm talks in TPL, then learn a little TPL.

The coil estimator web app might help a little.

You might ask your contractors to make several pickups of differing TPL so that you could see which one(s) sound best.

Get coil samples for 60, 70, and 80% max TPL and let your ears decide.

[Possum]

Boy you're stepping into a deep pool here. If you're having some coil winding company do work for you, basically you're going to be stuck with what they are used to doing. You are coming from zero knowledge about machine winding so you have nothing to base you instructions to them on. Tone is way more than just TPL and tension. How would you even communicate tension to a coil winding company unless you own a tensioner and know how many grams of tension to specify? TPL is a non-intuitive non-linear thing to begin with. If you wind 20 winds per layer then go to 30 you'll hear something change, but go to 40 TPL and you may find things go in the opposite direction of what you think it will. The only sane way to instruction a coil winding company in making coils for you is first to buy a machine winder and an adjustable wire tensioner, then give yourself a couple years experience winding with it. But before even doing that you should master hand winding first and be able to control the kinds of tones you want from the coil wind alone. If you don't want to do it the hard way, the alternative is use the width of the space the coil will fill, divide it by the magnet wire diameter to get how many turns will solidly fill one pass, then have them wind one like that, then one say 10% less, 20% less, etc. and then listen to the results. There are recommended tensions for winding different gauges of magnet wire but doubt it would be of much use in guitar pickups.

With machine winds I doubt they would give you the option of doing more than specifying one TPL within one coil. I machine wind but I don't set it on one deal and walk away from it. Your average industrial winding machine can't handle changing TPL's within one coil wind, thats one reason I didnt ever buy one or want one. I built a simple CNC winder that costs almost nothing to build and uses G-code and you can put unlimited lines of code in the programming. Same problem with mechanical machine winders, most of them will only do one TPL and you're stuck with it unless you buy other gear sets, etc.

[fieldwrangler]

Are they "off-shore"?
(ie; north of Thailand, west of India, south of Siberia?)

No, they're here in town.

All kidding aside, anytime you "out-source" you risk letting your spec/design go away beyond your control. Even if no one pop's up saying "we got his stuff" your spec/design has a HUGE chance of finding it's way into another someone's product and becomming potentially, your competition.
(potential, but not inevitable)

Certainly their products.

[fieldwrangler]

Boy you're stepping into a deep pool here. If you're having some coil winding company do work for you, basically you're going to be stuck with what they are used to doing. You are coming from zero knowledge about machine winding so you have nothing to base you instructions to them on. Tone is way more than just TPL and tension. How would you even communicate tension to a coil winding company unless you own a tensioner and know how many grams of tension to specify? TPL is a non-intuitive non-linear thing to begin with. If you wind 20 winds per layer then go to 30 you'll hear something change, but go to 40 TPL and you may find things go in the opposite direction of what you think it will. The only sane way to instruction a coil winding company in making coils for you is first to buy a machine winder and an adjustable wire tensioner, then give yourself a couple years experience winding with it.

Great idea, but it's time to get some product out there.

But before even doing that you should master hand winding first and be able to control the kinds of tones you want from the coil wind alone.

I will, in fact, do some more of this this very week. I do have some idea of what I expect from some variations; less about others.

If you don't want to do it the hard way, the alternative is use the width of the space the coil will fill, divide it by the magnet wire diameter to get how many turns will solidly fill one pass, then have them wind one like that, then one say 10% less, 20% less, etc. and then listen to the results. There are recommended tensions for winding different gauges of magnet wire but doubt it would be of much use in guitar pickups.

Very good way to set this up.

With machine winds I doubt they would give you the option of doing more than specifying one TPL within one coil.

They say that they're accustomed to using 4 tpl specs per coil.

I machine wind but I don't set it on one deal and walk away from it. Your average industrial winding machine can't handle changing TPL's within one coil wind, thats one reason I didnt ever buy one or want one. I built a simple CNC winder that costs almost nothing to build and uses G-code and you can put unlimited lines of code in the programming. Same problem with mechanical machine winders, most of them will only do one TPL and you're stuck with it unless you buy other gear sets, etc.

I may end up going down a similar road, depending on the initial samples I get back from them.

[fieldwrangler]

I'm guessing the versatility they're bragging about is in the traverse mechanism rather than the tensioner. .

I think so, too.

I also think they'll crank out a number of paired samples wound to different specs.

I know what you mean about the tension variation...

[fieldwrangler]

A very good gear driven mechanical winder which can do between 2 and 500 tpl can be had for $300 and $500 without looking very hard

I'll admit to not really knowing where to look for such things, but (as you & Dave are pointing out) it really is the only way I'm gonna know what to specify.

[belwar]

I looked briefly last night, and there are not a ton of the one i'm thinking of out there right now.. Probably due to the thanksgiving holiday they just arent listed. New ones come up every week so its just a matter of time.

Check out a Bachi 115. Great winder designed by Leesona. I bought my first one for $199 with a set of gears. I recently bought its cousin the 315 for $200 with a full gear set as well. You can buy individual gears from a company out there so if you know what you want to accomplish its really not that expensive.

HGR surplus often has this winder for $3-500.

[MrCandy]

So - I'm not asking for anyone to hand over their hard-won personal formulas; I just want to know what you think is a good place to start, and if there's any general consensus about what to do from the inside towards the outside of a coil.

Some information you interested in about TPL was written here on this forum.
And here is information about tension, it can be useful 2.

[tmenss]

Some information you interested in about TPL was written here on this forum.
And here is information about tension, it can be useful 2.

Thanks for sharing the information. Based upon the thread the discussion about "TPL with higher PR may not sound as bright", I believe is actually supported in the data. My contention is that many people interpret the PR curves as the actual frequency response of a pickup. It is an efficiency tranfer plot, the frequencies however, only imply the actual sound. The sound we hear includes the overtone series of the fundamental If we look at the 120ls plot compared to the 30ls plot in the sample range of 5k-10K frequency, the low PR plot (120ls) actually passes more frequencies within that sample and it will pass those higher frequencies at a steeper output gain. This is what accounts for the brighter sound of the lower PR pickup, there are more bright overtones passed and they brightly color the fundamental tone compared to the 30ls pickup with higher PR. Another way to interpret the information is that for any fundamental frequency, what happens to its overtone series relative to the slope of the impedance curve.

So capacitance relative to TPL...perhaps these aren't as important in a final analysis as they've been made out to be.

[Leonardo337]

So -
As a longtime Hand Guider I've payed attention to wire gauge, insulation, number of turns, tension and aspect ratios. However, as far as the finer points of layering go, really, I just basically try to do what I hafta do to get all the wire on there and have the coil look nice & even on the outside when I'm done. Then, I check them on the MIghty Extech, and the ones that look pretty much identical (which is most of them) get used.

As a result, I kindof have no idea what I'm really doing, and 'till now, just wanted make sure I kept doing it, whatever the heck it is, because the decisions I'm making about the pickups have been based on how they sound when built around those coils.

I'm not even sure I should be commenting on this thread, being about as far away from 'professional winder' as you can be, but IMHO the difference between machine wound and hand is that machines never get tired and never get distracted by anything... Maybe your 'MOJO' is down to you tensing up as you near the total figure, or relaxing slightly as you see the winding starting to go smoothly. Bear in mind that the little things like this will simply not be reproduced on a machine and therefore your handwound pups will always be better than any mass produced ones done to the same spec. It may be obvious advice but don't aim to mass reproduce what you've done so far, aim for a reasonable facsimile and you'll alleviate a lot of the stress along the way. Like a custom-shop, always hold something back behind the counter and breed exclusivity and desireability with it.

Just an opinion, like I say, I have no experience in the field anyway but best of luck with it, I hope it all goes well for you.

[fieldwrangler]

I'm not even sure I should be commenting on this thread, being about as far away from 'professional winder' as you can be, but IMHO the difference between machine wound and hand is that machines never get tired and never get distracted by anything... Maybe your 'MOJO' is down to you tensing up as you near the total figure, or relaxing slightly as you see the winding starting to go smoothly. Bear in mind that the little things like this will simply not be reproduced on a machine and therefore your handwound pups will always be better than any mass produced ones done to the same spec. It may be obvious advice but don't aim to mass reproduce what you've done so far, aim for a reasonable facsimile and you'll alleviate a lot of the stress along the way. Like a custom-shop, always hold something back behind the counter and breed exclusivity and desireability with it.


Just an opinion, like I say, I have no experience in the field anyway but best of luck with it, I hope it all goes well for you.

You've explicated some important things here.

Also, I like your sign-off tag at the bottom of your post.

[big_teee]

I'm not even sure I should be commenting on this thread, being about as far away from 'professional winder' as you can be, but IMHO the difference between machine wound and hand is that machines never get tired and never get distracted by anything... Maybe your 'MOJO' is down to you tensing up as you near the total figure, or relaxing slightly as you see the winding starting to go smoothly. Bear in mind that the little things like this will simply not be reproduced on a machine and therefore your handwound pups will always be better than any mass produced ones done to the same spec. It may be obvious advice but don't aim to mass reproduce what you've done so far, aim for a reasonable facsimile and you'll alleviate a lot of the stress along the way. Like a custom-shop, always hold something back behind the counter and breed exclusivity and desireability with it.

Just an opinion, like I say, I have no experience in the field anyway but best of luck with it, I hope it all goes well for you.

I think you just described my Helter Skelter Winding Technique.
B_T