Interleaved windings?

[Satamax]

Has any pickup maker tried "interleaving" the wire, i mean starting the coil with two or three parallel wires, and winding the whole pickup like this? I was reading the go tall thread, and someone was stating that 43 was too thin to build a coil big enough at a normal DCR, then paralleling two wires would halve the DCR of such a pickup with a bigger coil Or am i going completely astray?

[parentheticalfact]

I have not tried this (interesting idea), but I can tell you that if you have two strands of wire winding at the same time you will run out of room on the bobbin much quicker. I would guess this would reduce the capacitance in each "coil" as compared to, say a strat pickup with just 42 awg wire and another with just 43 awg wire.
If you were working with a bobbin with enough space I would definitely think it would be worthwhile to try it. Sure seems like it might be tough to keep the wire from tanging though.

[soundmasterg]

I had this idea too awhile back and talked with Possum about it. He hasn't tried it himself but theorized that it wouldn't sound very good. (or in his exact words, it will sound like shit!) I read about Seymour Duncan having done this too but I don't know what his results were. If you search his archived pickup FAQ, I believe it is in there.

[Satamax]

Well, thanks alot guys.

Just something which crossed my mind, and now i think, may be it would be possible to do this with 44 or 45 awg? 46 may be? I don't know what's the thinnest. I'm not a winder by any means, so you see where i'm standing. I might go for it one of thoses days, if i can build a winder on the cheap and buy cheap wire. I'd like to do some very old style pickups. Wire dirtectly onto the bare magnets.

Bye.

Max.

[soundmasterg]

You know, if you think about it, you could wind a Strat bobin with 42 gauge wire, but wind from two spools at the same time so the wire from each spool is in parallel with each other on the bobbin. If you did this to half the turns count as normal, you would end up with the same amount of wire on the bobbin as normal, but you would have two beginnings and two ends, and you could hook them up differently to get different options. The real question is if you hooked it up so one parallel coil was in series with the other to get the max resistance, how would it sound as compared to a normal Strat bobbin? And that can't really be answered unless you try it I suppose......

[DrStrangelove]

Bifilar winding

Compared to winding with a single wire, a bifilar wind gets you half the resistance, half the output voltage, and less than half the inductance.

The bobbin would fill up twice as fast, too.

It would sound very bright but would be relatively insensitive to loading from the volume and tone controls.

Multiple cored wire called "litz" (short for litzendraht) has advantages of higher AC conductivity at radio frequencies.

An old paper on selecting litz wires for transformers is at:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sullivan/litzwire/litz.html

-drh

[soundmasterg]

If you did one of these winds, you end up with two coil starts and two coil ends right?

So if you had one coil start be the beginning (1st coil) which is on the inside, then hook the 1st coil's end to the end of the 2nd coil, and end up with this 2nd coil's beginning as the end of the whole thing, you would have the same resistance as a coil wound with just one wire at a time wouldn't you? Essentially the two coils on the same bobbin would be wired in series with each other to make one coil? It would start on the inside of the bobbin, go to the outside, and then back to the inside again. I would think this would have the same resistance as a coil wound with one wire from inside to outside like a standard coil? I don't know how the other parameters like inductance, capacitance, output voltage, etc., would end up.

Greg

[DrStrangelove]

Yup, you'd have two parallel coils and you could collect them in series to get a coil with the same DC resistance as a single coil, etc.

...but that wasn't the original question.

I've no idea how it would sound.

Transformer manufacturors use dual primaries on power transformers so that they can be wired for 110 or 220 VAC.

-drh

[soundmasterg]

Thats what I thought. I guess someone would have to experiment and wind a coil this way to see how it would sound as compared to the more normal way with a single coil on one bobbin. Maybe when I get around to winding myself I'll try it.....

[Satamax]

My original question was did anybody do a coil like dis and do whatever they could with it Interleaved windings are usual in hifi i think. If i had a winder and wire, i'd try the outside inside thing.

Bye.

Max.

[Zhangliqun]

I've wondered about this myself more than once -- but I would definitely wire the "two" coils in series to get a normal spec so I could hear the difference between a normal pickup and one in...uh..."parallel series", for lack of a less confusing description. (Pass the Advil...)

[Arthur B.]

I've wondered about this myself more than once -- but I would definitely wire the "two" coils in series to get a normal spec so I could hear the difference between a normal pickup and one in...uh..."parallel series", for lack of a less confusing description. (Pass the Advil...)

I believe term you're looking for is "series aiding". I'm more interested in what series opposing sounds like. Will there be any sound at all?

[WolfeMacleod]

Yes. I did it about seven years ago, with 43 and 44 guage wire. I gave it to one of Seatle's best known repair and tech guys, Mike Lull.

Parallell wires, two coils per bobbin, completly independent of each other. Eight leads.
It's called Bifilar winding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifilar

[soundmasterg]

So what were your impressions of the sound of it Wolfe as compared to a normal bobbin?

[WolfeMacleod]

So what were your impressions of the sound of it Wolfe as compared to a normal bobbin?

Don't know, never heard it. I don't do tricked out wiring very well...

I'll do it again, probably soon, and send it to someone I know who is capable of wiring it up with 4 push/pull to do everything it could do.