Advice or Suggestions for a strat stacked single

[blakkwater]

Hello everyone!

I'm new to this forum, cuz quite frankly, I needed to tap into some serious knowhow for the project i'm working on.

I have some bobbins of various shapes and sizes, but I intend to re-wind a strat single coil, except make it a stacked humbucker (neck position) to compliment the DiMarzio Fast Track 2 I have installed in the bridge position.

I've already made sure I know about the basics and the physics of the pickup, I re-wound a P-90 as a gr. 12 physics experiment.

What I want to know is any tips, advice, or anything else you can tell me about making a stacked single coil. From my research thus far, I've noticed that many people prefer a series wiring compared to parallel.

I'm not sure how to do a series wiring on a single coil bobbin, cuz I don't know how exactly to do that crucial connection between the first and second coil and where to put it. Obviously, since I have only one bobbin, I can't just wind the first coil and then randomly start reverse winding for the 2nd coil...that'd just unwind the 1st one.

[David Schwab]

You have to have a separator between the top and bottom half. Or two bobbins. It would be pretty difficult to do it on one bobbin.

I made a stacked tele lead pickup recently. I decided to do it the Duncan way and have the poles run through both bobbins. What I did differently is use a blade and two ceramic magnets set up like a P-90. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd get... I would the pickup on the hot side with #43 wire.

Now here's the track with stacked pickups. The two coils have to be out of phase with one another or you wont get hum cancelation. But then the issue becomes that you also get some signal cancelation. In my case this was aggravated by my magnet setup.

I ended up with a very bright sounding pickup. The lows are a bit on the weak side, but it doesn't sound bad.. just not what I was expecting. It's very Tele sounding. I think it would make a nice neck pickup.

To get around the situation I probably need to wind the two coils differently. This was suggested to me by one of the forum members here who really knows his stuff, and I do believe he's right. I just haven't had time to try it out.

You can also try using a shield between the coils like a few makers do.

As long as you are making one for yourself, check out some of the relevant patents for ideas:

DiMarzio:

4442749

5811710

5908998

Duncan:

4524667

Kinman:

7022909

5668520

[blakkwater]

jebus!

thanks David. Yeah thinking about it, it does make more sense to have a separated bobbin... fortunately I have a bobbin specifically for stacked singles...blade magnet (not sure what it's made of though).

I was thinking of using the bottom flatwork of the strat pickup (minus the individual pole pieces and top flatwork bit) as a base for the stack bobbin.

Not sure if I'd still need that 2nd magnet on the underside of the strat flatwork though.

[Richard Head]

Hot stacked strat pickup

Ok, Any of you Einsteins out there got a good recipe for a strat style stacked humbucker with plenty of output?

This for my ultimate travel guitar which also has a built in preamp and is frequently used in the proximity of large (bus, train, airplane) engines.

Thats why the humbucking is necessary, and a hot pickup is just cooler generally speaking. I'm thinking of recommendations for DC resistance, and gauss for the magnets which need to be poles in connection with the mounting.

Currently I'm using a Select SES but something a little more "boutique" would be preferable

By the way, you can view the guitar at www.lapstick.com

rgds

[Spence]

How does 12K sound on A5 top deck and A3 bottom deck with a diamagnetic medium between poles?

[Richard Head]

Spence man! Gimme that in english! I may be stupider than you think.

[David Schwab]

It's hard to get a lot of output out of a stacked pickup. If the bottom coil is active (sensing the strings), you are getting phase cancelation. If the bottom coil is a dummy (not sensing the strings), you are loosing signal in it.

If you look over some of the commercial units, you see they have a TON of wire wound on them. DiMarzio's HS-3 are about 24K. The lower output HS-2 is 14k.

I made a stacked Tele pickup and it's about 14K and is about average output, and sounds very bright, like a stock Tele. It's a nice sounding pickup, but I was shooting for something with more output. Mine is sort of based on the Duncan patent with the magnetic blade running though both coils, but with a P-90 type magnet setup.

Personally I think the dual blade units work better.

[DrStrangelove]

Fishing Sinker weights

How does 12K sound on A5 top deck and A3 bottom deck with a diamagnetic medium between poles?

Clever. Yeah, lets use bismuth for the center plate. You can melt it down from modern fish sinkers.

Since the bottom coil provides a hum-canceling signal and contributes much less to the guitar string signal, has anyone tried winding the bottom coil with big wire like #32?

-drh

[Spence]

Fish sinkers or modern shot are a bismuth/tin alloy. It helps if it's pure bismuth which is obtainable from China. However, it will work with a bismuth alloy so long as the lower magnets are of a lesser power than the tops.
Essentially as Dr. Strangelove knows, a diamagnetic material will repel a magnetic pole regardless of whether it be North or South.
Well, I did say a while back I was working on a stacked single design so now you know.

[David Schwab]

Why not remove the bottom magnets and stick a steel core in there? Then bend the shield in a U shape to direct the top magnet's field up.

[Dave Kerr]

What would using thicker wire in the bottom bobbin buy you? Isn't the RF generated a function of turns * area? I suppose the wire gauge would increase the average turn area quite a bit, but would fit far fewer turns.

[Richard Head]

Dave thanks a lot for the valuable information. It all makes perfect sense when you think about it but you and the other guys on the forum who posted on this subject have saved me about 6 months of testing. Cool.

It's great to get all of this input and experience, like stumbling across a gold mine really. Although I have been repairing and rewinding pickups for years as an offshoot of my guitar repair business there are aspects of the art that I never imagined existed.

I have a lot more questions for you guys.

rgds

[David Schwab]

What would using thicker wire in the bottom bobbin buy you? Isn't the RF generated a function of turns * area? I suppose the wire gauge would increase the average turn area quite a bit, but would fit far fewer turns.

Thicker wire is lower resistance per turn. But then you can fit less of it on a bobbin. But if you could get about the same number of turns, the thicker wire on the bottom coil would probably have less affect on the tone of the upper coil.

Now all you need to do is increase the area of the dummy and you have the Suhr system*


(*which was first postulated by Rick Turner at the MIMF forum.)

[Possum]

bismuth and UFOs...

thought I'd throw this in for you conspiracy fans. There exists actual samples of metal from the Roswell crash, bismuth featured strongly in the samples and was layered with two other metals, you think those things are hum cancelling?
http://www.keelynet.com/rodbism.htm

[NightWinder]

damn, I'll shut up and learn!!