What kinds of coil-winding tensioner do people use, or avoid?

[jack briggs]

The dancer's only function is to measure the tension of the wire. The Azonic tensioners have gone up in price since I tried one, if you're running it without measuring the tension why even buy the thing? A felt works just as good, though maybe the Azonic wears more slowly so tension is more constant. I'm not really interested in cranking out lots of pickups anyway, so have no need of a winder you could theoretically walk away from. I'd never walk away from a running winder anyway, I watch each coil very intently.... Yeah the felt on piano hammers might work, but I think they'd be too hard. You might check McMaster to see if they have thick felt washers, I just had a couple sets of the battery felts sitting around so grabbed those...

Seems to me the whole idea of using the Azonic (or anything else) is to be able to standardize and repeat what works. But, since the gauge arm is what bothers some, why not just use it to set the tension, then remove the wire from it and wind away? The machine tensions by the brake rubbing against the feed wheel, so the dancer gauge arm is only an indicator - right?


cheers,

[Beef Coon]

I use neoprene in place of felt in my tensioner, the type used for wetsuits that has a tough "cloth" on one side close. Wire goes through tensioner which is maybe a foot above the spool, over a pulley that is covered in neoprene and under a bar also covered in neoprene. Covering those two points of contact with it adds a bit of drag/tension so I don't need to have much pressure with the tensioner by the spool. The cloth is very tough and the neoprene has good elasticity. This material is readily available to me and cheap/free, so that's why I tried it originally.

[Rick Turner]

I'm using felt on my CoWeCo winder, and I can match humbucker coils to +/- 1% DCR winding with 44 gauge at about 1,500 RPM.

[ReWind]

Seems to me the whole idea of using the Azonic (or anything else) is to be able to standardize and repeat what works. But, since the gauge arm is what bothers some, why not just use it to set the tension, then remove the wire from it and wind away? The machine tensions by the brake rubbing against the feed wheel, so the dancer gauge arm is only an indicator - right?


cheers,

That's generally how I approach it. (sorry about the watermark, it shows up TOO much on that photo)