hand winders or cnc winder

[David Schwab]

If you had told me back in '78, that in a few years, a little lunchbox sized computer would destroy every typesetting business in the world, would obsolete megamillion dollar photo retouching computer systems, allow anyone to do their own airbrush photo retouching, and put together four color ad and brochure design, ready for printing presses to run on press, I would have said you were totally crazy. Those changes happened nearly overnite. Well, it happened, and wanna-be "designers" came out of the woodwork, undercut professional pricing and pretty much flattened the field of graphic design, and brought the high level of design standards in that field down to a tragic level of mediocrity. Its never really recovered and the golden age of super star graphic designers is long gone, current generations don't even know those guy's names.

Amen brother! I started in printing as an offset stripper. Most people don't even know what that is anymore. I was smart enough to learn PageMaker and Quark and all that back in the early 90s, but the graphics industry is pretty much dead because printing got so expensive.

[RedHouse]

Amen brother! I started in printing as an offset stripper. Most people don't even know what that is anymore. I was smart enough to learn PageMaker and Quark and all that back in the early 90s, but the graphics industry is pretty much dead because printing got so expensive.

Double amen brother.


Last year I looked into having some of those 5"x7" postcards made up for advertising, so I checked around in my area sheesh! what a funkin eye-opener. All the "printers" (those big offset guys) wanted $1000 just to get a run going, whether they print 10 or 1000 pieces, still 1k to get 'em to roll.

No wonder that "Vistaprint" (which I don't use) is doing such a bang-up business, locals are sticking to their guns, big-$ or get ta steppin, I finally found a printer in a small town about 1-1/2 drive away, they do those postcard adverts that you get in your (physical) mailbox, and got 500 printed for under $100 bucks.

IMHO, with an attitude like that, I wouldn't care if those offset guys disappered as a footnote in history. IMHO it was those guys back 20 years ago that had such a lock on things it's what propelled the desktop printing industry. And after seeing the writing on the wall, do you think those offset guys are rising to tho occasion? nope, still want the big bucks, still have several hundred dollar "setup fee's"

On another note, and not at all in the league you guys were in, but I spent a year being an OCE operator once.
(a big ol photocopier, woohooo)

[RedHouse]

(freekin double posts anyway!)

[dor baruch]

The first thing I want to do is to thank you for that you are willing to share some of your knowledge and public opinion is make me very happy to talk with people who really understand sound and Business not just talk, The second thing I'd be happy if I can talk about myself for a second, I'm only twenty-six, but dealing with sound from my Childhood the age of 10, first i build electric guitars then I joined the army and
studied Physics To quantum mechanics (but let's not go there)
and Since then I handled hundreds of guitars (probably closer to 1000) I realized that if the guitar sound is reasonable the pickup made the big Difference!!! So I decided to engage in this Domain
I developed a very sensitive ear (Some has to do with genes) My father and I can hear a little above the area that a normal person hears
i think that to Hear if one pickup sound better its
Not as common as people think, And beyond our ability to build a guitar or pickup (sorry I include myself with the much bigger than me) is to change reality to fit the desired outcome And what I mean is when I build an electric guitar and you obviously know it very well lollar There are many variables, such as Stretching (tansion) and the sound wood within the same family tinsion creates neck Problems, wood absorption behaves differently on a specific woods, the Environment temperature and the the humidity which it was given and a lot of variables,
we as builders capable of weighing the variables and get the desired result.
on the subject of construction pickup there are many variables need to weigh and adjust them to what we want if you are trying to get the best result, such as the quality of the magnets specific to buying order , the thickness of the wire and the coating changes a spol by spol the tansion of the machines varies and should match the asymmetry of bobin or some other things in the pickup, given the strength of the magnet guss. What I'm trying to say is that you or any expert who builds pickups dont need to fear!!! there are too many variables that only those who really understand the construction process and building physics standing in front of the pickups can solve and actually get better results.
I of course still young and have much to learn from you experienced one but still as long as there are enough people looking for the best product and are willing to pay a reasonable amount the good builders remain...
im also an acoustics engineer and when there are problems in the rooms although if we have advanced equipment there is nothing that can replace someone experienced

[David Schwab]

Sometimes drawing by hand is faster than with a computer- look at pro tools, talking about screwing off hours and hours if you let yourself

Yes, certain kinds of drawing is faster by hand. But if you are doing a mechanical type drawing, a computer is more precise because you can type in dimensions, etc. I can do these types of drawings in Adobe Illustrator very quickly. It would take me much longer by hand.

But doing something like a sketch would be tedious on a computer without a tablet. And then you are still doing it by hand!

But either way, it's not doing it automatically. You are drawing on the computer, even if you are using a mouse and keyboard instead of a pencil of pen.

I guess a better analogy would be hand writing 200 flyers vs. printing them out on a computer. Which is faster? Which one will be more consistent?

That's my reason for wanting a CNC winder. I can already hand wind. But the CNC winder would have to produce the same results. I'm sure that takes some trail and error. But then once you have your formula, you are all set.

As for Pro Tools; I can't agree here. It's just as fast as tracking as using tape, and without dealing with the tape, but where it shines is editing. Ever try to splice tape? Or even for punching in and stuff. But where I really like it is; say I have a guitar part that repeats through a song, and every time it's exactly the same. I'll play a couple of bars of it, and copy and past it where I need it. Pro Tools is pretty darn fast.

But I'm a machine kind of person. When I was building guitars on a regular basis, I liked using routers and patterns and stuff, and my partner did more stuff by hand. I love carving a neck, but if I were making a lot of them would rather use a CNC. I'm interested in the end results, and not how I get there.

Just because you have a computerized winder- let say it has something equivalent to pro tools on it. An auto winder cant go faster than a handwinder if the handwinder is any good and dont bullshit me about that. BUTTTT You can set it up to wind more than one bobbin at a time - dream on- that would take an incredible amount of experience to get any consistency and it would be a hair pulling experience anyways. Name one guy you know that does that with any regularity.

Even if you are winding one bobbin at a time, you have repeatability. Personally I can wind very consistently by hand, but most of the time I'd rather not be sitting there winding. After an hour or so it gets boring. I'd rather load up a bobbin and press a button. That will free me up a little to do other things.

Regarding multiple bobbins at once; who does that? Off the top of my head I can think of Bill Lawrence (used to be a selling point on his humbuckers that both coils were wound at the same time... not sure if he does that any more), TV Jones (both coils in a humbucker), Gibson, Fender, etc. I think Jon Gundry does too. Maybe not for the faint of heart, but I'd like to at least wind two coils at the same time.

When it comes to something like a multi coil pickup, with two coils per string, and each having like 10,000 turns, I'd REALLY like to wind at least four coils at once! Wind eight of those... It just feels like it takes forever.

Of course if you have employees and multiple winders that takes some of the pressure off.

Its like the Korean pickup makers, they can make a pickup but they don’t get it.

I think that goes beyond how many coils they wind at once!

OK lets say all these guys have pre programmed winders- where do they get the information to know what they are doing or why they are doing it?

Well just as with hand winding, you have to figure that out yourself, unless you are trying to copy something.

Don’t be scared, be ahead of everyone.

[dor baruch]

I just want to add that like lollar Saying )In other words of course) we need to Develop pickups from our Knowledge this is what make us Real builders and Always try to develop a better product not jast copy this we have No matter what
That will never change (Unless the substitute for us will be a future robot with advanced artificial intelligence)

[RedHouse]

... multiple bobbins at once; who does that? ...

I do, sometimes:



{Edit} I should say "I used to", but now that I have my own programmable auto-traverse in place I don't have to do it that way anymore to get matched coils.

[JGundry]

I've got the niche of PAF replicator right in the pocket and I know that stuff way beyond what some want to believe.

Dave my lawyer will be calling you. I already have this phrase trademarked. In fact I'm having bumper stickers and T-Shirts printed as we speak.

[JGundry]

I do, sometimes:

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{Edit} I should say "I used to", but now that I have my own programmable auto-traverse in place I don't have to do it that way anymore to get matched coils.

Same here. I have my multi bobbin winder running just about every day. Here are pics of my old Gibson made winder in use. It was a hassle to dial in but it makes very consistent coils even though the traverse mechanism is wood! Gibson used multi bobbin winders in the 50's for P-90's, and P.A.F.'s.

[Joe Gwinn]

Anyway [to Possum's] example of the printing industry, I went back to college in the early 90s to take more drafting and possibly get a degree which I didn’t finish and we spent months learning how to make blueprints which involves drawing a perfect line in lead pencil, you have to lay down a certain amount of lead with a particular amount of pressure and keep the overall drawing free of excess lead or the blue print wont come out with consistent line weights. We also spent a lot of time using pen and ink which is really hard too.

Don't forget to rotate the pencil as you draw!

So as soon as I left- in came the computer, now you dont need to know the old ways- cut and paste use to mean you actually cut out a piece of graphic and pasted it on to a board and photographed it to make a printed page= now cut and paste is just a computer command no one knows what it means
so did all these drafstmen go out of business? Only if they didnt either keep ahead of the new technology or they didnt have something special to offer.

When I came into engineering, we had whole departments of Draftsmen, churning out vast volumes of large-paper drawings. They are all gone, every last one, and the drafting is now done by the engineers.

Also missing are all the secretaries, and now days people type their own stuff.

[RedHouse]

... I've got the niche of PAF replicator right in the pocket and I know that stuff way beyond what some want to believe......

Sounds like you're a ....legend.

[Possum]

You can tell your laywyer, I have "prior art" rights, several years prior..... ;-)

Multiple bobbins at once-I haven't actually tried to do it and I think the quality would suffer, coils are done too fast to watch more than one and get it right in my opinion. I'm always futzing with tension and adjustments to make sure I don't wind lop sided coils. I'd rather do one good set of pickups than six that are just OK, but thats me.

[Possum]

Well here's one thing you can't do with a computer, pen and ink drawings. They've tried and tried, pressure sensitive digital pens and sophisticated tablets. I have a famous cartoonist friend who tries to get the same lines he does with his ink pens and it just never works. He uses and artist fountain pen and I use dip pen nibs some that are 100 years old (another example of vintage stuff being better). Here's one of my own cartoons from my blog, and one I'm working on:

[JGundry]

You can tell your laywyer, I have "prior art" rights, several years prior..... ;-)

Multiple bobbins at once-I haven't actually tried to do it and I think the quality would suffer, coils are done too fast to watch more than one and get it right in my opinion. I'm always futzing with tension and adjustments to make sure I don't wind lop sided coils. I'd rather do one good set of pickups than six that are just OK, but thats me.

Grasshopper, the child that crawls hugs the ground as if it was his mother's embrace and fears to leave her safety. But once the child conquers this fear he learns that the ground is there to propel him forward. And so he learns to walk so he may run. Learn to walk my son.

Holy crap, I just made that up and it would fit right into a Kung Fu script!

[Possum]

I prefer my Harley, its faster ;-)