Experimenting with coil shapes

[shawnl]

I understand that you can a fine-tune a dark or bright tone based on the height and width of a coil. I understand that this all has to do with the way the magnetic field senses the strings.
However, I'm curious about how other dimensional characteristics come into play. Does anything happen to the inductance by having either a concave or convex wound coil?

[shawnl]

Ok, I just now found some older threads about the subject and think I may have answered my own question. Based on what a lot of people say, this may be one of those nuances in coil design that don't drastically affect outcome. Still I remember reading somewhere that having a more rounded or center bulging coil somehow helped in reducing the skin effect. Now it just seems like the only reason to do this is to help prevent flaring. Do any of you agree?

[David Schwab]

I personally hear no difference with bulging middles on coils, and I stopped winding them that way. YMMV.

But for an example of coil shapes; look at a Strat and then a Jazz master. Or a Jazz bass and a P bass. The short squat coils are also wound a bit hotter, but they have quite a different tone from the tall thin coils.

[shawnl]

One of the first things I learned about pickup winding had been about short vs tall coils. I have tried to keep this mind while planning for a certain type of tone. I tried winding a few coils with a bulging middle and found that it helped in getting extra winds without covering up the eyelet terminals, but this was done to make use of parts I had on hand. Some of course ended up that way because I had to compensate for irregularities.

Tonally speaking, there are just so many subjective views out there about how coils react to certain factors that it's easy to over think it. However, the more I do this pickup winding stuff, the more I feel that pickup coils are way more forgiving than I think. Aside from basics such as proper solder joints and no possibility of a short, a perfectly formed coil seems more about aesthetics than the tone.

[David King]

I think you'll find that the magnet length and aspect ratio could have more effect than the coil shape/aspect ratio.
In general I'd say that the closer the bulk of your turns is to the magnet -the brighter the pickup will sound -all else being equal.