magnet wire resistance and other sundry questions

[GunbarrelCustom]

How do you figure out the wire's resistance? Should it be written on the spool? I do not see it on any of the three spools I have though all are 1 pound or less and maybe they figure people buying the small spools do not need to know lol

The Mojotone 42PE (dark) comes out far under the coil estimator calculations (I put in the actual measurements of the bobbins) where the Remington Poly wire is really close. I ran out of the mojotone and will not buy it again, but I do have a pound spool of the dark 42PE from Remington that I have not used yet and I wonder if it will be more like the Mojo wire or like the Poly I got from them.

I was searching for other wire recommendations in other threads and it was said BAE Wire is less expensive though their on line store and ebay store do not have 5 - 6 pound spools of 42 poly.

I also wanted to know if there is any difference between Red poly wire and Normal poly wire? I suspect it may come in other colors as well. Since few people see the coils why would you want/need other colors?

So far I am thrilled at the pickups I have made for the guitars I have made. (I no longer have any brand name electrics but mine). So far I did a Tele bridge for my Telemaster, neck humbuckers for my two teles, a dog ear for my LP Jr and both P-90s on my carved top LP w/wrap. My next step is to build a set of Jazzmaster pickups where I have the flatwork and loose, uncharged magnets. I want to experiment with the JM pickups as the JMs I build are around 7.5 pounds and sustain like a Strat. I also need to build some Strat pickups as that was my main guitar until I built my carved top LP which may be the best guitar I have ever played.

Thanks for your continued help!

[jack briggs]

http://www.mwswire.com/pdf_files/mws...book/page4.pdf

[salvarsan]

How do you figure out the wire's resistance? Should it be written on the spool?

The NEMA magnet wire specs for AWG #42 allow for +/- 0.0001" diameter which becomes a whopping +/- ~8% range in resistance.

A reproducible test is to measure 10 feet of your #42 and see if it's close enough to 16.6 ohms at 68 F.

[David Schwab]

The real question is why do you need to know the resistance? Unless you are trying to match an existing pickups, there's little reason to worry about it since you should not be winding to a target resistance. And even then you don't know what the wire measured on the sample pickup. Just wind by turn count.

Red and natural poly, or green or black or blue, is just the color of the insulation. Magnet wire is not made just for pickups. There may be reasons why different manufacturers would want different colors.