Tipping a coil

[Jason Rodgers]

Hypothetical question: What sort of tonal change could one predict as a pickup coil was gradually rolled on its long axis?

For example, say you had a single coil bridge pickup and were able to roll it toward the neck 5 degrees, play and listen, roll 5 degrees, play and listen... until the pickup was on its side? What would you expect to hear?

I don't know a lot of pickup design history, but it seems like most pickups have coils oriented "flat," and then there are a handful of variations on the Sidewinder, which have their coils completely rotated 90 degrees. Are there any pickup designs that feature coils slightly rotated, or tipped as far as 45 degrees?

[mr fab]

as you turn the polepieces away from the strings, they will lose magnetism to some degree, as they are charged from the polepieces. I would expect a volume drop.

[big_teee]

Just wanted to add, that though the sidewinder has it's coils turned sidewise?
The steel blade is straight up and down, not tilted.

[madzub]

i think you would just lose output. but, if you took something like a strat pickup and tilted it 90 degrees so that the polepieces are parallel to the strings, then add a couple of small steel bars to the tops and bottoms of the poles to direct the magnetic field up to the strings, i wonder if this would have a good effect. you'd get a wide aperture with two sensing points at the strings, maybe you'd get more output and a fuller tone. anyone tried that?

[rjb]

... but, if you took something like a strat pickup and tilted it 90 degrees so that the polepieces are parallel to the strings, then add a couple of small steel bars to the tops and bottoms of the poles to direct the magnetic field up to the strings, i wonder if this would have a good effect. you'd get a wide aperture with two sensing points at the strings, maybe you'd get more output and a fuller tone. anyone tried that?

Well no, but... I have rebuilt an Electromuse I-Beam pickup- which is a simpler implementation of the same idea.
It's just an I-beam (or you might say H-beam or goalpost-shaped) alnico bar magnet with the "uprights" charged north & south
and coil wire wrapped around the middle.
It sounds good, but I have no practical way of orienting it like a "regular" pickup for comparison.

[Jason Rodgers]

I'm thinking about the diagrams of a pickup's magnetic field shape, and it seems to me if the orientation of that field in relation to the strings changed, then there would be a tonal change, as well. Would one predict a roll off in higher frequencies, in addition to a drop in volume?

[David King]

Jason, I'm not sure why the tone would change as you haven't really changed anything that could cause that. On a different interpretation of tipped coils some pickups use two coils for each string and the coils form an inverted V with a 60º or 90º angle between them but the poles still point directly at the strings. The idea there was to capture both vertical and horizontal movement but there's a little phase cancelation between them though not one you could hear. And though they were pairs of coils they couldn't cancel noise effectively due to the angle between them.

[Jason Rodgers]

Jason, I'm not sure why the tone would change as you haven't really changed anything that could cause that. On a different interpretation of tipped coils some pickups use two coils for each string and the coils form an inverted V with a 60º or 90º angle between them but the poles still point directly at the strings. The idea there was to capture both vertical and horizontal movement but there's a little phase cancelation between them though not one you could hear. And though they were pairs of coils they couldn't cancel noise effectively due to the angle between them.

Ah, so other weird things start to happen when you change the orientation of the magnetic fields. You've actually answered the next step in my thought experiment: what would happen if, in a humbucker, you tipped the coils toward or away from one another; or rolled both coils toward the bridge or neck? A humbucker wouldn't act like a humbucker anymore, yes?

[Jason Rodgers]

Well no, but... I have rebuilt an Electromuse I-Beam pickup- which is a simpler implementation of the same idea.
It's just an I-beam (or you might say H-beam or goalpost-shaped) alnico bar magnet with the "uprights" charged north & south
and coil wire wrapped around the middle.
It sounds good, but I have no practical way of orienting it like a "regular" pickup for comparison.

By the way, this is a really interesting pickup!

[David King]

For a humbucker to work the coils need to be in the same planar orientation and fairly close together (to cancel nearby EMF say from a computer monitor.) If you tilt them slightly away from each other they won't be picking up quite the same background fields and those fields won't cancel completely.
This idea of yours is so easy to test out you'd be best off trying it out yourself and reporting back of course.

[Mark Hammer]

What is critical is not the coil so much as the field that the coil sits in. After all the coil is simply there translating disturbances in the field to a voltage.

So let's imagine something like a fender Jaguar pickup, or a Lace-type, in which there are vertically mounted polepices, but a channel added to the bottom to redirect one pole of the field up from the bottom. On a P-90, the bar magnets adhered to the keeper bar in the middle direct the field outwards, rather than down or up.

But let's imagine the angle of the conductive channel on the bottom could be varied. That could be through some form of adjustment, but it could also be via replaceable angled inserts. So one might be a pure 90-degree angle (i.e., out to the side and straight up around the coil), but others might be at different angles and of different heights. For instance, one might be at 60 degrees but only come up about half the height of the coil (i.e., well below the level of the top of the polepieces). The "shape" and width of the field produced could be varied.

[big_teee]

Sounds like you're putting too much enfasis on the magnet, and not enough enfasis on the pole pieces.
The Pole pieces are extensions of the magnets, and go through the coils.
Whether the poles pieces are magnetized steel, or actual magnets, the effect should be the same.
When you magnetize the steel poles pieces, they in effect become the magnets.
When the strings moving over the magnetized pole pieces, become magnetized, they induce a signal into the coils.
You can make a Sidebucker, with the coils layed down, and it should work very similar to a humbucker with the coils upright.

[Mike Sulzer]

What makes a pickup work is the changing component of the B field from the vibrating string, that is the component pointing through the coil. So you have to make it so that
1. The permanent field at the string has a sufficiently strong component in that direction so the string is properly magnetized.
2. The coil is located so that this component of the field resulting from the magnetized string passes directly through it, such as the coil right under the string.

Tilt the coil, and you do not meet these conditions very well unless you use some ferromagnetic material to guide the field. Why make it more complicated than necessary?

Hypothetical question: What sort of tonal change could one predict as a pickup coil was gradually rolled on its long axis?

For example, say you had a single coil bridge pickup and were able to roll it toward the neck 5 degrees, play and listen, roll 5 degrees, play and listen... until the pickup was on its side? What would you expect to hear?

I don't know a lot of pickup design history, but it seems like most pickups have coils oriented "flat," and then there are a handful of variations on the Sidewinder, which have their coils completely rotated 90 degrees. Are there any pickup designs that feature coils slightly rotated, or tipped as far as 45 degrees?

[Jason Rodgers]

This idea of yours is so easy to test out you'd be best off trying it out yourself and reporting back of course.

Had a feeling you might say that.

[Jason Rodgers]

Why make it more complicated than necessary?

It's not that I'm trying to complicate things: just asking questions about things I don't know about. In just the half year or so that I've been regularly reading on this forum, I've learned of the existence of many pickup designs that I've never seen or heard of (in my admittedly limited guitar electronics experience). Just wondering about what's possible.