Scatterwinding in humbuckers

[alexirae]

Hi,

I read in some places that is not good to scatter-wind humbuckers but the explanation of this is not clear enough, can someone explain the details of it?

I want to wind a couple of humbuckers but I'm not sure how it will end up since I only have a homemade pickup winder (kind of schatten pickup winder), I wound singlecoils with it and they sound good enough for me, but I don't know if the situation will change if I try to wind humbuckers, I could possibly minimize the scatter with a regular/constant/linear hand pattern.

Any info about this will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[LtKojak]

I read in some places that is not good to scatter-wind humbuckers but the explanation of this is not clear enough

If you know why you scatter-wind your single coils, you should guess why it doesn't apply to humbuckers, isn't it?

[alexirae]

What I know is that the more you scatter-wind the less TPL, thus the less the wire that you can wind into the bobbin.

Now from what I've read (maybe not enough) I know that scatter-wind reduces in some degree the distributed capacitance of the coil, thus the more brighter the pickup sound, in other words, the resonance peak of the pickup gets shifted to the right in the frequency spectrum.

But coming back to the first point, I guess you can scatter-wind a humbucker without worrying about the amount of wire that you can wind using a thinner gauge (correct me if I'm wrong!)

Thanks!

[salvarsan]

A link to a general article on PAFs

[big_teee]

All hand wound pickups will have some scatter.
So most of us that hand wind humbuckers, try to keep the scatter to a minimum.
The other reason for low scatter to get more wire in the same winding area.
Another rule of thumb with hand wound neck buckers is to reduce the turns 5% or so.
That helps keep them from being muddy on the bass strings.
I wind my neck buckers to around 7.2k
I over wind the bridge pickups and scatter is not as big a deal with bridge pickups.

[alexirae]

Thanks Salvarsan, interesting info, specially:

Gibson Burstbucker. Gibson's newest take on the P.A.F. Scatter wound, not wax potted, these are the closest replicas Gibson makes. These pickups come stock on the Historic line of Reissue Les Pauls.
SKATTERBRANE Earthbrane. Scatter wound PAF pickup. Featuring plain alkyd enamel 42awg magnet wire, rough cast magnets, butyrate bobbins and maple spacer. Also includes true German silver covers and backing plates.
Bare Knuckle Pickups The Mule. An accurate scatter wound PAF replica: The Mule uses a solid nickel baseplate and cover, #42 AWG plain enamel wire, unpolished Alnico 4 magnets, maple spacer and butyrate bobbins.

[copperheadroads]

Thanks Salvarsan, interesting info, specially:

I've repaired a Couple of Burstbuckers there was no scatter in the coils.

[Lollar Jason]

you also get more inductance with more TPL. Even newer expensive commercial machines have some degree of random scatter with finer wire like typically used on guitar pickups. The wire is going to oscillate on its own- example winding thread onto a bobbin with a sewing machine- there is no auto feed it just oscillates on its own and fills the bobbin, the farther away the thread is held in position from the bobbin the more it oscillates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoyzMQNhNiI
Talking about old mechanical machines like the leesona for example there is some slop in the mechanism all the way from the cam to the wire guide. There are alot of different old machines based on the same cam to operate the traverse mechanism but you dont see them for sale very often. 15 - 20 years ago there were alot more around.

[Jim Darr]

Talking about old mechanical machines like the leesona for example there is some slop in the mechanism all the way from the cam to the wire guide. There are alot of different old machines based on the same cam to operate the traverse mechanism but you dont see them for sale very often. 15 - 20 years ago there were alot more around.

With these old mechanical winding machines, even within the same brand & model from about the same time-frame, I see differences in how wire is laid down with the same TPL, coil height, tension, dereeling system and setup. It may be machine wear, manufacturing tolerances, or some unknown forces from beyond!

I've given up trying to find out the exact reason for these differences and now just focus on predictable results to my best advantage from each machine.

If you find one of these old mechanical winders pick it up if the price is reasonable and the condition is decent...a lot of these make very good sounding pickups. Most are built like tanks and have a lot of flexibility with the proper gear sets. They can assure consistent results if you are just starting out or currently using a hand guided hobby winding machine. I'd say you need a fair amount of mechanical sensibility and skill to get these old machines up and running for guitar pickup winding.

[Jason Rodgers]

Unless one is able to lay down wire EXACTLY turn by turn, perfectly up against the last pass, it's all technically "scattered," right? Which means there's a spectrum of scatter, from generally falling and piling over itself in a bunchy heap, to widely spaced zigs and zags: i.e., from very high turns per layer, to as few as one. So, what's to be expected, tonally speaking, from TPL across that spectrum?

[David King]

Beats me Jason. I think you just need to hear for yourself. The other consideration is keeping the speed and tension consistent. the faster you spin the bobbin the looser your coil due to centripetal force stretching the wire. The wire wanders further at lower tension and higher speeds.

[Possum]

Nobody is really going to tell you anything you can really trust. Do your own experiments, make sure you do every possible experiment you can dream up, record your results, an LCR meter is somewhat helpful but there's not alot of use in a 1khz test signal, a frequency analyzer, especially peak resonant tests is even more useful, then use your ears which is the bottom line. There aren't any books on audio frequencies and coil winding patterns, which seems odd to me, but from what I have personally seen with what Leo Fender did and what Gibson did over the 40 year span I worked with, those guys knew their stuff, and their patterns and methods make total sense, if you do the work and understand why they chose certain patterns. As far as old machines having any real value or tonal effects on coils, its all bunk, I disproved it personally by winding alot of machine guided coils, and throwing in percentages of "slop" in programming, and you couldn't hear any differences at all unless you got really way outside the base pattern; any winder that had that amount of slop in it would probably shake itself off the table. There IS real uses in various patterns and its not just TPL either. So, in your experiments you have alot of variables besides turns per layer, you have a certain space to fill or not to fill, you need to know actual measured outside diameter of the wire on the particular spool you are using, how thick the wire insulation is over what bare wire is. It only makes sense the more years you do experiments, the more R&D you do in pickup design, then eventually you come upon basic principles that give repeatable results. Its important to stay out of "magical" thinking and do hard core testing on alot of coils. It is true than pretty much all coils are scatter winds unless you have a real precision winder than can actually lay down each turn directly next to and up against the last turn put down. It always boggles my mind when I see some who have been winding for 20 years or more make public statements about machine winding doing this or that, only based on things someone else said and not whats actually going on. Studying the history of pickups by dissecting vintage pickups that cover a long time span can give you some important tips, but then there's the fact that vintage wire up til about 1965 was really crude stuff and sounds way better than the radically different wire we have to deal with now, which forces us to be much smarter about how its wound; you can get away with anything with the old wire and it'll sound good. The last really good wire I ever saw was what Guitar Jones for a short time imported from Korea, it must have been an old plant, its exactly like vintage wire. I eventually tracked them down, but the language problem and the fact that they have probably modernized and/or are getting modern raw materials probably means they couldn't make it anymore anyway. I talked to Elketrisola about changing their methods, as the analysis project of 40 years span of vintage wire they analyzed for me, showed me exactly what is different than what they do now. But they can't do it, it would have to start before the wire is even drawn, all they are doing now is using the same bare wire they use for everything else and putting a modern PE insulation on it.

[Beef Coon]

...the wire is going to oscillate on its own- example winding thread onto a bobbin with a sewing machine- there is no auto feed it just oscillates on its own and fills the bobbin, the farther away the thread is held in position from the bobbin the more it oscillates.

I've seen you mention this numerous times on here & think it's a great point. That coupled with reading here about someone keeping their wire guide as close to the bobbin as possible to minimize that effect lead me to make the wire guide on my first winding machine have a good amount of adjustability to give me some control over it and experiment. I'm surprised that I don't see that more often, particularly with hand-guided set ups.

[Zhangliqun]

All hand wound pickups will have some scatter.
So most of us that hand wind humbuckers, try to keep the scatter to a minimum.

Other than getting more wire on the bobbin, why? In my experience, the more scatter, the better...

[big_teee]

Other than getting more wire on the bobbin, why? In my experience, the more scatter, the better...

Cause that's what I like!
To each his own!
T