Offset PAF coils?

[voodoochild]

I have always been told that offsetting your coils on humbuckers gives them a better sound. From my own testing I have found that matching them makes more sense and seems to sound better to me.

What I noticed when mismatching the coils was #1 it was noticeably noisier(which I hate being that its a humbucker and all) and #2 it seemed to have funky presence that didn't work well at higher levels of distortion meaning that the frequencies seemed more out of control rather than smooth and even.

When matching the coils I get a dead quiet pickup that sounds much smoother and more defined to my ears. Am I missing something here or does this make sense?

[Sam Lee Guy]

What is better sound? Everyone like something different! Some like smooth, some like raucous. Some vintage PAF and P-90 sound very on edge and lively due to wire type, wind, and no potting. Some like - some no like. Generally for vintage buff, offset with PE better, and for metal god balanced with poly better. Sam think you must have made velly big offset to get noise. Old PAF have small offset which just help to get edgier more single coil like sound. I let experts explain different size of screw and slug and signal cancellation of higher frequency etc.... because they know better than me.

[PoorMan]

I think there is a general misconception that pickups sound "better" when one coil is biased...this may or may not be true depending on a number of factors that are both quantifiable and unquantifiable...including personal preference. You shouldn't think you are necessarily doing something "wrong". You may just not like mismatched coils. I agree that balanced coils are smoother.

I often bias a coil (not always) and they are dead quiet, but it depends how much the offset is.

[voodoochild]

Well I did try different amounts of offset. The further apart I got the worse it was in every aspect IMO. I agree that it is personal preference and I do prefer smoother sounding low output pickups.

[David Schwab]

Offsetting your coils will make them brighter, which can be good for the neck pickup. But that's not always a good tone for the bridge pickup.

PAF's were never offset intentionally.... just sloppy winding. There was an article in Guitar Player many years ago where Jeff "Skunk" Baxter explained how to improve the tone of your humbuckers. He went on to say to unwind the higher resistance coil to match the lower. So in his opinion perfectly matched coils sounded best.

I was surprised that an old Bartolini Hi-A I have had one coils 1000 Ohms higher than the other! It's dead quite and has a nice open tone. Of course I have no idea what gauge wire was used on each coil. Could be the same number of turns and different gauges.

I do them both ways depending on the tone I want.

[kevinT]

+1 on Gibson's accidental offsets. That is what i always heard is that the Leesona 102 didn't have an automatic shut off and when workers were not paying attention to stop the machine (at 5000 turns), the machines would continue placing wire on the bobbins. But on the other hand, based on Seth Lover, they were supposed to "fill the bobbins" without any regard to turn count. However, with Gibson being the misers that they were (wanted to use less wire as possible to control costs), the 5000 turns theory makes more sense to me.

I don't go over 300 turns on offsets. 100 to 250 sounds best to me. Depending on what you want to accomplish, favoring either the screw, or slug, as well as having the same turn count each bobbin has its own tonal effect.

[Possum]

....

some of my early humbuckers none of this stuff was really known and I have some that are like 1.2K difference yet they still sound good using the parts I was using. Its all relative, you either like it or not. I noticed Tom Holmes pickups which are touted as being the closest PAF set you can get aren't offset at all. Actually his pickups have little in common with PAFs really, they are an interpretation. Alot also has to do with what magnets you're using, every part in the pickup has some tone effect so what you like now might not work if you changed suppliers....

[NightWinder]

What pickup am I???

Here's a nice example of offset coils in a hot Paf range exploiting some Eddy current as well as Magnet manipulation Dimarzio's way. This is a Fred Design:

4.49k
5.67k

5.67k coil
@1khz
L-1.889
C-13.417
R-7.341

Q-1.632

4.49k coil
L-1.822
C-13.896
R-5.976

Q-1.938

The coils are both Screw coils with 1/4 in Keepers. also worth noting are the tiny shim keepers- two Birds with one stone, they are to elevate the height to compensate for the magnet, and furthermore to soak up current as they are Brass as well as the Baseplate.
*** The Magnet is something intense also. Length is 50.5mm Cast and 4.5mm thick!! Gauss is set at 523 s....526 n....
This is a great example of thinking outside the box and from traditional standards that we all seem to get consumed by.

[SkinnyWire]

Better is in the ear of the beholder.

I've had a number of pickups in for spec, including the Holmes H455 (which doesn't sound bad), with rumors regarding magical offsets and magnets and such only to find they are dead even winds that simply represent the winder's method in their own unique way.