Duncan interview videos at the factory....

[greenfingers]

I still have an original 70's Super Distortion humbucker that I rewired as a Dual Sound. I painted it white a few years ago to look better on my Charvel Frankenstrat.

I had a 70's Model P but I sold that on eBay a few years ago. That was cream, but I had replaced the cover with a black one.

I'm thinking of makeing a frankenstrat at the moment, i think it's funny that a guitar that Eddie made for about $300, fender are selling an exact replica for $20.000. I feel sorry for all who got one, They totally miss the point of that guitar Eddie made, it was function over form. people only look at the form now, I would rather make one and have $19.700 burning a hole in my pocket,

Of course if anyone on this forum has one i'm not talking about you, just the ones who don't know any better.

[David Schwab]

Yeah, $20,000 for that thing! Crazy! I guess Ed needs money.

My Frankenstrat is not like that... it started out as a Charvel. I don't remember the model number. A long time customer of mine had a white one with a badly warped neck. Finally one day the truss rod snapped, so he got a birdseye Tele neck.. I think it's a Mighty Might, and had me replace the Charvel neck.

Some years later he picked up a blue Charvel of the same model, and had me swap the neck with the white one, and gave me the blue one with the Tele neck.

I took the crappy Jackson humbucker out and put in the Dimarzio. Then I removed that and put in a Dirtyfinger. Then I removed all the pickups and had an EMG SA at the neck and a real old Overlend EMG minihum at the bridge.

Then I took the guitar apart to use as a test bed.

Recently I put it back together with a JB clone I wound at the bridge and an experimental single coil at the neck, and no middle pickup. I also replaced the original bridge with an old ESP flicker I had laying around.

I'm making a new pickguard for it.

[Possum]

....

You gotta remember when Seymour talks about all those famous people that he was the only one doing rewinds at that time, so his name got around. Plus he worked the NAMM angle alot. Right place right time, guess he was meant to do what he's doing. The winder he uses is an Adams Maxwell, same model that I use, great little winders, almost never see them on Ebay anymore and they go for alot of money. I have a Seth Lover and have been looking it over, his butryrate bobbins are beautiful and yes they have a distincitive smell. I have some old P90 parts from the mid50's , a cover and a shim ring both made of butyrate and they still have that cool smell. I seem to remember alot of plastic stuff as a kid being made of that stuff becaue the smell takes me back in time :-)

[David Schwab]

I remember when Seymour first had ads in Guitar Player for pickup rewinding. I think that was 1976. I wrote him a letter about having my Ric pickup rewound, but ended up getting the Hi-A to replace it. He wrote me back. This was long before email of course. I had the letter for years but lost it.

[SkinnyWire]

Thought it was interesting he states firmly that "humbuckers should NOT be handwound."
Good videos:
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazin...ur_Duncan.aspx

Well, it's interesting that he says it but it's not at all true that you can't wind consistent coils by hand winding. I've always done it that way and I always hit the same resistances within 10 to 20 ohms and the same inductances with a less than 10 micro henries. It's really not hard to do. If you look at old Gibson pickups, it's not uncommon to see flaring on the ends of the bobbins, so again it's interesting what he says but no less untrue.

I have a lot of respect for Seymour Duncan, but those particular claims ... like the same claims from a few who intimate the rest of us are screwed without a particular winding machine ... are basically untrue.

[JGundry]

I think what Seymour is getting at is that humbuckers were designed with machine winding in mind. And if you want to stay true the design machine winding is needed.

[Possum]

...

Still you can't really hit the same wind by hand as you can with a machine, LCR meters definitely do not see everything. As a test I wound two bucker bobbins once with two radically different scatter patterns, this was on my machine. Both bobbins measured exactly the same on the Extech, but I do know that in a pickup they don't sound the same. And as mentioned awhile back I magnetized a bar magnet in a way that puts the whole pickup out of phase with itself, this produces that out of phase bright tone, the LCR meter did not pick that up at all but ears immediately hear the difference. Another example, I love P90s but never could hit by handwinding the kind of readings I get off old Gibson pickups. The first pickup I wound with my self made machine hit it dead on first try, a much brighter well defined tone versus a darker muddier tone with hand winding. What really matters is do your pickups sound good to YOU. But the truth is that using an automated machine will get you to places you can't go by hand, and believe me I did alot of testing between the two when I was changing over to automated control.

[Possum]

...

I ought to add you don't need to build a computer controlled winder to go automated winds, go look at old steam locomotives, a rod connnected to a wheel that moves a piston back and forth, add some adjustment capabilities and there you go......

[SkinnyWire]

Still you can't really hit the same wind by hand as you can with a machine, LCR meters definitely do not see everything. As a test I wound two bucker bobbins once with two radically different scatter patterns, this was on my machine. Both bobbins measured exactly the same on the Extech, but I do know that in a pickup they don't sound the same. And as mentioned awhile back I magnetized a bar magnet in a way that puts the whole pickup out of phase with itself, this produces that out of phase bright tone, the LCR meter did not pick that up at all but ears immediately hear the difference. Another example, I love P90s but never could hit by handwinding the kind of readings I get off old Gibson pickups. The first pickup I wound with my self made machine hit it dead on first try, a much brighter well defined tone versus a darker muddier tone with hand winding. What really matters is do your pickups sound good to YOU. But the truth is that using an automated machine will get you to places you can't go by hand, and believe me I did alot of testing between the two when I was changing over to automated control.

I suppose you're right. I guess I just get a little defensive over the notion of what's "required" to get the type of tone that many of us like. Repeatable results are key to building a customer base in this business. I get repeatable results on any of several models I build, all by hand guiding. If I couldn't, I don't think I'd get consistent repeat orders for the same wind or consistent business based on word of mouth.

That said, I've never been happy with my own P-90s. Some folks have, but I disliked them myself enough that I don't build them anymore. Part of that I think was due to the crappy bobbins I was getting and I don't really have the time to make my own. I can see where machines would allow you to control things better there in terms of the wind, and I don't doubt you can build good pickups with them.

[Rosewood]

So what is automated? I built a winder (Jason's) with different cams for scatter, down counter with shutoff, so guess I'm automated. At least automated enough to repeat, good or bad, kinda like Mcdonald's hamburgers.

[SkinnyWire]

So what is automated? I built a winder (Jason's) with different cams for scatter, down counter with shutoff, so guess I'm automated. At least automated enough to repeat, good or bad, kinda like Mcdonald's hamburgers.

I dunno. Wolf has a fancy one he showed us on the board once. With some of them you can dial in the turns per layer, number of turns, etc., and then sit back with a cup of coffee while it spins away. Sometimes when I'm hunched over my machine focusing on the coil shape and motor sound and tweaking the speed to keep the sound the same, etc., I wish I had something like that. I like my results enough though that I'm loathe to change much.

You can probably find a decent number of representations with a search of this site.

[Possum]

...

The Lollar winder is an automated winder, hell you don't need much more than that. All you need to do is to be able to control how fast the traverse moves and set the end limits. Jason still winds alot of stuff that way. An industrial computerized winder in my opinion is not a good way to go, they are too perfect, you'd have to spend some time setting one up so it wouldn't do perfect radio coils. there's a guy who has a website called Designed2wind I think it is who has alot of good idea....

[mkat]

I had a 70's Model P but I sold that on eBay a few years ago. That was cream, but I had replaced the cover with a black one.

I bought a pbass pickup (cream coloured covers/bobbins) back in '87, I think it's a DiMarzio. I still have it, but it's not working. This pickup has hex adjustable screw poles with ceramic magnets underneath. It was the only pbass replacement I could afford at the time. Plastic bobbins, lead wires attached directly to the magnet wire.

[David Schwab]

Sounds like a DiMarzio.

[mkat]

Sounds like a DiMarzio.

I thought so. Designed similar to those cheap single coil pickups, but with better magnets and thinner wire.