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I have two sons who play electric guitar (awesomely!!), and I wanted to find a good science fair project for them. So we decided to build a humbucker and find out how it worked. We wound that pickup using a cordless drill and 38 awg wire and mounted it in a rough lapsteel we cobbled together. We installed a switch, so we could compare the results using just one coil and using the humbucker. And lo and behold, it worked! I could hardly believe that we got it to pickup anything, but that it actually bucked hum blew my mind!
Since that time, my luthier-friend has been encouraging me to try winding some pickups for real. He got some ludicrous idea of having someone who could wind "house pickups" for his custom guitars. I laughed the first seven times he mentioned it, and then finally broke down and tried. I've never been all that handy, but the simplicity of these designs made me think I might be able to produce something - and their average quality would eventually convince him that he should continue to buy pickups from people who knew what they were doing. Besides, since I stopped coaching my kids' soccer teams and I had to break down my marine aquarium, my wife has started to think I have time to do yard work and home repair jobs!
I mounted my first major engineering project and built myself a winder using an old sewing machine motor, a bunch of parts from McMaster-Carr and an ebay counter.
I wound my first strat single coil pickup without really thinking about what I was doing - I was just thrilled to see wire going onto a coil. It obviously wasn't great.
I pulled apart an old plastic-bobbin strat pickup and rewound that. I didn't realize that the D and G poles had been almost totally degaussed. It obviously sounded terrible.
Then I bothered to do some research and actually tried to make a decent sounding pickup. We stuck it into my luthier-friend's strat - and he loved it!
Since then I've produced a heap of pickups (well, it feels like it to me), running little experiments along the way, trying to infer how changes in construction will affect the pickup. I've also continued to do more research - that's how I found this forum. I can't work out whether this has been a good thing or a bad thing: at moments I feel like I'm unearthing vital insights, and at times I just feel like I'm simply discovering how ignorant I am.
The biggest issue I'm running into is interpreting all the positive responses I'm getting. Everyone running in and out of my friend's shop is unreservedly complementary about how my pickups sound. Even when comments are unsolicited. I can only assume its because hand-wound pickups just sound "better", for some reason - because I'm not doing anything special.
Here's the most recent example. One of the guitars my friend built for his personal use was made to be a close clone of a Dave Gilmour strat. I think it's all maple (I'm fuzzy on this detail), but his comment was that the construction tended to make it a relatively bright-sounding guitar. Anyway, it was convenient to test my pickups in this guitar - so out with the ones Gilmour uses, and in with mine. A totally different sound (obviously). But within minutes, my friend was shaking his head in disbelief and had proclaimed the neck pickup the "best" strat neck pickup he'd ever heard. Now, obviously everyone has their own preferences, and I'm sure there's nothing about my pickup that makes it inherently "better" than others. I'm not really on a big ego trip here. But this pickup obviously does things that satisfy his (and others') subjective tastes extremely well.
So, now I'm on a mission to work out exactly what it is about these pickups that people are finding appealing. Because it's no earthly good to anybody if I can't reproduce it.
I know the dimensions of the bobbin I'm winding on.
I know the number of turns in my coil.
I know the type of wire in my coil.
I know the input impedance, or the DCR (but I don't know why people use different terms for this, nor which is the "correct" one).
I've recently acquired an LCR meter, so I can determine the inductance (at 120Hz or 1kH frequencies).
I know which pole magnets I've used, and I even know that they are all fully gaussed and which way they're oriented.
I'm thinking of investing in the circuitgear mini oscilloscope interface thing to help me get a clear picture of the resonant frequency and frequency response from my pickups.
The big variable in all of this is the actual winding technique, and I'm at a loss to identify how reproducible any of that is. I mean, each time I sit down to wind, I use the same approach - and given the number of these things I've done, I suspect I use a fairly stable winding speed and tension. But I can't possibly know. I'm not just randomly laying down wire, but each coil evolves differently. No two coils will ever end up the same shape, but none are wildly different. I have a romantic notion that this makes each one unique, with its own characteristics, and consequently each one is "special." It also makes it impossible to know whether I can reproduce any success. Of course, for all I know none of this matters - if I produce two pickups with the same number of turns, with the same amount of wire, with the same measured inductance and DCR, for all I know it will give me the same frequency response characteristics.
Short of automating the process of feeding wire onto the coil (i.e. eliminating my hands!), is there anything I should do?
Anyway, I hope I didn't annoy anyone with the long post. I hope I get away with a lengthy introduction if I promise to be more succinct next time.
Chad
Since that time, my luthier-friend has been encouraging me to try winding some pickups for real. He got some ludicrous idea of having someone who could wind "house pickups" for his custom guitars. I laughed the first seven times he mentioned it, and then finally broke down and tried. I've never been all that handy, but the simplicity of these designs made me think I might be able to produce something - and their average quality would eventually convince him that he should continue to buy pickups from people who knew what they were doing. Besides, since I stopped coaching my kids' soccer teams and I had to break down my marine aquarium, my wife has started to think I have time to do yard work and home repair jobs!
I mounted my first major engineering project and built myself a winder using an old sewing machine motor, a bunch of parts from McMaster-Carr and an ebay counter.
I wound my first strat single coil pickup without really thinking about what I was doing - I was just thrilled to see wire going onto a coil. It obviously wasn't great.
I pulled apart an old plastic-bobbin strat pickup and rewound that. I didn't realize that the D and G poles had been almost totally degaussed. It obviously sounded terrible.
Then I bothered to do some research and actually tried to make a decent sounding pickup. We stuck it into my luthier-friend's strat - and he loved it!
Since then I've produced a heap of pickups (well, it feels like it to me), running little experiments along the way, trying to infer how changes in construction will affect the pickup. I've also continued to do more research - that's how I found this forum. I can't work out whether this has been a good thing or a bad thing: at moments I feel like I'm unearthing vital insights, and at times I just feel like I'm simply discovering how ignorant I am.
The biggest issue I'm running into is interpreting all the positive responses I'm getting. Everyone running in and out of my friend's shop is unreservedly complementary about how my pickups sound. Even when comments are unsolicited. I can only assume its because hand-wound pickups just sound "better", for some reason - because I'm not doing anything special.
Here's the most recent example. One of the guitars my friend built for his personal use was made to be a close clone of a Dave Gilmour strat. I think it's all maple (I'm fuzzy on this detail), but his comment was that the construction tended to make it a relatively bright-sounding guitar. Anyway, it was convenient to test my pickups in this guitar - so out with the ones Gilmour uses, and in with mine. A totally different sound (obviously). But within minutes, my friend was shaking his head in disbelief and had proclaimed the neck pickup the "best" strat neck pickup he'd ever heard. Now, obviously everyone has their own preferences, and I'm sure there's nothing about my pickup that makes it inherently "better" than others. I'm not really on a big ego trip here. But this pickup obviously does things that satisfy his (and others') subjective tastes extremely well.
So, now I'm on a mission to work out exactly what it is about these pickups that people are finding appealing. Because it's no earthly good to anybody if I can't reproduce it.
I know the dimensions of the bobbin I'm winding on.
I know the number of turns in my coil.
I know the type of wire in my coil.
I know the input impedance, or the DCR (but I don't know why people use different terms for this, nor which is the "correct" one).
I've recently acquired an LCR meter, so I can determine the inductance (at 120Hz or 1kH frequencies).
I know which pole magnets I've used, and I even know that they are all fully gaussed and which way they're oriented.
I'm thinking of investing in the circuitgear mini oscilloscope interface thing to help me get a clear picture of the resonant frequency and frequency response from my pickups.
The big variable in all of this is the actual winding technique, and I'm at a loss to identify how reproducible any of that is. I mean, each time I sit down to wind, I use the same approach - and given the number of these things I've done, I suspect I use a fairly stable winding speed and tension. But I can't possibly know. I'm not just randomly laying down wire, but each coil evolves differently. No two coils will ever end up the same shape, but none are wildly different. I have a romantic notion that this makes each one unique, with its own characteristics, and consequently each one is "special." It also makes it impossible to know whether I can reproduce any success. Of course, for all I know none of this matters - if I produce two pickups with the same number of turns, with the same amount of wire, with the same measured inductance and DCR, for all I know it will give me the same frequency response characteristics.
Short of automating the process of feeding wire onto the coil (i.e. eliminating my hands!), is there anything I should do?
Anyway, I hope I didn't annoy anyone with the long post. I hope I get away with a lengthy introduction if I promise to be more succinct next time.
Chad
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