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So, I dissected a couple of humbuckers today, and was a little surprised by what I found under the hood
I took apart a Gibson Custombucker that came in my 2012 R9, and was originally in the bridge position. Why? Because it was sitting in a box on my shelf and was never used. So, sacrifice it for learning, and what I saw surprised me. Wire appeared to be 42 PE, and guessing from the gauss measured on the magnet, it appears to be an A3 magnet, or a weakened A2...not really sure. In terms of resistance, the pickup measured 7.8 ohm. The slug coil measured 4.0 ohm and the screw coil measured 3.8 ohm. But it was in peeling back the tape and unwinding the pickup that I was rather surprised. Both coils were wound at a whopping 10 turns per layer. That's it. Equal traverse 10 turns per layer. I unwound and counted at various portions throughout the coil, and each point that I counted winds and averaged, I got 10.
So, then I decided to dive into the custom 78 pickup that I bought many years ago and haven't used in a long time. Sacrificing for science, I wanted to see what the differences were. Wire appeared to be 42 PE, and magnet gauss was in the A2 range. I believe Duncan advertises that they use A2 magnets for the pickup. The pickup measured 9.05 ohm. Because the custom 78 is supposed to be an overwound PAF style pickup, used to get VH tones (I think bright, rich, harmonic), I expected to see something scatterwound, with maybe with offset coils. But that wasn't it at all. Slug coil measured 4.52 ohm and screw coil measured 4.53 ohm. And here's the part that was most interesting to me-- a rather high TPL count of about 96 turns per layer, equal traverse. Again, I counted in several places throughout the coil. The pickup coils were very evenly machine wound, with almost no variation and a consistent number of turns per layer.
So, I was a little surprised. I always thought the custom 78 was a lively articulate pickup. These were attributes that I typically thought were found in pickups that were scatterwound. But clearly this pickup is a higher tpl with a very consistent wind pattern. I was also surprised that the Custombucker had such a low tpl.
Anyhow, thought I would share. I figured it would be interesting to see what, if anything, could be learned from this simple experiment.
I took apart a Gibson Custombucker that came in my 2012 R9, and was originally in the bridge position. Why? Because it was sitting in a box on my shelf and was never used. So, sacrifice it for learning, and what I saw surprised me. Wire appeared to be 42 PE, and guessing from the gauss measured on the magnet, it appears to be an A3 magnet, or a weakened A2...not really sure. In terms of resistance, the pickup measured 7.8 ohm. The slug coil measured 4.0 ohm and the screw coil measured 3.8 ohm. But it was in peeling back the tape and unwinding the pickup that I was rather surprised. Both coils were wound at a whopping 10 turns per layer. That's it. Equal traverse 10 turns per layer. I unwound and counted at various portions throughout the coil, and each point that I counted winds and averaged, I got 10.
So, then I decided to dive into the custom 78 pickup that I bought many years ago and haven't used in a long time. Sacrificing for science, I wanted to see what the differences were. Wire appeared to be 42 PE, and magnet gauss was in the A2 range. I believe Duncan advertises that they use A2 magnets for the pickup. The pickup measured 9.05 ohm. Because the custom 78 is supposed to be an overwound PAF style pickup, used to get VH tones (I think bright, rich, harmonic), I expected to see something scatterwound, with maybe with offset coils. But that wasn't it at all. Slug coil measured 4.52 ohm and screw coil measured 4.53 ohm. And here's the part that was most interesting to me-- a rather high TPL count of about 96 turns per layer, equal traverse. Again, I counted in several places throughout the coil. The pickup coils were very evenly machine wound, with almost no variation and a consistent number of turns per layer.
So, I was a little surprised. I always thought the custom 78 was a lively articulate pickup. These were attributes that I typically thought were found in pickups that were scatterwound. But clearly this pickup is a higher tpl with a very consistent wind pattern. I was also surprised that the Custombucker had such a low tpl.
Anyhow, thought I would share. I figured it would be interesting to see what, if anything, could be learned from this simple experiment.
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