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  • #16
    Anyone who aspires to have a line of commercial products will need two very important things:

    1) a way to produce reliably consistent copies of their own products,

    2) a way to either obtain remarkably patient and monied clients, or a way to produce product with as little time and labour invested as possible, so as to be able to offer greater availability and cheaper prices.

    So, unless we're talking individual boutique makers who do custom orders only, a mechanized system that lets you stick bobbins and wire spools on a machine that you don't have to watch every second, and provide identical copies, is the only option for something one could call a "business" (as opposed to a hobby that occasionally pays for itself, but little more than that).

    Not only is the market saturated with folks offering new stuff, but pickups aren't the sort of thing that really wears out easily or gets easily damaged. Your pickguard may get worn, your pots may need changing, your frets may need replacing, and your strings will definitely need changing, but unless you have a habit of taking it in the shower with you, your pickups will be humming along just fine, 5, 10, 20 years from now.

    Five years from now, there will also be all the re-purposed pickups of all those busy boutique makers...and maybe even 2nd hand Duncan Zephyr pickups on Craigslist, in addition to all those loaded Strat pickguards you can buy for peanuts at Guitar Fetish. Anyone who hopes to make a go of it and pay their rent and living costs with pickups better damn well have a tight grip on a big niche market, or something truly revolutionary that creates a market, or else a day job will be imperative.

    Someone suggested catering to the local market where you live. I think that's a terrific idea. And I also think that's a great reason to plan around other primary revenue streams and treat pickup-making as a little thing you might do on the side for beer money and buddies. On the other hand, if you win a lottery and don't have to worry about rent or mortgage ever again, have at it.

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Mark Hammer View Post
      Anyone who aspires to have a line of commercial products will need two very important things:

      1) a way to produce reliably consistent copies of their own products,
      I know I've popped in on this before, but I found it interesting that the "stated" acceptable variance in DCR that Seymour Duncan tests for in their pre-shipping quality control stage was at the range it was. 5% would have seemed to me to be a fairly significant degree of variance. That would put their acceptable DCR range on a 6.8K p/u anywhere between 6.5K and 7.1K. Other "recipe" components aside, I would have thought that a range of that magnitude could produce substantially different tone. But, I'm guessing either that it doesn't or in fact those limits are very seldom reached.

      Seymour Duncan Factory Tour_part 2 - YouTube
      Take Care,

      Jim. . .
      VA3DEF
      ____________________________________________________
      In the immortal words of Dr. Johnny Fever, “When everyone is out to get you, paranoid is just good thinking.”

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      • #18
        Originally posted by kayakerca View Post
        I know I've popped in on this before, but I found it interesting that the "stated" acceptable variance in DCR that Seymour Duncan tests for in their pre-shipping quality control stage was at the range it was. 5% would have seemed to me to be a fairly significant degree of variance. That would put their acceptable DCR range on a 6.8K p/u anywhere between 6.5K and 7.1K.
        The copper diameter of #42 wire varies from 0.0024" to 0.0026", and the variation in DC resistance will follow the ratio of cross-sectional areas, and so will be (0.0026/0.0024)^2= 1.174, or a total range of 17%.

        By comparison, 7.1/6.5= 1.092, or 9.2%, a far smaller range.

        Other "recipe" components aside, I would have thought that a range of that magnitude could produce substantially different tone. But, I'm guessing either that it doesn't or in fact those limits are very seldom reached.
        It isn't obvious that it matters all that much. Turns count is the more fundamental measure.

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        • #19
          Originally posted by kayakerca View Post
          I know I've popped in on this before, but I found it interesting that the "stated" acceptable variance in DCR that Seymour Duncan tests for in their pre-shipping quality control stage was at the range it was. 5% would have seemed to me to be a fairly significant degree of variance. That would put their acceptable DCR range on a 6.8K p/u anywhere between 6.5K and 7.1K. Other "recipe" components aside, I would have thought that a range of that magnitude could produce substantially different tone. But, I'm guessing either that it doesn't or in fact those limits are very seldom reached.

          Seymour Duncan Factory Tour_part 2 - YouTube

          I see that some people measure each roll of magnet wire they get. I'm guessing that would be to match some DC resistance figure.

          I wind to turns count, and have not heard any noticeable different from one roll of 42AWG to another.
          It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure. — Albert Einstein


          http://coneyislandguitars.com
          www.soundcloud.com/davidravenmoon

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          • #20
            I have not been interested in marketing a pickup. Winding started as repairs to old pickups, now I save money by offering my customers pickups made with quality materials, wound to taste for less than what a new Duncan, Dimarzio, Fender, Gibson, etc will cost them. Some weeks I make no pickups, some I make a dozen. It just adds another service I can provide in my shop. There is one humbucker "formula" I have really been into that everyone is pleased with, but is it truly unique? I am certain something out there is pretty damn close.

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            • #21
              I make pickups for my own use, not for sale, but then, I have a small guitar factory and I need a unique product...which I get in part by making my own pickups. I could wind up (pun intended) selling pickups, but I really don't care one way or the other, and I'm not even going to consider it until I get through a current round of re-tooling bobbin and base plate parts. I do have a fantastic antique automatic winder, a CoWeCo "Laboratory Winder"...it's all gears and cams and clackety-clack, but it shuts off right on the dime with exactly two turns over count, and I can match coils to within + or - 2% easily and within 1% with a bit more attention. I will occasionally hand guide a pickup wind for prototypes or weird stuff, but I think "hand winding" as a regular thing is just silly. I need consistency, and the only way to get that is to wind with an automatic winder. BTW, I once talked to Seth Lover about the whole hand guided thing, and he said that he always had automatic winders in mind when designing what we now call the PAF. He thought hand winding was idiotic for production pickups. He also thought that the variation in earlier Gibson humbuckers was indeed caused by a wider range of wire diameter as well as a wider range of insulation thickness "back in the day". Those two factors control DCR and internal capacitance...and hence you have a wider range of difference among older pickups than we need to put up with now.

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Rick Turner View Post
                I make pickups for my own use, not for sale, but then, I have a small guitar factory and I need a unique product...which I get in part by making my own pickups. I could wind up (pun intended) selling pickups, but I really don't care one way or the other, and I'm not even going to consider it until I get through a current round of re-tooling bobbin and base plate parts. I do have a fantastic antique automatic winder, a CoWeCo "Laboratory Winder"...it's all gears and cams and clackety-clack, but it shuts off right on the dime with exactly two turns over count, and I can match coils to within + or - 2% easily and within 1% with a bit more attention. I will occasionally hand guide a pickup wind for prototypes or weird stuff, but I think "hand winding" as a regular thing is just silly. I need consistency, and the only way to get that is to wind with an automatic winder. BTW, I once talked to Seth Lover about the whole hand guided thing, and he said that he always had automatic winders in mind when designing what we now call the PAF. He thought hand winding was idiotic for production pickups. He also thought that the variation in earlier Gibson humbuckers was indeed caused by a wider range of wire diameter as well as a wider range of insulation thickness "back in the day". Those two factors control DCR and internal capacitance...and hence you have a wider range of difference among older pickups than we need to put up with now.
                Glad to see you here again Rick
                "UP here in the Canada we shoot things we don't understand"

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                • #23
                  I'm finally getting to a point where I can at least think about delving back into some new pickup design. I've got a few more months of re-tooling my current (and some older "reissue") pickups to make it a lot easier to make them. Now that I've got a CNC machine, and there's access to a CNC laser as well as 3D printing (look into DLP printers...), costs for limited runs of extremely accurate parts are much more under control than in the past, and it's actually practical to tool up to make parts for a given pickup of which I may only need twenty to forty a year. Up to now, it's been a lot of hand made parts aligned by hand and some crude fixtures. Once I've retooled, I'll be able to turn the actual manufacturing over to one of my employees and get onto some new stuff.

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