a few newb questions on winding...

[Capacitordeath]

I've gotten all worked up on the DIY concept on music, and I've added pickup winding onto my list of things to do soon.

1. I've read some stuff about different winding designs, especially the lipstick and trisonic pickups. They seem almost stone-age in their concept; are they really more of an act of patience than a technological trick?

2. I know that if you break the wire, start over. Is a sort of...i don't know...not perfect winding still going to work pretty well? By "not perfect", I mean that the wire may stray around a bit on the bobbin back and forth in spots.

3. pushing the odd windings thing a bit farther, can a braid work? How about a winding that's been twisted into a figure-eight? As long as it's a contiguous wire, it should be okay, correct? These are just blue sky ideas; I wouldn't want to braid 1000s of turns worth of wire.

4. If a circular winding was made around, say, a 2in diameter pipe with a few bar magnets set on the backside, would a second winding placed INSIDE the pipe, if set up properly, act as a sort of humbucker? Again, just spitballing here...I'm trying to look at all the angles of this concept, and throwing weird stuff out helps.

I hope these questions end up being either interesting, or easy.. I look forward to hearing from you.

[Peter Naglitsch]

Welcome to the forum. Here you will find some hobbyists, some pros and some in-between guys (me included)

1. I've read some stuff about different winding designs, especially the lipstick and trisonic pickups. They seem almost stone-age in their concept; are they really more of an act of patience than a technological trick?

They are not as old as the Fender pickup so they are not “stone age” in that aspect. They are different. And therefore the sound different. And yeah, they are harder to make…

2. I know that if you break the wire, start over. Is a sort of...i don't know...not perfect winding still going to work pretty well? By "not perfect", I mean that the wire may stray around a bit on the bobbin back and forth in spots.

3. pushing the odd windings thing a bit farther, can a braid work? How about a winding that's been twisted into a figure-eight? As long as it's a contiguous wire, it should be okay, correct? These are just blue sky ideas; I wouldn't want to braid 1000s of turns worth of wire.

Call it odd windings or not perfect windings if you want. Or call it scatter winding and charge a lot more for the same pickup.

4. If a circular winding was made around, say, a 2in diameter pipe with a few bar magnets set on the backside, would a second winding placed INSIDE the pipe, if set up properly, act as a sort of humbucker? Again, just spitballing here...I'm trying to look at all the angles of this concept, and throwing weird stuff out helps.

That is a step into the same direction as the hum reduction system patented by Mr. Suhr. If you are interested check out his back plate hum canceling thing-of-a-jig.

[David Schwab]

4. If a circular winding was made around, say, a 2in diameter pipe with a few bar magnets set on the backside, would a second winding placed INSIDE the pipe, if set up properly, act as a sort of humbucker?

There have been designs that were patented for coaxial humbuckers. I think the fact that they never made it into working pickups shows it doesn't work very well.

The thing with a humbucker is the two coils have to have opposite magnetic polarity, otherwise you will have two out-of-phase coils, and the tone will be very thin.