The Truth About Scatterwinding Guitar Pickups
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ค. 2024
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As a (former) radio-/tv-technician I sometimes feel like I'm the only sane person when talking about electronics to guitarists or fellow luthiers. Then i watch one of your videos and I just want to scream thank you as loud as I can and hug you until it's awkward.
I worked in the telecommunications industry eventually in the transmission section ie between major telephone exchanges... For the longest time I just gave up trying to convince anybody in the guitar world it is pretty much the same as any "$%#@%^&%%" group they cling to there belief systems
@Kenny H Since wood is not involved in the generating of sound of electric guitars, anybody who says it effects the tone is lying., stupid. :)
@Kenny H I'm a luthier, i build guitars, I wind pickups and I most important of all I know physics. What anybody did with a microphone is completely irrelevant because that is not how the sound in a electric guitar is generated. It's called induction. Read a book. your degree of stupid is hurting.
@@immanuelkantholz9033 Wood isn't involved in generating the signal but resonances within the wooden body will serve to mechanically filter the tone generated by the string. It's the same as the difference between a hollowbody sound and a solid body sound - but much more subtle. It won't make a difference if you're playing through overdrive/distortion/fuzz but it can be heard in clean tones, in my experience. Imagine if you had a very absorbent, dead body - it would soak up higher frequencies and kill sustain. "Tonewood" is much subtler form and has been overhyped to sell expensive guitars but it can make detectable differences in some situations
@@immanuelkantholz9033 You can't isolate the strings from the body material, hence it affects the timbre of the vibrating string. Tonewoods may be a fucking scam but body material affects the sound, without a shadow of a doubt.
That explains why a lot of dirt cheap pickups coming out of Asia sound fantastic!
They sound good if you like the sound profile. The problem is they all sound the same, with the output being the only variable.
there are many things you can do to alter the sound any any pickup. Change the magnet to alnico or adjust the polepieces for a start, and well ... raise or lower the pickup in the guitar.
If you want a classic PAF, ok, you are basically screwed there.
Cheap gear is fine. They use less pure copper to save a dollar, but what the hell. (An EQ pedal is the secret ingredient, can make any sound you might be looking for. 100 bucks). It's people who don't play well who get to obsess. Spend the money on music lessons instead. Mind you, I would like one of Dylan's pickups. Sell the guitar, say it had Dylan's pickups, let the buyer make an assumption.. Caveat emptor...👍
I’ll have to agree with you I bought a set of simulated P90 pick ups and they sound great for what I wanted. much better than I expected I actually looked inside one of them and saw that the Bobben was not really as big as a real P90 would be. by the way I was looking for a nice clean round jazz tone with decent high frequency.
They sound good and 400 pound hell hags with giant glasses and tattoos are sexy too.
Hi Dylan! Great video. I developed a special CNC winding system (patent pending) to minimize parallel wires on top of each other, which matters more than the side by side coils. In order to control the eccentricity of the coils I have to use a precision nozzle millimeters from the bobbin. Typical hand scatter winding machine has guides 6" or more from the bobbin: the tiny helical angle possible (~3deg max), and the number of turns the bobbin has to make to catch up to the guide position makes the whole concept comparable to snake oil in its reliance on the placebo effect, and lack of reproduce-ability.
Remember that a capacitor has a dielectric: the insulator between the conductors. Adjacent coils that were wound one after the other have the least resistance between them, so the capacitive coupling is very small. Put a coil on top from one or two layers above and now you will have 100 ohms or more of resistance between the parallel conductors in these coils. Here the capacitive effect is much more significant, and of course cumulative.
An additional issue is that a scatterwound pattern is less dense, and that means you can't fit as many turns on the bobbin. A cnc machine pattern can address the capacitance issue using an ordered layering system that maximizes coil turn density.
Does this mean you can make a perfect sounding pickup over and over?
@@charlesreohr6236 It means I can make perfectly consistent pickups. Perfect sound is a matter of taste. Definitely better frequency response than other comparable hand/scatter wound or machine wound coils.
Thanks for explaining these things so clearly without dumbing it down completely. I always come away from watching these videos feeling a little more knowledgeable and hopefully making smarter choices with my guitars
I really appreciate your explanations.
So many people, me included in the beginning, get caught up in the nonsense over all these superficial attributes of things.
When the truth is, every piece has its influence, but it’s a combination of a group of variables, that actually makes up a given result.
Thanks Dylan!
Really enjoy your channel. I too live in GA. Athens to be exact. I use to do a lot of what you do now. I’ve found you to be on point with no BS. Keep up the good work.
I really enjoy the knowledge dump and understanding of pick-ups that I'll definitely try to experiment with in the future
I work hard to NOT scatterwind my garden hose each time I roll it back on the reel.
Good luck
that garden hose reel’s capacitance must be freakin tremendous!
My hose reel lays the hose in perfect rows to allow the mist capacity. It probably has crazy capacitance. But it holds 200 feet of hose. This was a great video that explains a lot about hand-wound vs machine produced pickups. And why some pickups are better than others. In other realms, perfection is the ultimate goal. But not here. Winding pickups seems more like an art. Someday, someone will program a machine that consistently winds the perfect imperfect pickup. Maybe it has been done already.
@@robinleebraun7739 would also be nice if any active electronics were ever built with decent quality components...i have yet to hear any active system that didn't have the low end of an underinflated bus tire. i'll tell you what i do like, the lace alumatones. brilliant idea using a current sense architecture. i don't know of another way to get so many tone eggs in one basket. there's only one or two other things that could be employed with them for the most hi-fi sound ever. i also dig the bladed filtertrons (super trons). they sound pretty amazing as well.
Like take off, you HOSER!
Great information. This is something I may try myself.
Hi Dylan. Just discovered your channel. Great content. Facts clearly explained with no BS. Enjoying your work.
I'd love to hear you review "pickup technology" from the science end of things.
E.g.
- Dimarzio's "d activator" technology to make a pup sound like an active one.
- Dimarzio's "Air" tech
- Classic Active pickups vs the new school ones from Fishman
- How you think pickups should be measured for output and used as a universal rule
- Where you think pickups should move onto tech wise from the past
- Rails vs pole pieces.
- Different types of caps
- String pull, reality vs fiction
- What Seymour Duncan are doing to make their new pickups more modern sounding (Pegasus, Nazgul etc)
- General differences in approaches between some of the pickup companies that's actually worth noting
- How many variables can you have on pickup making before manufacturers are accidently copying each other?
etc etc.
Excellent... You explanation of pickup winding, in particular scatter winding was perfect. You left nothing to imagination. I get it. Thanks.
Very well put over and accurate
100% Disabled Veteran, THANK YOU for sharing your extremely informative lectures.. Now I know how to select components and incorporate them into making my guitars even better. Your charm and generous compassion helps us all learn to be better too! May you be blessed!
I gotta ask how you typed this out while being 100% disabled
@@arkadihughes4893 lol, and how did I come across this comment on a 3 yr old video within 6 days
@@arkadihughes4893 If he’s a 100% disabled, he probably had his secretary type it for him as he dictates internet posts
I’m a disabled veteran, too, but I’m wondering why it was even relevant for tat comment. Most disabled veterans don’t go around advertising it.
Love these technical details.
As a tune o matic lover... Thank you for setting the record straight about the stop tailpiece.
I have a guitar with the stop tailpiece located too close to the bridge. By the time the tailpiece is high enough so that every string clears the back of the bridge, the tailpiece actually wobbles a bit before strings are on the guitar. IOW the mechanical connection between the tailpiece and the body is weak. The threaded studs don’t screw tightly into the lugs (?) set into the guitar body. Top wrapping THAT guitar does improve tone and sustain. I didn’t get there after guzzling snake oil, I just got so frustrated trying to set up the bridge right that I figured what’s the harm in trying top wrap. If the tailpiece were 3/16” further from the bridge and the threaded studs screwed tightly into the lugs, I would very happily use the tailpiece the way Gibson intended.
Thanks Dylan.
Another great video loaded with truth. Another myth: Unless you have a supply of wire made in the 1950s, you can't make "authentic" PAF clones. Wire made today is very different.
You forgot that unless your fretboard wood was rolled on the thighs of an Egyptian virgin you can never achieve the same sustain as Paul Kossoff.
...and ultimately paying a premium for technically 'degraded' wire...same with old stock capacitors.
theres companies that replicated making that old wire with old machines. Its all a fail if you ask me lol
@@Dad-Gad ..ef’n GREAT..!!🤣🤣🤣
@@Dad-Gad I actually think that guitar WILL sound better 😉
Hi Dylan
I’ve just wound a bridge with 6.40 ohm and e neck with 3.50 ohm. The wire is a 42.5 . Neodymium on the neck and al I o 5 on bridge . Sound is similar in volume . Warm and chimy on neck and punchy but clear on beige . In the middle i put a Texas special to better appreciate the differences .
Thanks for videos
I agree with your comment regarding the difficulty in explaining technical subjects to people with little understanding of the topic being discussed. I have no idea of how scattered a "scatter-wound" pickup might be, nor the effects good or bad. The majority of commercially produced coils of various types that I have seen had very level-controlled windings.
Thank you sir. The voice of reason😊
My brother's a mechatronic engineer and he told me I should just use a machine even if I want to scatter the wire. That way you could program the exact scatter pattern and reproduce it exactly. I told him sure one day I'll do that when I actually know what I'm doing. Right now I'd probably break a lot of wire getting it set up.
I don’t scatter, but my pickups are true bypass. 😁
There’s also mutual inductance between each turn of wire. The current flowing through one wind induces current in the next. The tiny bit of capacitance in a coil is swamped by the large capacitance of your cable. Maybe coil capacitance would matter if you were winding inductors for radio frequency circuits.
Great video.
I love your channel because in one video I can hear 4 things that either make me think to myself 'oh, that makes sense: or; we'll see about that!"
Dude I love this comment. Inspiring people to play, investigate, learn, and just try stuff.
I have a 1938 Gibson ES-150. Seymour Duncan himself rewound the pickup. It is ... well, it’s like if a choir of angels sang the same perfect note. He has at least one of Gibson’s old winding machines, but he reconstructed the pickup to its original pre-machine glory. It’s breathtaking.
Love the shirt!
Dylan keeping it 💯....
I have an old Danelectro lipstick tube (the real thing, not a re-issue) that I salvaged from a trashed U2 about 30 years back, and it's resistance is about 1K higher than the standard; it has tons of harmonics and 'gronk' when I've wired it into various guitars. I think the only way it could likely have the higher impedance (I know that Z and R are not the same, trolls, but if one is higher, then...) would be if the thing had been wound much tighter than usual...I don't care to take it apart to check, though...
Im thinking well isnt it scatter winding if your doing it by hand? Then you said it right after I was thinking it. I think you nailed this. From everything I have learned so far, you hit on all of it and added some. Thank you so much
Makes sense.....thanks
Thanks a lot for your content Dylan! It always provides different perspectives and confirms/denies assumptions with backed arguments. I make my own pickups and have been scatterwinding the sh.. out of 'em. As a result, neck pickups sound beautifully, bridge pickups sound quite yappy-trebbly (which can be an inconvenient, if you have a master tone) and, as you said, the room for wiring is limmitted and you cannot easily predict the final overall DC Resistance based on the total turns (no scatter to heavy scatter = 0 to 6% DCR increae) . To avoid this, I considered going for flatter/wider coils (Jazzmastering them a bit) or thinner gauge AWG43 (AWG42/0.8 in winds to achieve a similar output) instead of the typical vintage Strat AWG42 (#waxpottingisamust). This helped. However, I will give it a try and go easier on the scattering of bridge pickups. If it really doesn´t make so much of a difference, at least I will not look mentally impaired while winding...
You are extreamly smart. I'm going to enjoy geeking out on your channel. I'm glad i found you.
I have a set of tone emporium big city 69 pickups in a strat that were advertised as scatter wound. I don't know if it makes a difference but they sound way better than my 57/62's and the 69cs fender pickups! I personally think that there are other variables that have a more significant influence on a pickups tone, like wax, magnet staggering, pickups height and bobbin dimension.
in the machine shop we just call .0002" as "two tenths" and .0026" as "two thou, six tenths"
Yes, what you think you will hear is what you will hear. Exactly.
I scatterwound an extra layer of 16 gauge speaker wire around the single coil bridge pickup on my squire 60s cv jazz bass to get that fat tone and better harmonics. i use most of the feedback that comes from my high powered sound system and dirty power emitted from my 90 year old home.
Brilliant technical explanation Dylan! Also the reason why smaller wires are better for higher frequencies is due to the skin effect. Electrical current actually flows around a wire (not through it like a water pipe), and whenever you use a thick wire or a thick dialectic material around the wire, the higher frequencies are lost due to capacitance and the skin effect. But bear in mind that these are high radio frequencies in the megahertz range, which are way above the audible human hearing range, which tops out around 20 khz. However it does make a noticeable difference in sound quality, especially for things like speaker cables and interconnects, as things like sound stage depth, width, and layering are mostly conveyed at those higher frequency ranges, and when you lose those frequencies due to capacitance losses in the cable, it kills your soundstage depth and layering first. For a mono signal like a guitar pickup or guitar patch cable, the effect shouldn’t be too noticeable. As for your explanation of windings, you essentially lose inductance like you said, which is basically the same thing as a perfectly wound coil just with less windings (so it wastes copper wire, making the pickup coil more expensive with no benefit to sound quality.)
Output transformer designer and winder here.
To obtain a deeper idea of parasitic capacitance, you need to think of voltage gradients. The less it is between two wires, the less the capacitance is by square root. The biggest capacitance will be found on layer ends. The more overall turns you have, the less voltage gradient between adjacent turns.
I used to rewind electric motors and this information is correct. It's near impossible to lay windings with the wire turns laying perfectly side by side without using unnecessary sophisticated winding equipment.
The only thing I think could be different about "hand winding" is that the wire may tend to bunch up randomly nearer and farther the poles through out the process in a fairly sloppy job, but who does that.
Scatter winding makes sense in audio and power transformers (where the wire is quite a bit thicker, and you can perfectly put one turn next to the other) but especially in RF coils, where small capacitances (on the order of picofarads) are of great importance (given the high resonance/operating frequencies. For the same reason there is the "litz wire" (skin effect at high frequencies; that range really doesn't exist on the guitar)).
Capacitance is also a thing to consider in cables, occurs the same, as the main conductor gets closer to the shield it raises and treble starts missing, but then i have doubts about if the longer the pickup as you mentioned in the humbucker - jazz bass comparison is really like that, i think it may be the opposite.
I like your channel because you keep it factual. It's pretty hard to find information about pickup winding that isn't "faith based".
A lot of people can’t handle their “guitar faith” being challenged so I appreciate this. Thank you.
I much prefer the tech description approach over the "see how this sounds" approach. That is a big problem with human beings - we tend to hear what we want to hear in many areas of our or lives. I don't know how people think they can even make a distinction from YT sound bite examples? I have had some of my commonly misplaced values / "wish lists" changed dramatically over the years by researching curiosities and being able to view videos similar to yours. Thanks for your efforts. T :)
The first pickup I ever made must have been in 1978 or 1979. Small bar magnets and wire that I salvaged from a telephone mouthpiece. Great sound. The next one I made was an optical pickup that involved a large Laser with a huge power supply that created ozone. It also made a great cat toy.
The ugly truth about all of this is that those "classic" tones from those "vintage" pickups , were the result of the cheapest production methods a company could employ. Their goal was to produce _clean_ distortion free products at as low a cost as possible. This is also reflects my personal taste in pickups. I want them as inefficient, harmonic, and almost out of control as possible. No taming them down with potting (maybe a quick dip in Bee wax...at most) scatter wound like if you got paid to make pickups by the bucket load.
Then it's just trial and error.
A lot of trial and error.
ravenslaves true, that's really interesting too, when you think about some of the most sought after tones like 59 gibsons or 60s era fender single coils you're looking for the inconsistency and the work of the pioneers and inventors who really weren't quite sure what they were doing yet. Like tele pickup...one of the earliest, the design of that one messes up the magnetic field and all improvements ruin the the thing we love about it.
@pagansforbreakfastThis is just my opinion, but I think there are always tonal possibilities. The big question is what tonal possibilities do you really want? And is there a need for it? The basic transducer that we call a pickup was pretty much established by the late 1930's. There have been changes made to pickups as the musical tastes, needs and technology have changed. But overall the music and the role of the guitar haven't really changed as much as we like to think it has. Even the most cutting edge design will always be compared to your basic pickup as a standard for performance and tone.
"those "classic" tones from those "vintage" pickups , were the result of the cheapest production methods a company could employ. "
Which is why i buy pickups from a guy on ebay that sells them for 100 bucks a set. If you pay more you're really just paying for the brand name but there's no real guarantee the pickups will be better.
that also describes the stratocasters design in general. fender just wanted something he could cheaply mass produce.
There are great parallels between guitars and golf clubs. Both are subject to tremendous marketing hype, chasing silver bullets, over analysis, and finally folklore. But in the end, it's most enjoyed by those who make pragmatic decisions within budget , allow for a little mystery, and in the end realize it's all in the hands.
(I wanted to illustrate a 'scatterwound' post.....)
Hello Dylan!
Thank you for your very informative videos!
I have a question concerning the effect of wire gauge on the effective output of the pickup, which is kind of a thought experiment:
Say we have a humbucker pickup, which is machine wound with AWG 42 to say 8,00 kOhms with relatively full bobbins. Now we (in thought) stretch the AWG 42 wire from that pickup to AWG 43 and rewind the same pickup with the same wire, using machine winds. The resistance of the pickups might end up being around 13,50 kOhm that way (give or take, it does not really matter that much here).
The mass of wire on the pickup will be exacly the same either way. It's clear that we will end up with considerably more winds on the bobbins, resulting in a diminished treble response.
But in which way will his have an effect on the overall output of the pickup, when everything else stays the same? Will it be effectively be the same output, as there is the same amount (mass) of wire on the bobbins? Will it be more, as there are more winds on the bobbins? Or will it be less? What else will effectively change when every other factor stays the same?
Could you deal with this by using wire with a thicker insulation? Making the wire centres further apart?
(Great channel Dylan, really well explained and down to earth !)
i want the answer for this one too
I have a 72 Lefty Tele I bought new.
I was playing professionally on the road through a Ampeg V4 !
I changed the guitar to humbuckers in 73.
It was in a Club fire in the early 80s and I repainted it.
I want to put it back original, Butterscotch with white pick guard.
Should I try to find out what type pups were in it or go with something else?
Thoughts and ideas appreciated.
So ? Can you alter the sound of a pickup based on the scatter wind technique? Will there be a noticeable difference in tone and if so which is more desirable ?
Interesting, thanks. :)
Love my Fralin’s!
I'm planning on winding a ingle coil pickup for a tenor guitar I'm building (so 4 string). How many turns am I suppose to wind around the 4 magnets ? 8000 like a regular guitar coil ? Thanks for the great content as always !
I believe an accidentally related issue is the wax potting. The cheap old pickups that sound good might be scatter wound leading people to believe that's the key, but those pickups also aren't wax potted.
Not being wax potted seems (to me at least) to give a nicer sound, but unfortunately the trade off is microphonics. So nice in the bedroom, not at stage volume.
It makes maybe 20pF difference on a humbucker, being optimistic with my measurements. On a ~100pF pickup, that's pretty good right? Only when the cable between guitar and amp is maybe 400pF, and the 4 core and shield pickup wire is 320pF/metre, the difference is lost by adding a pedal or not cutting the pickup wires short to length.
Measuring with a driver coil and oscilloscope/data logger and some maths.
If you have a perfectly machine-wound and muddy pickup ... get an 0.047uF cap (you can try other values) like you find on the tone knob and put it in series with the muddy pickup hot lead. This gives you the effect of capacitors in series (check out that equation) and thus hacks down the impact of the pickup's internal capacitance. It's dramatic. So now you can fix any overly muddy pickup -- for a nickel!
You're just creating a highpass network with the winding and capacitor in series which will remove low frequencies from the guitar signal. It's not going to affect the parasitic capacitance of the coil or its high frequency response at all. There is no reduction due to series combination of capacitance as you state since the smaller capacitance dominates, and the winding capacitance is probably 100x or more smaller than your proposed 47 nF cap.
Oh, yeah? Well, I know a guy who has been playing guitar for 24 years and he says... Nah, I'm jerking your chain, but I am sure you have received these kinds of comments. I've gotten to where I don't tell people I have an EE degree because that automatically tells them that their friend knows more than I do. Because he has been PLAYing guitar. Preach, brother.
I was wondering if you were ever going to mention inductance and you did!
Good video my question if you are making a humbucker and by hand each coil is scatter wound since this is random the two coils are wound different which will probably yield two different capacitance so the two coils are unmatched to a certain degree does this affect the sound?
So as far as top wrapping goes. I wasn't always a top wrapper till something happened to my 2014 Gibson ES335. I raised the tail piece to relieve the break angle a bit. what happened next was my nightmare. the extra sideload pressure from raising my tailpiece cause the top to crack. not finish but the wood. so now I have a Bigsby on my ES##% because of that. it's very cool but I didn't want to do it because of damage. So, I would say take it on a guitar-by-guitar basis.
Late to this conversation and very interesting. If insulation is 0.002 thick. Each wire edge (not centre) will be at least 0.004 apart. Has anyone ever would a pick-up that does a layer with insulation, then a layer without (repeated for the full wind)? In that case, the wire edges now have a minimum of 0.002 apart (and if done by machine, very accurately). I’d love to know how this may sound. Yeah, that’d be some labour cost prepping the wire so there are no shorts, but I bet that would be really sought after (if not already done before).
I know many different epoxies coatings paints varnishes polymers and other stuffs heh corrode over time due to natural acids from touching (oils acids etc finger prints one e.g.) would it not be better to NOT touch the wire at all or use gloves to inhibit / reduce this corrosion.? {stands proud in front of the confuser monitor after having a real question} plz respond thx
We love A B tests with spectrum analyzer.
Dylan, do you have any demo videos on TH-cam of a your pickups? I would love to hear them.,, I only found the centerpunch vid.
Great stuff. I'd luv to see if I could actually hear the difference between identical pups wound the different ways. That same capacitive idea is a big deal on circuit boards to keep signals from cross talking from one trace to the next. But the reason that is a big deal is because digital drivers send almost square waves that contain a lot of really high frequencies. The frequencies we can hear are so low, I have a hard time believing one signal is bleeding next to it enough to matter. But even if it did, it's the same signal!
I am curious why you say the inductance changes though. If there's a thousand coils over an inch, one scattered one parallel, everything else being equal on two pups, seems like they should be the same. I guess the scatter might increase the coil thickness of the scattered one a tad?
Too bad you're not old enough to have been playing guitars in the sixties, when Fender and Gibson
were still hand-winding pickups. It wasn't about different styles of pickups creating the same signals,
you could have a Les Paul where one pickup was a lot louder than the other, or sounded different.
Some of that was the two volume, two tone control wiring, where the hand soldering could mess up.
Thing is, inductance is used as a kind of blanket term for everything that has to do with the inductive properties of the coil. For example, you could say one magnet has a stronger magnetic field than another and have a real number attached to it, but if they're shaped different (just like how scattering a coil differently gives it a different "shape") you can't really compare them numerically
So. I appreciate your getting to the bottom of things. Its „boring“ science and theory. Ím on your side. So i tried paper in oils. Vs orange drops vs cheapos. Couldnt measure a difference. But i hear one. They just roll off differently. Whres that study about saturation properties of caps? Is it god? Btw, buffer first or no buffer makes a much bigger difference
OK so what is the best readings for capacitance, inductance etc..for the best Strat pickups to get the hugest Jimi -SRV tones ever. and what wire should be used? I am looking to get the hugest single coil Strat tones ever.
You need the same strat pickup. Don't worry about the meter readings; makers don't list them . Listen to pickup demos.
Dylan, formulae for calculating induction of the coil is L= u((N sqrt x A)/l)
Where: u - relative permeability of material.
N - number of turns in coil.
A - area of coil
l - length of wound wire.
As you can see, no matter how "sloppy" you wind the coil, as long as the area and conductor length is the same, the INDUCTANCE will be the same. But inductance means nothing in pickups. Not a single manufacturer lists it. It is important for chokes, not pickups.
Also, you said something along the lines "the wire radius (then "diameter" - proper engineering term is "gauge") does not affect the sound. I suggest you try winding a pickup with AWG 20 and tell me if you liked the sound.
Finally, to the point of scatter winding. Except stray capacitance, it is meant to eliminate "skin effect". Check it out. It makes pickup actually more, hmm, "proper".
And arriving again to the milivolts debate: People may say star grounding is a hoax. People may say skin effect in pickups does not exist. Meanwhile rich R&D departments are pouting millions into the tech you say doesn't work and cash billions out.
Cheers,
Item.
Formula is not correct -- L = N^2*u*A/l. Inductance is indeed the most important measure, the greater the inductance, the greater the output of the pickup. Pickups are often specified with DC resistance since for a given wire gauge and bobbin size (ie a given pickup style) the number of turns is linear in the resistance, which is extremely easy to measure. HOWEVER, that N^2 in the formula is only achieved with an ideal winding. A scatterwound pickup will not achieve N^2 in the inductance because the mutual inductance between windings is decreased when consecutive windings are moved further apart. It is true the capacitance is reduced, but so is the inductance. A scatterwound pickup would probably not be as hot as an ideally wound pickup. My best guess is an underwound ideally wound pickup would sound very similar to a scatterwound pickup with more turns.
Let's talking about Fractal FM3 for the next video, really want to know how do u think about it?
What pickup had the widest, flattest frequency range?
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Distance to the center of the wire doesn't matter that much. Currents are carried on the outside of the conductor (for DC, it is completely on the outside, for AC there is a skin depth, which is on the order of tenths of microns for audio frequency waves. Almost no current moves through the center of the wire, almost all of it is on the surface, just below the insulator. I speak on this from experience and knowledge, I'm a college physics professor.
Recently rewound my american strat pickups. Stock pickups sounded tinny and thin. Now they sing. They are warm and full. I Can hardly believe the difference.
I must say though ive spent a ton of money on pickups over the years, and there does seem to be more hi-fi “air” in bare knuckle high gain ‘scatter wound’ pickups, i noticed that before i ever knew what scatter winding did. Id love to hear your thoughts on BKP
What he's saying is only half true, there is an art to scatterwinding, and just because a pick-up is scatterwound, doesn't mean it will be superior, it takes a skilled winder to do a nicely scatterwound pickup. This debate is becoming as annoying as the tone wood debate, tone wood exists, and a well done scatterwound pickup just flat out sounds better than one that isn't, and Bare Knuckles is a fantastic example of this, both these things exist and DEFINITELY matter. I hate when people upload videos like this that try to debunk the value of artisan wound/scatterwound pickups, when you can hear the difference in clarity and articulation with your own damn ears. If the hype wasn't there then professionals the world over would swear by them for literally decades now. Glad you're able to hear the difference like me, and unlike half the people that blab about these things, actually OWN a high end scatterwound pick-up.
@@FretLevelMidnight All of my pickups are scatterwound and I completely agree. There is an attention to detail needed to create a great scatterwound pickup.
@@voodoocustompickups2547 if all your pickups are scatterwound. how would you know the difference
@@ff-qf1th because I have cloned machine wound pickups. Same magnets, same base plate material, pole material, magnet wire gauge and material. Only difference is the hand wound vs machine wound
@@FretLevelMidnight furthermore, why do you hate this video? It's okay to disagree I guess, but this guy is taking a scientific approach to figuring out what things make the best tone for a pickup. He's not got a vendetta against you, or your pickups. There shouldn't be anything wrong with trying to debunk something you think is wrong. If you think _he_ is wrong, then make a proper counter argument. Don't just complain that he's got a contrary opinion
I'm in the process of laying out the drawings for a baritone guitar. In one of your videos you suggested trying a single pickup. I'm curious, where you would locate the pickup? The bridge, neck or middle? What kind of pickup? Single coil, humbucker, P90, or something else. How would you wire it if it it's a humbucker? Simple volume and tone, split coil, or something else?
I like the idea of trying a single pickup.
i feel like answering. i would put one pickup in the middle. i don't like neck pickup tones much, too bassy, too thick in my opinion. i would put it in the middle between the middle and the bridge to be precise. i think les paul juniors were layed out that way.
if you play distorted mostly i would take a humbucker. the more gain the nicer it sounds. otherwise a single coil. maybe a p90. but i have no explanation for that.
In any case i would wire it the 50's-wiring way, so you can dial in a lot of nuances which are not available the modern way.
no split coil, but parallel as an option.
@dylantalkstone how would you build a scooped pickup verses a standard pickup?
i scatterwind in different patterns and there are different harmonics. it also causes different sounding pick ups.
So would you be saying then that string tension does not have anything to do with sustain? Because if I understood the comment right the brother was saying that raising or lowering the tailpiece affects the sustain, I don't know about that so much but I know it affects string tension as I keep mine raised a little more than normal in order to keep my strings slinky, I've sometimes questioned if it gives me a little less sustained but it definitely doesn't have any major effect on anything that I can hear aside from that I can bend the strings easier especially close to the nut where string tension can make it hard sometimes
i totally agree
? would a solid block of copper machined down or how about copper foil (size weight ect... )
Is bobbin wire gauge affect the tone between 42 awg and a 44 which is thinner ?
My first try at hand wound I didn't use any machines. I literally found the spool by hand.
Yes it was a little tinny but after several tries I did come up with a pretty good sounding pickup.
Rickenbacker thinks it's a big enough of a deal to have invested back in the 2000's in a machine w/Program that 'scatterwinds' their Vintage Toaster-top pickups.
44 AWG used.
just a quick comment. first off. im a nuub. i cant play as of now. still learning but i love the ide of making stuff myself. So i have been dabbling with making my own guitar body for a while now. But i did want to buy a kit guitar just to have all the things i needed outside of the body itself. But i have been hesitant because people say those pickups are something people can hear are shit. And i did not want to use loads of time on making a body and have it sounding shit basically.
So that's the background of my now comment and question.
thank you so much for your info. I love it. I see now that i can buy some pickup kitts and wind the coils myself. As a part of the guitar project im thinking of. Or even make them totally myself.
question.
will a pickup still work covered in resin? even if the metal pieces are covered or will those have to be uncovered? i get that the pickups will essentially sit low so they will probably not be able to pick up everything. I would love some insight on the idea or if anyone who reads this have info or maby a link to a video.
Did the Fishmann pickup out when this was made? It was a printed coil? Sorta? Something like that? However it is done I understood the idea was to have a 99.9% consistent coils. That is opposite of scatterwound!
So essentially, a pickup too machined makes it so you don't need a .22 cap? Because the capacitance created essentially does that correct?
#gettinsloppywithit
That made me chuckle!
I can't play a guitar for shit. The nerdy stuff is why I love your content.
You need to buy a soldering gun and try to solder something so you get a soldering burn. Yeah!
Can you talk about making an EVH type pickup and how it's voiced?
evenly
I've found it very difficult to hand wind pickups, up have to wind them as evenly as you can or you won't get enough wire on them to get a reasonable output ie 7k , with out the coil becoming so wide you can't get the covers on, it's impossible not to scatter the coil winding by hand
ya thats what he said
I winded two strat pickups by hand over the course of a few months, laying a few hundred turns every now n' then. Completely by hand, scattering like mad. I winded until the cover barely fit. They measure 5.7k and have incredible clarity. My Fender Fat 50's now sound like cardboard compared to them. I'm totally a believer in scattering.
..using the cheapest poly chinese wire from Ebay. The slugs were from a '75 Mustang.
Do you have any numbers? What capacitance does a strict and a scattered wound pickups actually have? What is the difference in frequency response?
Yes. A graph would be nice to see actual measurements.
yes, it would help judge a pickup just by looking at its electrical parameters ... @@BeardofBeesPool
42 gage wire has a diameter of .0026 I looked it up.
Can you give an explanation on why your brand of pickups are so expensive compared to say Dragonfire. I'm just curious if you have to mark them up to make money on them, or if they take so long to make, = price.
We hand wind our pickups in house. A company like dragon fire buys pickups from a company like Artec and rebrands them. This is the case with many cheaper pickups... and it shows
I dare you to look in to the maths of pickup winding, the full maths. The two different insulators nylon/enamel have a different dielectric factor which will affect any capacitance. There is alway the therrory of using old tech for caps eg Paper in oil what differences you are hearing are actual faults from being the perfect capacitor. I have a old PIO cap that has failed it now acts as band pass filter with a horrid overall signal drop of around 20ish dB...
how do you feel about this hat of yours? do you enjoy it?
well if I didn't like it I wouldn't have bought it... nor would I wear it
How crazy does one have to be to really wind by hand, I mean without any help from a machine at all, so your hand has to move around the bobbin for each wind? The tension of the wire will be far from constant, but Id think you could lay each winding exactly the way you want. Id love to wind my own pickups sometime, but all I have are the componants and my two hands. Ranging from 1 to 10, how crazy do I have to be to pull this off? About a 12? :P
But seriously, what kind of lengths of wire are we talking about for 1 coil?
1. Nobody actually "hand winds" pickups -- the more proper terms for the old-fashioned way of doing it are "hand-guided" "hand-tensioned." The actual rotation of the bobbin has always been powered by electric motors. Hand rotating the bobbin literally thousands of turns is simply impractical.
2. Constant tension is very difficult to achieve because of the oblong shape of the bobbin -- controlling tension by hand, e.g. varying the finger pressure on the wire as experienced winders like Abigail Ybarra do -- is quite imprecise. A variable tensioning modification to the coil winding apparatus -- something only the late Bill Lawrence has ever managed to implement AFAIK -- is required to get reliable pickup winding quality.
Just love how myths get busted and ''buzz words'' brought down to size. I do think that one of the things that we tend to do is , try to sound like we know! what we're talking about. Our need to have answers is kind of wired into us, and the more people rehash a phrase the more it's ''confirmed'' as the truth. It takes some knowledge and thought to step out of the echo chamber and do a propper investigation.
When I hand wind my pickups, I only move my hand 0.0028" for each turn, so that the pickups are not scatter wound, LOL. I got a pretty steady hand, you know...
my old MICROCOIL strat pickup sounds very bright even though it is just 3mm coil height. Weird.