Let's Test Your Pickup Tone Prediction Knowledge!

[larryguitar]

I thought it might be instructive to see what specs alone could tell us about a pickup's tone. Since I'm winding a bit again, I have the opportunity to list the specs for pickups nobody's ever heard before, and then see how people's predictions match up to (my subjective opinion, admittedly) their actual tone.

1.Neck pickup: 50MM bobbin, 42 single build poly wire, 5,300 turns on both screw (3.96K) and slug (3.98K), 7.99K total, 2.5" polished A2 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the neck of an all mahogany single cut with 24 3/4" scale.

2. Neck pickup: 50MM bobbin, 42 single build poly wire, 5,200 turns on both slug and screw, 7.73K, 4.73H, 2.5" polished A4 magnet, fully charged, installed in the neck of an LP style guitar.

3. Bridge pickup: 52MM bobbin, 44 single build poly wire, 6,500 turns on both slug (7.73K) and screw (7.75K), 15.8K total, 2.5" polished A5 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the bridge of the mahogany single cut.

4. Bridge Pickup: 53MM bobbin, 43 single build poly wire, 6,300 turns on both slug (6.12K) and screw (5.76K) (note the offset) and 12.51K total, 6.13H, 2.5" polished A5 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the bridge of the LP style.

All hand-guided scatter wound, BTW and lightly potted.

There's always a lot of discussion about how well spec's can and cannot predict how a pickup sounds, and I thought this might be a good opportunity to check that out on 'never before heard' pickups.

I'll answer any questions you have if that could help-

Larry

[jeremy]

6300 turns on both coils with the same wire getting that big a discrepancy in dck suggests a quite different pattern. were the coils all wound at a similar rotational speed?

[larryguitar]

6300 turns on both coils with the same wire getting that big a discrepancy in dck suggests a quite different pattern. were the coils all wound at a similar rotational speed?

One 'fast and tight' and the other 'slower and looser', although still 'tight enough', if that makes sense.

Larry

[Lucius Paisley]

How many jellybeans are in this jar?

[jeremy]

One 'fast and tight' and the other 'slower and looser', although still 'tight enough', if that makes sense.

Larry

interesting. i usually find a faster speed will give a looser coil, partially because the way the wire comes off the spool, given the same winding tension

[Securb]

interesting. i usually find a faster speed will give a looser coil, partially because the way the wire comes off the spool, given the same winding tension

That might be your experience, but common knowledge totally contradicts that statement.

https://www.pickuptechs.com/winding/IADK549TEALD/5152C52D65412

[larryguitar]

interesting. i usually find a faster speed will give a looser coil, partially because the way the wire comes off the spool, given the same winding tension

I specifically increased the wire tension on that coil, Jeremy; not sure if the speed contributed (or decreased) the tension as well.

Larry

[TVFV]

How many jellybeans are in this jar?

Aw, come on, man, let just me have some. I'll tell you what, guess how many jellybeans I want! If you guessed a handful, you are right.

[jeremy]

That might be your experience, but common knowledge totally contradicts that statement.

https://www.pickuptechs.com/winding/IADK549TEALD/5152C52D65412

i know better than to click on anything you post without checkin the hype link bro ive learned my lesson

[freefrog]

I would find fun to play but IME and AFAIK (and going from the obvious to often overlooked parms)...


A PU 1.5mm under the strings then lowered of 3.5 other mm can appear as a different transducer.

A same PU with a 100k or a 1M volume pot doesn't sound identical.

A 2.6H modern Strat pickup can exhibit exactly the same measured resonant frequency than a real L series Strat PU having the same inductance but will still sound noticeably different and give different measurements once submitted to the probe of a Teslameter/Gaussmeter (this explaining that)...

A same humbucker with different screw poles / slugs / keeper bar (especially made of different alloys) can give various inductance / magnetic measurements and sound differently.

A same bridge pickup 1cm closer to the bridge has an extended high range but a flatter response and generates differently comb filtered harmonics.

A passive pickup played through 150m to 180m of cable would sound as with a tone control @ 0/10 because of stray capacitance (IOW: you can replace a 22nF cap with 150m of guitar cable but be aware that its capacitance will vary if it's rolled on itself or not).

A 4 conductors PU wired with screws coil to ground then with slugs coil to ground can sound noticeably different because of how parasitic capacitance of the coils changes and creates or not a double tuned resonant circuit...


Non limitative list.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think really possible to guess the sound of unknown passive pickups without knowing their height settings, + precise position relatively to the bridge + their measured magnetic specs + the overall resistive load / parasitic capacitance of PU and harness + the impedance of the device in which it's plugged (amp or pedal) + [insert forgotten specs and parms here] ...

Not to mention that the acoustic resonance of the host guitar always blends with the specs of a pickup, IME/IMHO.

I'd even venture to say that fundamental notes are basically shaped by the guitar itself, with its inherent bandwidth, snappiness (or lack of) and dead spots along the fretboard, while a pickup AND all the parms evoked above define mainly the harmonic response + the relative level of harmonics (felt like a BMT EQing because of an aural illusion) + only a part of the ASDR envelope.


So, no, sorry, I don't feel able to guess the tone of pickups on the basis of the few specs disclosed in the first post. :-/


Now, I'll humbly state that IME/IMHO/AFAIK and all other parms being equal, a coil wound with a defined turns count of 44AWG should have the same inductance BUT less output level than with the same turns count of 42AWG because thinner wire is more resistive... and that it should be more capacitive too, giving a lower pitched resonant peak. Oops, I've just summed up DiMarzio Dual Resonance as it has been measured and understood here. :-P

Sorry for the rambling : it's Sunday morning and I had to change my mind before to come back to real life and its current issues. Nevertheless, I'll be happy if I've succedeed to share at least a few useful thoughts above.

I wish you all a nice day.

[Chistopher]

I would find fun to play but IME and AFAIK (and going from the obvious to often overlooked parms)...


A PU 1.5mm under the strings then lowered of 3.5 other mm can appear as a different transducer.

A same PU with a 100k or a 1M volume pot doesn't sound identical.

A 2.6H modern Strat pickup can exhibit exactly the same measured resonant frequency than a real L series Strat PU having the same inductance but will still sound noticeably different and give different measurements once submitted to the probe of a Teslameter/Gaussmeter (this explaining that)...

A same humbucker with different screw poles / slugs / keeper bar (especially made of different alloys) can give various inductance / magnetic measurements and sound differently.

A same bridge pickup 1cm closer to the bridge has an extended high range but a flatter response and generates differently comb filtered harmonics.

A passive pickup played through 150m to 180m of cable would sound as with a tone control @ 0/10 because of stray capacitance (IOW: you can replace a 22nF cap with 150m of guitar cable but be aware that its capacitance will vary if it's rolled on itself or not).

A 4 conductors PU wired with screws coil to ground then with slugs coil to ground can sound noticeably different because of how parasitic capacitance of the coils changes and creates or not a double tuned resonant circuit...


Non limitative list.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think really possible to guess the sound of unknown passive pickups without knowing their height settings, + precise position relatively to the bridge + their measured magnetic specs + the overall resistive load / parasitic capacitance of PU and harness + the impedance of the device in which it's plugged (amp or pedal) + [insert forgotten specs and parms here] ...

Not to mention that the acoustic resonance of the host guitar always blends with the specs of a pickup, IME/IMHO.

I'd even venture to say that fundamental notes are basically shaped by the guitar itself, with its inherent bandwidth, snappiness (or lack of) and dead spots along the fretboard, while a pickup AND all the parms evoked above define mainly the harmonic response + the relative level of harmonics (felt like a BMT EQing because of an aural illusion) + only a part of the ASDR envelope.


So, no, sorry, I don't feel able to guess the tone of pickups on the basis of the few specs disclosed in the first post. :-/


Now, I'll humbly state that IME/IMHO/AFAIK and all other parms being equal, a coil wound with a defined turns count of 44AWG should have the same inductance BUT less output level than with the same turns count of 42AWG because thinner wire is more resistive... and that it should be more capacitive too, giving a lower pitched resonant peak. Oops, I've just summed up DiMarzio Dual Resonance as it has been measured and understood here. :-P

Sorry for the rambling : it's Sunday morning and I had to change my mind before to come back to real life and its current issues. Nevertheless, I'll be happy if I've succedeed to share at least a few useful thoughts above.

I wish you all a nice day.

Nerd!!


But I was going to say along the same lines that if they wound up in my house, all 4 of them would sound pretty similar given my rig consists mostly of EQ -> DS-1 -> some variety of fuzz.

[Aceman]

I'm going to jump in and say....

3 & 4 will be louder than 1 & 2. Do I win a prize?


Not that it matters, because I'm going to run this pickup through my Bad Monkey, which we know can be made to sound like anything!

[jeremy]

if i wound these, i could give somewhat accurate predictions of what theyd sound like. in your hands? generalizations at absolute best. the specs look good so i assume they are probably fine sounding pups, but you tell me what ya think

[larryguitar]

You guys know too much to be any fun....caveats got waist-deep there!

Here's my subjective (obviously) take on these-note all have 1018 slugs and 1022 screws with brass baseplate screws on nickel-silver baseplates:

1.Neck pickup: 50MM bobbin, 42 single build poly wire, 5,300 turns on both screw (3.96K) and slug (3.98K), 7.99K total, 2.5" polished A2 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the neck of an all mahogany single cut with 24 3/4" scale. I tend to like thick, warm neck pickups that don't get muddy; this was designed to get that in that specific guitar (an Ibanez ARC 300, FWIW) and it did; warm and never brittle, but not floppy on the bass.

2. Neck pickup: 50MM bobbin, 42 single build poly wire, 5,200 turns on both slug and screw, 7.73K, 4.73H, 2.5" polished A4 magnet, fully charged, installed in the neck of an LP style guitar. I don't have a lot of experience with A4, but was again looking to avoid an overly bright neck pickup, and that's what it turned out like. More push than #1, but very similar tonality.

3. Bridge pickup: 52MM bobbin, 44 single build poly wire, 6,500 turns on both slug (7.73K) and screw (7.75K), 15.8K total, 2.5" polished A5 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the bridge of the mahogany single cut. I was trying to get in the ballpark of a JB, and got into, maybe, the parking lot of the ballpark. It's *much* less compressed, and very open; string noises are easy to get, and harmonics happen even when not necessarily trying. Challenging to play, because it seems to reproduce every single little touch of the strings, but sounds (all MHO, of course) very aggressive without being shrill, which is a large part of what I was after. I'm going to try a similar wind with an A2 and more heavily wax potted (the default is a pretty quick dunk) to control some of the extraneous noises.

4. Bridge Pickup: 53MM bobbin, 43 single build poly wire, 6,300 turns on both slug (6.12K) and screw (5.76K) (note the offset) and 12.51K total, 6.13H, 2.5" polished A5 magnet, fully charged. Installed in the bridge of the LP style. The goal here was a good rock tone without so much of the 'over the top' character of #3, and that's pretty much it. It's got plenty of push into my Egnater, but (much to my surprise) has a really good clean tone as well; didn't expect that. Probably a better all-around pickup than #3 if you're not building a 'rock guitar', but can still rock just fine. Still pretty open, and not particularly compressed.

Aceman, I've got a box of experiments shaped like humbuckers here. If you want a couple DM me your address and preferences, and I'll mail them out to you as the 'Major Award' you so richly deserve. https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic...s/760095_1.jpg

Larry