Educate Me On Pickup Winding

[SavageRiffer]

I have heard all the terms such as scatter wound, hand wound, over wound, pure wound, etc. but come to think of it, I don't really understand it all. Overwound has been said to be hotter, fatter, warmer sounding. Scatter wound has been said to do something to direction or interaction of magnetic fields. Hand wound somehow is supposed to give a signature character from the experience of the winder. I don't know what pure wound is. So what does all of this mean? What affect does winding have vs. type of magnet? What about noise/hum? Can someone please explain the pickup winding concept in detail?

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Man, your could just as well have asked for the meaning of life.

P'up winding can be compared with gourmet cooking; it's an enormous subject, with literally thousands of small details that make or break a (dish) p'up.

The only way is to get yourself a coil winder and start spinning some bobbins and breaking some wire.

If you're resilient and persevere, you'll eventually get there, but it's by no means cheap as a hobby.

HTH,

 

[jeremy]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

as kojak said, its a huge topic if you really get into it. jason lollar put out a book a while ago you should be able to find used if you really want to learn.

hand wound (more accurately hand guided) is when a machine spins the bobbin and a person guides the wire onto the bobbin controlling pattern and tension. typically a hand wound pup will have more character and texture than a machine wound pup but modern winding machines can do basically anything a person can do so this is as much about tradition and marketing as anything else.

scatter wound means the pattern of the wire on the coil has fewer turns per layer or is inconsistent in pattern. the more scattered the wind of a coil the more texture and character the pup will have. there tends to be a clarity to the sound that some more consistently wound coils dont have. again, lots of bs in marketing with this term.

over wound means there is more turns of wire in the coil. if you have a coil with 8000 turns of wire and a similar one with 10000 turns the one with 10k will have more output and be darker/warmer/fatter than the one with 8k but will have a less open high end

pure wound is a bs term and means nothing

a pup is a coil of wire (or multiple coils of wire) and a magnet (or multiple magnets) a typical strat pup is six rod magnets in a bobbin with a coil of wire wrapped around the bobbin. a typical gibson style humbucker is two coils of wire wrapped around bobbins with one bar magnet shared by the two coils. one coil cannot be humcancelling or noise free. if you have two identical coils that are wound opposite and have opposite polarity (reverse wound/reverse polarity or rw/rp) then they will cancel hum. if the coils arent identical then only some of the hum will be cancelled out.

there are a variety of threads about magnet type and their effect on tone if you search for them

 

[AlexR]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

There is Pure Handwound as a term though, if you've just misread it.

Think of winding a hose on a reel. You can do it really neatly where there is every bit of space possible used and each layer is uniform. The final shape is uniform and the tone tends to be less 'alive' for want of a better word. Then you can have it a bit more random....scatterwound....where the wire has a random degree of turns and position of the wire. You can have the wire bunched more toward one flange of the bobbin or the other, or a big hump in the middle.
The possibilities (and the resultant tone produced) are endless. The PAF is a good example of random (within a tolerance) winding. Open tone with a depth to it.

Overwinding is a relative term.....simply 'more than' something else.

 

[SavageRiffer]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Thanks for the replies. I understand the idea of it now. Is there any specific interaction between tightness or overwinding of a pickup and the type of magnet? For example would a thick overwound pickup be more agreeable with an A2 vs A8?

 

[thanaton]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Thanks for the replies. I understand the idea of it now. Is there any specific interaction between tightness or overwinding of a pickup and the type of magnet? For example would a thick overwound pickup be more agreeable with an A2 vs A8?

Even though AlNiCo is a magnet, the coil only cares about the fact that it's a metal (while the guitar strings only care about the fact that it's a magnet). The two properties of the AlNiCo metal that the coil care about are a) the permeability and b) the conductivity. Higher permeability increases the inductance L of the coil, lowering the resonant peak while increasing the pickup's voltage output, while higher conductivity will cause more eddy current losses. Eddy currents are like resistance that gets higher with frequency, and so they dull the high end response of the pickup.

The closer the metal is to the core of the coil, the greater an effect it will have on the coil. Humbuckers have steel slugs and screws in their coil cores. Steel has a much higher conductivity and permeability than AlNiCo, so this is a fact that sets them apart from Fender type pickups, which have AlNiCo in the coil's core. Since the AlNiCo bar in a humbucker is slightly outside of the coils, it has less of an effect than the the steel slugs and screws, but it's still close enough to make an audible difference.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Thanks for the replies. I understand the idea of it now. Is there any specific interaction between tightness or overwinding of a pickup and the type of magnet? For example would a thick overwound pickup be more agreeable with an A2 vs A8?

I've found some pickups will take to any magnet type, and others will be very picky.....of course this brings the element of personal taste into it, but that comes into the pickup area anyhow so its part of the game really.

The first part of pickup winding is the mechanics....getting enough wire in the right way onto the bobbin so it has the right sort of output you want. Then as you get more skilled then you can experiment with other aspects to finetune elements of the sound.
Magnets have somewhat identifiable eq traits as well as strength. But these work together with the wind to create the final tonal outcome. So an A2 pickup is not always strong mids and loose bass like the magnet's natural inclination. Neither is A5 scooped in all cases. In all my mag swapping I've never found any pickup where the magnet influences the overall tone more than just as a minor tweak. Of course my swaps were all in the A2/3/4/5 +UOA5 range. A8 or Ceramic might have some more significant changes over a low strength Alnico.

 

[SavageRiffer]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Even though AlNiCo is a magnet, the coil only cares about the fact that it's a metal (while the guitar strings only care about the fact that it's a magnet). The two properties of the AlNiCo metal that the coil care about are a) the permeability and b) the conductivity. Higher permeability increases the inductance L of the coil, lowering the resonant peak while increasing the pickup's voltage output, while higher conductivity will cause more eddy current losses. Eddy currents are like resistance that gets higher with frequency, and so they dull the high end response of the pickup.

The closer the metal is to the core of the coil, the greater an effect it will have on the coil. Humbuckers have steel slugs and screws in their coil cores. Steel has a much higher conductivity and permeability than AlNiCo, so this is a fact that sets them apart from Fender type pickups, which have AlNiCo in the coil's core. Since the AlNiCo bar in a humbucker is slightly outside of the coils, it has less of an effect than the the steel slugs and screws, but it's still close enough to make an audible difference.

Great explanation. Thanks. I should have clarified my question a little more though. What I meant to inquire was whether there is a general rule or something that applies to high, low, medium output pickups as far as the winding vs magnet strength. Since Ceramic and A8 are significantly stronger than A2-5, are high output pickups underwound to compensate for the more powerful magnet or something like that? I've seen a lot of stuff about overwound PAFs, and since PAF style pickups typically use A2-A5 type magnets, would it be because the overwinding plays nicer with weaker magnets? Less muddy or something?

I've found some pickups will take to any magnet type, and others will be very picky.....of course this brings the element of personal taste into it, but that comes into the pickup area anyhow so its part of the game really.

The first part of pickup winding is the mechanics....getting enough wire in the right way onto the bobbin so it has the right sort of output you want. Then as you get more skilled then you can experiment with other aspects to finetune elements of the sound.
Magnets have somewhat identifiable eq traits as well as strength. But these work together with the wind to create the final tonal outcome. So an A2 pickup is not always strong mids and loose bass like the magnet's natural inclination. Neither is A5 scooped in all cases. In all my mag swapping I've never found any pickup where the magnet influences the overall tone more than just as a minor tweak. Of course my swaps were all in the A2/3/4/5 +UOA5 range. A8 or Ceramic might have some more significant changes over a low strength Alnico.

I have only swapped magnets in Duncan and Dimarzio pickups, but an interesting observation I have made is that magnet swaps seem to have a little greater tonal effect in Duncan pickups than Dimarzios. I wonder why that is?

 

[AlexR]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

The wind is they key.....if the wind is pushed in a certain range of frequency, then that will dominate. Less push and the magnet's small shift will make seemingly more change to the overall.

 

[thanaton]

Re: Educate Me On Pickup Winding

Great explanation. Thanks. I should have clarified my question a little more though. What I meant to inquire was whether there is a general rule or something that applies to high, low, medium output pickups as far as the winding vs magnet strength. Since Ceramic and A8 are significantly stronger than A2-5, are high output pickups underwound to compensate for the more powerful magnet or something like that? I've seen a lot of stuff about overwound PAFs, and since PAF style pickups typically use A2-A5 type magnets, would it be because the overwinding plays nicer with weaker magnets? Less muddy or something?

Actually it's the other way around, a hot humbucker such as a DiMarzio Super Distortion exploits a larger ceramic bar for more output, and it has a DC resistance of 14k. A stronger magnet results in more voltage output, so if you want a hot pickup, a stronger magnet gives you more of what you want. Also, for reasons that are not clear, a stronger magnet seems to result in more high end response, be it ceramic or a stronger AlNiCo bar, which helps compensate for the lower resonant peak of the hot, overwound coils. The reason every pickup isn't made like this is because there are other tonal consequences that go along with the use of a ceramic bar in a humbucker, they can sound "harsh".

The reason you see AlNiCo 2 and AlNiCo 5 in conjunction with "hot PAFs" is because 1) hot PAF wound to, say 9k, are still low output pickups relative to something like a Super Distortion, and 2) AlNiCo is vintage correct, where as ceramic is not, and to say that a pickup is a PAF implies some degree of historical accuracy.