Handwound Pickups

Andrew Lamprecht

Andrew Lamprecht

Minion of One
So whats so great about them?

If I buy a Gibson P90 pickup and a Handmade P90 by someone well known for pickup winding like Lollar, what are going to be the differences?
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

more vaiations between pickups. A machine winds to a certain programming language, someone moving wire side to side can vary at his / her will the tension, the angle of the wire, the speed of the wire moving side to side etc. Thus, no two pickups will have the same personality. It is possible to have them very similar, but the wiring turning style is like a fingerprint. Abby has her style, MJ has her style, Seymour has his style, Lollar has one, Tom Holmes has style (and MASSIVE OCD), but the way a pickup is wound, when a hand is feeding to the winding machine gives each pup its own signature sound and range of highs, mids, and lows.

THe machine does the physical winding, but when a pickup is "handwound", usually it means someone is feeding to the winding machine doing the above actions... the only pickup I'm aware of that has to be literally handwound are the lipstick pickups, although if there are others, please enlighten me too.

Jason
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

IMO, an experienced winder, guiding the wind by hand, has more control over the pattern, tension, and final resistance of the pickup.

the other factor is the materials used
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

As described above, the process of hand-guiding the copper wire around a pickup bobbin does has some noticable effect on the properties of the finished article.

Unfortunately, nobody has yet produced a clear, demonstrable and repeatable explanation of PRECISELY what is going on.

Electro-magnetism happens.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Funkfingers said:
nobody has yet produced a clear, demonstrable and repeatable explanation of PRECISELY what is going on.

Electro-magnetism happens.
Click to expand...

The equation of what makes a humbucking p'up sound the way it does is almost as complex as the brain's chemistry itself.

There are some magnetic field interactions (eddy currents mostly) that can't be measured because they don't know how or with which instrument they could be measured.

The best analogy is to compare it with the human body. You can measure almost everything and explain almost every organic function of the body... yet you can't explain why is alive!
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

I agree with those who say that the more random patterns of "scatter winding" a single coil pickup will produce a pickup with fewer frequency spikes, therefore a pickup with nicer texture and tone.

Although some people scatter wind the coils for humbuckers, the PAFs that many love were actually machine wound, so I don't know how much those pickups benefit from hand winding.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Inevitably, to some degree, our expectations of what a given pickup design ought to sound like are determined by what has gone before.

In the Fifties, hand-guided scatter winding was all that we had. Hence, hand-guided, scatter wound pickups is what we got. Rightly or wrongly, this formed the baseline of expectation for electric guitar pickups.

Anything that does not look or sound similar to what we have learned to expect is perceived as being "wrong".

This might explain why the technically superior Japanese-made pickups of the Seventies and Eighties sounded "clinical" and "sterile" in comparison to their less efficiently made American counterparts.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Handwound (handguided), handwrapped, or wound with a computerized CNC-like winder, the wire DOES NOT CARE how it got in the pattern/tension combo it's in. Whatever pattern/tension combo it's in is what it will sound like, no matter the method -- just like I'm sitting at the same end of the counter at my favorite diner whether I got there by foot, bike, bus or car.

There's no reason pure-machine-wound or pure-handwrapped pickups can't both sound great. Or both horrible. It's the wizard, not the wand...
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Funkfingers said:
Unfortunately, nobody has yet produced a clear, demonstrable and repeatable explanation of PRECISELY what is going on.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's true. The whole circuit has been extensively modelled with good, practically verifiable results.

There is pretty much no witchcraft in guitar building.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

I'm not convinced (as you might expect if you know me) that there is any difference between handwound and machine wound pickups except in the minds of the user.

It's a little like the debate over point-to-point wiring vs PCB in amp circuitry. There is a perception that anything which is "old style" equates to "tradition" and is therefore better. In no other sphere of human activity do we make this judgement other than audiophilia. We don't hear people saying "hey I'm going to get me one of those old 425 black and white TVs; they are so much better than these new mass manufactured HD units."

I would LOVE to do a double blind test on a group of guitarists to see how many could actually tell the difference between hand wound and machine wound pickups. I'm willing to bet that the results would not be better than 50:50.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

I'm not convinced that there is any difference. It's a bit like the ongoing debate over point to point wiring and PCB construction in amps. Anything old fashioned is seen as "traditional" and therefore better, but little is offered in the way of verifiable evidence other than subjective opinion. In few other fields do we follow this bizarre reversion to archaic technology other than audiophilia. When was the last time you heard someone say "I'm gonna get me one of those old 425 line black and white TVs much better than these new factory built HD units..."

I'd love to do a double blind test with a bunch of guitarists to see if anyone could actually tell the difference between a hand wound and machine wound pickups. I'm betting the result would be no better than 50:50.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

octavedoctor said:
I'd love to do a double blind test with a bunch of guitarists to see if anyone could actually tell the difference between a hand wound and machine wound pickups. I'm betting the result would be no better than 50:50.
Click to expand...

The should still be able to tell the difference between a good one and a bad one.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

David you've done hand and machine winds, would you say it makes more difference in SCs than buckers? I've heard that more than once. I know that CS humbucker Duncans are Leesona wound and the SCs are hand wound.

Everyone must also keep in mind that just because we night not hear a difference doesn't mean there isn't one.

Luke
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Another factor that was partly touched earlier is that the people doing hand winds at smaller companies have often put a lot of research into wire gauge, wire type, etc. and have usually examined a lot of good-sounding pickups. So in addition to the physical winding of the pickup, the handwound pickups are often the result of a lot of research and development in order to achieve a specific sound or sounds. That final tonal result is what one is paying for and the handwinding is only one component of that.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Luke Duke said:
David you've done hand and machine winds, would you say it makes more difference in SCs than buckers? I've heard that more than once. I know that CS humbucker Duncans are Leesona wound and the SCs are hand wound.

Everyone must also keep in mind that just because we night not hear a difference doesn't mean there isn't one.

Luke
Click to expand...

Everything I do would be considered handwound by the standard use of the term, which is to say at least hand-guided. The two types of winds I do are hand-guided and entirely hand-WRAPPED (no machine involved). The difference there is actually less noticeable on single coils, hence the hand-wrapped option is offered only on my humbuckers.

But again, it's where the wire ends up, not how it gets there. A computerized machine could be programmed to lay the wire on just like one of my hand-wrapped buckers and it would sound just the same.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

I am not sure about the 'hand guided' aspect, but i have used regular production pickups and scatterwound pickups, and the scatterwound (which always seem to cost a lot more money) definitely sound a lot better. To me, the difference is this....good regular production pickups can sound great, but kinda two-dimensional when compared to the scatterwound equivalent. The scatterwounds have this extra dimension to the sound, which is something quite wonderful and seems to make non-scatterwond pickups sound rather flat in comparrison. You can almost hear your fingers walking about on the fretboard, there is so much life and dimension to the sound, and every tiny nuance and every ounce of your instrument's timbre becomes audible. It is really something to behold, and it is very difficult to go back to hearing mass-produced pickups once you have felt the third dimension from scatterwinding. So much so that I will never again buy any pickups if they are not scatterwound.
 
Re: Handwound Pickups

Zhangliqun said:
The should still be able to tell the difference between a good one and a bad one.
Click to expand...

THat's not what would be tested, but it begs the question "how do we define good and bad in terms of pickup tone?" Surely it is a case of chacun-a-son-gout? (prefer a case of Chateau Lafitte meself)
 
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