Maybe Seymour Knows?

[octavedoctor]

Re: Maybe Seymour Knows?

I have always wondered why there isn't a pickup with aluminum wire for the coils rather than copper? I think since aluminum has greater resistance you could wind less turns and get a higher resistance. Although you may get more inductance, and capacitance. My line of thinking was a low output distortion pickup.

It seems that so many distortion pickups are designed to drive clean amps into distortion. Rather than than distort a signal first and let the amp provide volume later. I kind of like the idea of low output with distorted sound.



Snowdog

What would be the point?

You would just decrease the s/n ratio.

There would also be difficulties with soldering to aluminium.

Aluminium has been used for underground telecommunications cables because once the surface has oxidised (which happens very quickly) the oxide layer protects the metal substrate from further corrosion. It is also cheaper than copper.

However an aluminium pickup coil would have to use a fatter wire to resist corrosion because the 60µ wire used in pickups would corrode very rapidly and wouldn't have the strength of copper, so it would be difficult to wind.

A fatter wire means less inductance, not more, and there is no advantage to increased resistance to lower the output. A lower output means you can't over drive the input stage of the amp as easily, hence the decreased signal/noise ratio. I don't see how you can think this would produce a low output distortion pickup. ???

All in all, it's a bit like saying "hey, lets make al the roads narrower! That'll make driving to work a much better experience..."

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: Maybe Seymour Knows?

I was just thinking that since aluminum has higher resistance it might be able to wind less turns while getting higher resistance and that the higher resistance might play a role in creating a distorted waveform. But I guess that waveform isn't applicable only ouput.

Snowdog

 

[Artie]

Re: Maybe Seymour Knows?

I know that somewhere in the SD Q & A, there's a specific question about why they don't use metals like aluminum, gold, silver, and platinum in pickup winding, but now that there's around 600 - 700 of them . . . you'll have to go find it yourself.

Artie