Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

[thanaton]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

If the wind pattern results in different tone with the wire type being the same, then it is proof wind pattern affects tone. Inductance and capacitance are simply metrics used to quantify this, and are aspects that change with different physical properties of wire and wind......(along with res freq and q) - they are not separate.

There are numerous ways to change inductance, capacitance and Q factor. This would be an omission that winding pattern does nothing that can't be achieved through more trivial means.

 

[thanaton]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

in your second paragraph you say that hypothetically a winder wound three pups at 6k with different wind patterns and they sound different. if we assume a single coil, inferred from your 6k dc resistance, and that the winder used the same wire on the same machine on a similar bobbin with the same number of turns but three different patterns... could it be the winding pattern causes a change in res peak? could that be part of the point of different coils geometry?

The guitar cable changes the resonant peak, the pots change the Q factor, as does the input impedance of whatever the guitar is plugged into. It's hard to claim that a winder has mastery over these values when they're so readily changed by external variables. In fact, it is never assumed that a pickup will deliver on it's inherent resonant peak or capacitance, since it's so unlikely that a guitarists will install them in a guitar with no pots, or use a cable with zero capacitance. Whatever specifications a pickup has in these regards will never actually make to the guitar amp's input, as such.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

There are numerous ways to change inductance, capacitance and Q factor. This would be an omission that winding pattern does nothing that can't be achieved through more trivial means.

This is poor arguing, plain and simple. The fact that there are many ways to achieve something does not make one of the way invalid.

 

[SJ318]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

Whoa, Gentlemen.
I started this and it has become something else of it's own.
So I will close it tomorrow night if someone has any thing useful that hasn't been said, it must be applicable to my original post. Alex put this in perspective, and I agree.
Tons of info here, thanks to all participants.
Steve Buffington

 

[freefrog]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

Whoa, Gentlemen.
I started this and it has become something else of it's own.
So I will close it tomorrow night if someone has any thing useful that hasn't been said, it must be applicable to my original post. Alex put this in perspective, and I agree.
Tons of info here, thanks to all participants.
Steve Buffington

FWIW, have you also searched on the music-electronics forum in topics like this one?

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t26538/


Regarding the thread above and to put in perspective the last link, here are my last two cents.


One of my friends is a retired luthier. Around 1980, he has been the first in my country to import Bill Lawrence’s products.

A few years ago, this friend was still designing his own pickups.

His lab include(d) things like a MCP CQ5010C oscilloscope, a Tonghui TH2811D LCR Meter etc. He has used this gear during rational researches, allowing for example to design what he considers as the best humbucker for his own guitars : it’s a passive PU reading more than 16k and with an enormous inductance of almost 12H… but still clearer sounding than some 8k equivalents.

Now, what he thinks to be his most successful single coil is not born from lab researches: he has explained me that he had found this recipe by luck, after an intuitive trial…


This short story reflects my own humble experience these 3 or 4 last decades.

Yes, most magnetic guitar pickups have comparable / predictable specs and physical reactions in terms of LRC, output voltage, Gauss level or electrically induced resonant peaks, Q factor, phase response, and so on… I measure such things for almost 15 years now and I rarely obtain surprising results.

Things are not so clear IME when the same transducers are played in test guitars, in order to capture their ADSR envelope, harmonic spectrum under chords and single notes, etc… Because some pickups refuse to be reduced sonically to their theoretical proflie.

For example, I’ve met things like a boutique P.A.F. clone exhibiting a solid 5,6H of inductance and whose sound should therefore have been beefy.. but it was clear and bright like a strong single coil once mounted in 3 different guitars.

I’ve also noticed that in the same guitars and under the same strings, ALL other factors being equal, some pickups would capture more harmonics than others with similar specs. The pickups of a L Series Strat that I've periodically in maintenance come to my mind.

It’s not a question of tension, turns per layer, helical or scatter winding, hand wound vs machine wound coils, magnets, Gauss levels, permeable alloys, (un)potting - at least, the key is not for me in these things considered separately.

It’s just that some “blends” of simple materials according to some seemingly simple recipes behave musically as being more than the sum of their parts and tech specs.

You have owned a real P.A.F., Steve, so I think that you know what I’m talking about.

For me, the key parameters here are "synergy" and "fecund unexpected specs", and if the first aspect can be rationalized, the second one, is necessarily harder to grasp... But I'm not sure that it can't be mastered intuitively, by people who have years of experience and practice - like seasoned winders? ; 0 X



End of my stupid ignorant rambling for the moment. )

 

[thanaton]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

This is poor arguing, plain and simple. The fact that there are many ways to achieve something does not make one of the way invalid.

Poor arguing is putting words in people's mouths. I never said anything was "invalid", but I did suggest that you have conceded that the outcome of scatter/pattern winding is non-unique, from a technical standpoint. Just because something doesn't result in a unique outcome, does not mean it's invalid.

Scatterwinding or layering patterns have been characterized as something that only a seasoned pickup winder has mastery of, and servers as a "tonal fingerprint" for their pickups, but you're admitting that all these same qualities can be duplicated with caps and resistors, which would seem to devalue the whole "experience" factor in knowing how to apply a special wind to get a special outcome. Any beginner could therefore create a pickup any which way, and then proceed to make it just as special as a pickup with a "unique winding pattern" by simply adding caps or resistor in parallel or series with that pickup.

 

[frankfalbo]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

Poor arguing is putting words in people's mouths. I never said anything was "invalid", but I did suggest that you have conceded that the outcome of scatter/pattern winding is non-unique, from a technical standpoint. Just because something doesn't result in a unique outcome, does not mean it's invalid.

Scatterwinding or layering patterns have been characterized as something that only a seasoned pickup winder has mastery of, and servers as a "tonal fingerprint" for their pickups, but you're admitting that all these same qualities can be duplicated with caps and resistors, which would seem to devalue the whole "experience" factor in knowing how to apply a special wind to get a special outcome. Any beginner could therefore create a pickup any which way, and then proceed to make it just as special as a pickup with a "unique winding pattern" by simply adding caps or resistor in parallel or series with that pickup.

I may be wrong but t would seem to ne that now you're putting words into AlexR's mouth. You're telling him what theories he has conceded to. I did not read it the way you've re-stated. I didn't take it that he meant that different methods yield the same result, irrespective of their validity. What I thought he was saying is that if differing methods result in ONE of the measured criteria being the same, as in the peak frequency and Q of the resonant peak are the same between two pickups, that it DOES NOT mean that both of those pickups sound the same. There would still be nuance between the two pickups, one utilizing an rc network and the other utilizing a modified wind.

I don't want to put words into your mouth either. So correct me if I'm mischaracterizjng here: It would seem to me that one of your overarching points (whether here, or as a composite of rhetoric around different forums and different threads) is that if you can duplicate the flux at the string, and the resonant peak curve of a coil, that you tend to lean toward that being "the same". Or at least close enough that you think a lot of the stuff on top of that, whether it's cryogenics, scatter, insulation thickness, copper purity, silver wire, turns per layer, bobbin material, pole alloys, baseplate material, all those things are some version of snake oil or marketing speak by people who want to make money. And that pickups can be distilled down to resonant peak and flux aperture.

I know I'm over-simplifying, I'm not saying you said all that stuff, just that on a spectrum, you are closer to that end of the spectrum than those who are on the fairy dust, what the winder ate for lunch, how much plasticizer is in the butyrate type of guy.

 

[RogerMexiko]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

I'm so confused. As far as I can tell this is about people putting words and foots in mouth.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

I think the flaw in this latest batch of contention is the notion that achieving the same numeric value for an electronic characteristic, be it resonant peak, resistance, or whatever, but achieving it by different physical means will always sound identical. IME this is wrong in real world experience because the resulting sound is not just a matter of those few electronic numbers being set somewhere, but is subject to where in the circuit those values were set and all the other various factors inherent in the materials/components used to set those values, be it pickup coil wire, guitar cable or other passive components in the guitar.

 

[SJ318]

Re: Searched, could not find info:scatter, loose, tight, normal wind

Thanks All,
The last page was great info also, #85-89.
Probably 50% of this thread was over my head and beyond my inquiry, but a very generous amount of knowledge and
I hope more healthy back and forth than unwelcome back and forth has happened also.
Bunch a geniuses,
Thanks everyone,
Steve Buffington