Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

[Philsy23]

Long time reader, first time poster!

I'm very curious as to HOW and why the YJM pickup (as an example) reads somewhere around 25k resistance, yet something as hot as a JB is around 16k. I've noticed this with other noiseless single coil designs and I can't for the life of me figure out how you would wind a pickup to that high a resistance. Is it likely a 44 awg wire or thinner? I know resistance isn't a definite indicator of how much output or how hot a pickup will be, but I'm truly perplexed at how high that reading is. Can anyone help clear that up for me? For the record, I've noticed the same thing with other "single coil" pickups from other manufacturers employing designs like stacked coils, etc. Two coils on both a design like a noiseless single and a humbucker. Both can only hold so much wire, so how is the sc design that much higher than a humbucker?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

I know you can't really use resistance to judge output between, say, a stack, a Rail-type single coil-sized humbucker and an actual humbucker.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

Its a stack (the YJM). There are 2 coils, and one cancels the other to get a somewhat singlecoil tone.

 

[Philsy23]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

Its a stack (the YJM). There are 2 coils, and one cancels the other to get a somewhat singlecoil tone.

Right, but a humbucker is also two coils wired in series, just side by side, which doesn’t affect resistance. My suspicion is the gauge of wire in the yjm is a 44 awg or even thinner.

 

[devastone]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

Right, but a humbucker is also two coils wired in series, just side by side, which doesn’t affect resistance. My suspicion is the gauge of wire in the yjm is a 44 awg or even thinner.

This doesn't make sense, each coil in a traditional humbucker is bascially a single coil pickup, but they are wired in series to the resistances add together. Older humbuckers were symmetrical winds so each was 1/2 of the total, now there are a lot of asymmetrical wound humbuckers.

The YJM has a dummy coil that apparently is in series with the main coil, it doesn't generate any sound from the strings, but it will pick up any noise except as a mirror of the noise in the "audio" coil hence subtracting the noise from the signal leaving the pickup. The same way humbuckers work, except in a hb both coils are also generating a signal.

As far as wire gauge, yeah, not sure, it is probably thinner wire to get that much DCR into that small a space. Or the winds might be different wire gauges, you'd probably need to talk to someone at Duncan for the specifics, but, since it is patented, they may not be willing to share much with you.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

Right, but a humbucker is also two coils wired in series, just side by side, which doesn’t affect resistance. My suspicion is the gauge of wire in the yjm is a 44 awg or even thinner.

You seem very confused, in your fundamental understanding of everything about pickup knowledge. Both stacks and humbuckers do have the two coils affecting resistance.....of course they do. The humbuckers sums together positively because they are wired in series and add to both K and output due to the internal wiring putting the two coils in summing mode. If you ran the exact some thing out of phase for example with the same wiring then you'd get practically no output for the same K reading.
There are also various sorts of noise cancelling pickups about too. But the two coils get measured as well for K, even though the output is not a series sum of the two like a traditional humbucker.

 

[Philsy23]

Re: Single coil ohm readings vs Humbuckers - curious!

You seem very confused, in your fundamental understanding of everything about pickup knowledge. Both stacks and humbuckers do have the two coils affecting resistance.....of course they do. The humbuckers sums together positively because they are wired in series and add to both K and output due to the internal wiring putting the two coils in summing mode. If you ran the exact some thing out of phase for example with the same wiring then you'd get practically no output for the same K reading.
There are also various sorts of noise cancelling pickups about too. But the two coils get measured as well for K, even though the output is not a series sum of the two like a traditional humbucker.

I’m not confused. I misspoke, sorry. What I meant to suggest is that the orientation of the coils, whether stacked or side by side theoretically shouldn’t make a difference in resistance if they are both wired in series. The question still remains why a YJM would read 25k vs a JB or similar high output humbucker at 16k. Thoughts?