The Secret To Winding Electric Guitar Pickup Coils
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2020
- In this episode, I explain my secret to winding electric guitar pickup coils for optimal tone.
My Pickup Winder Assembly Manual: www.eguitarplans.com/
LCR Meter: amzn.to/3aiBEL1 - Навчання та стиль
This kind of channel will never be shared alot because the information on this is like a gem
This is one of the best explanations I have heard on how pickups vary in tone. Thank you!
This video is fantastic, best one I found so far, as I was searching about how pickups are made. I now understand the importance of the skilled person who winds the pickup. Thanks 👍
Beautiful. Answered simple questions with hard to find simple, thorough explanation. Thank you.
Chris, amazing video. I´ve always wanted to start building some pickups and this is a great help! keep the good work!
Great info, I am looking forward to the magnet conversation! Thank you!
Great lesson. Im starting the journey of winding pickups and there’s not a lot of info on the science of tone in this regard so thanks for doing this. Keep up the good work. 👍
Enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on the subject of pickup coil winding.
Fascinating.
🙂
Thank you for the technical breakdown. It is greatly appreciated as it really helps in choosing the correct pickup placed in the correct body position for the desired sound. Not to mention it inspires the diy'er to further fun.
Your becoming one of my favorites to watch thank you
Chris, you are truly a scholar and pioneer and a massive help to us weekend warrior guitar builders. Thank you for yet another truly enlightening video.
Wow, thank you!
Awesome video man! Thanks for posting this!
Perfect! Thanks for sharing.
Outstanding, as an old T&E Engineer I applaud your comment about record keeping and repeatability. I hand wind (hobbiest) and hardest thing to get is tension to prevent word breaks.just trial and error I guess.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this
Thank you for making this video. I was aware of all you spoke about with the exception of the C and C machine, which definitely had me raise my eyebrows. Another neat invention. I'll be checking out your pdf's, et al. Many thanks for quenching my thirst for all things guitar. Much success!
CNC meaning Computer Controlled
One of the best or maybe the best video about pick-ups.
Fantastic video and great information on how to craft the coil.
very good information Chris, thanks very much
The intro audio is an incredible hook 0:00 Nice one. Great info too. Cheers!
Thank you, great information including from commenters!
this is exactly the information was looking for, thanks for share, due to pandemic seems like new pickups storage has lowered, now i want to rewind some old good ones better than buy, wire is common and not expensive
Great video! Thank you for sharing this. I'm going to subscribe.
Very interesting 😎.... I have experienced dealing with different pickups and I understand what you are saying would love to be able to experiment with these hand windings.... I know that pickups hold the key to unlocking many unexplored tone and sound . thanks 😎
just discovered your channel & I'm really enjoying the content! cheers!
Some really great info in here, thanks!
This is excellent information!!!! ❤️
Great video, thank you so much!
I love this.
Best channel I found!
I'm considering having him wind me one..
I've got a recipe id like to try
Please do!
Excellent!
I like the idea of the CNC winders that can scatter-wind.
amazing sir much respect from india ive learnt so much from you cant thank you enough
Great information ! Best regards from Portugal
Great video, no fluff, all info.
Great video Informative and right to the point. Fantastic channel I gladly subscribed thank you!
Thank you. Well done.
Fantastic, thank you Sir 🤩👍🏆
You're a guitar making wizard. Thanks for sharing what you know!
Wow, thanks!
Glad to see this covered. I have sorted pickups for years by kohms to know general output and Capacitance to know if the pickup would be muddy. The surprising thing is that many of the 'cheap import' pickups have much lower internal capacitance (similar to hand-wound boutique builders) than the popular domestic aftermarket sources for similar kohms and inductance. I've found resistance and inductance are quite closely correlated for similar bobbin geometries while capacitance varies. If stuck with a terribly muddy pickup in a guitar the fix I've found is using a typical tone cap in series with the muddy pickup hot lead based on the theory of capacitors in series which cuts the effective capacitance eliminating the muddiness.
gettting your wire closer to the poles in humbuckers is my "secret". i use a thin piece of padauk with sand paper glued to the edge that's the same width as the internal space of a HB bobbin. i shave off plastic all around the inside of the bobbin to the point that its transparent and almost completely gone but still enough material so the bobbin doesn't collapse. im getting 17k with 43awg with a handwind scatter process. its pretty tight but still a lot of scatter because of the hand winding process i use. my JB/Jazz clone set are my best work they sound amazing. more open and bigger than a duncan with just a touch less ouput and somewhat smoother. I have SD JB's in 3 other guitars and I had a JB in the les paul that has my new clone set and they definately sound better than the duncan. they're not as hot and gritty more like a mid-output rather than high-output. definately not muddy!!
@True Scotsman Holy smokes! THANK YOU!! I never would have thought to do this. Fascinating, for sure. I would love to hear a sound bite of your pick ups. Tell us where we can. Thanks again.
Finally got enlightenment on this part of the subject. I still need more clarity on wire gauge . I’m sure you will cover this soon. Great vid !
Thicker wire has a low DC resistance per foot. And tends to be brighter with a looser low end, and less midrange. 41 and 40 AWG have a very hi-fi tone with a round bottom end.
As you go to thinner wire, like 43 and 44, you get a tighter low end and more pronounced mids.
Keep in mind that over wound “hot” pickups use thinner wire because you need to fit more wire on the same size bobbin. If you wound two pickups, each with 6,000 turns, one with 42 and one with 44, they will have roughly the same output, but will sound different. And the 44 gauge wire will show a higher resistance.
Gibson always liked the 42 gauge for most of the hummbuckers
Very nice and clear. Thanks! I find that the easiest way to make tremble sounding pickup is to wind it with thick wire.
A few points I’d like to make. There’s always lots of talk about winding patterns. While a random wound coil will have lower capacitance, there’s two things to consider; first the capacitance of the cable you plug into your guitar has a much higher capacitance. The pickup’s self capacitance is pretty low in comparison
Second, when you scatter you are making more diagonal wraps on the bobbin. So you’re winding more wire per turn. More wire will make the pickup sound darker, eventually.
Next is the fact that all Gibson humbuckers, like the fabled PAF, as well as Duncan, DiMarzio, etc., are machine wound. Humbuckers are never scatter wound.
Fender pickups were hand wound because they used very low tech winders.
Now here’s my personal views on scatter winding. I hand wind but I try to wind as nearly as possible. I don’t do any intentional scattering.
If winding patterns mattered much, and this includes counting the turns-per-later on machine wound coils, then scatter wound pickups should all sound different, since it’s a randomly wound coil. You can’t do two hand wound coils exactly the same.
But that’s not the case. Wind two pickups by hand using the same specs and they sound the same. That implies that winding patterns don’t matter.
You should make two identical sets of coils with more and less scatter and compare them. I find by winding neatly I have a tighter bass response and brighter trebles.
I actually thought about ending the video by saying it may not matter much since there's more capacitance in a guitar cable. The things is a lot of people like trying to squeeze every drop out of juice out of the guitar orange. I also thought about suggesting that machine wound pickups are scattered to a slight degree due to electromechanical limitations. However, that's pushing it and even I have limitations!
True, but as long as you use a low capacitance cable of a reasonable length, the pickups self capacitance is not swamped and it still plays an audible part. The resonances / filtering involved change, depending on the position of the volume control. With the volume control at maximum the pickups self capacitance and the cable capacitance are in parallel. As the volume is turned down the cable capacitance is isolated from the pickup.
Terry Relph-Knight the capacitance of a pickup is very small. Cables, not so much. The volume pot introduces resistive loading. You can buffer the pickup in the guitar and avoid all that, but lots of people think it’s too bright.
@@DavidRavenMoon I am well aware of the typical capacitances involved. Pickup capacitance varies between perhaps 80 and 160pF for a Strat pickup. A good quality instrument cable might be 20pF a foot. Van Damme instrument cable, for example, is rated at 90pF per metre. A typical instrument cable of 3 metres might be 270pF. So when using such a cable the pickup capacitance is significant, not 'very small'. If the instrument cable is very long and made of high capacitance cable then yes it can swamp the pickup capacitance.
These are good points. However, i would challenge your second point. Imo if you wind at random the windings are not stacked optimal so you end up with less windings in the same volume of bobine. Less windings means less resistance for higher frequencies, thus brighter sound. To compare random vs. optimal one should make two PU's, bothe with same amount of turns.
this is incredibly informative, thankyou!
Glad it was helpful!
perfect explanation. no silly noodling around, straight to the point. thanx a lot.
Good lesson.
Very informative!
You cleared a lot up for me , Thank you for that , I need to know wire gauge and how many wounds on Tele pick ups . Looking for that Brad Paisley sound .......
Great info. Thanks!👍😎🎸🎶
Tnx for useful information 🙏
Thank you so much
Your videos are excellent. The last one made my head hurt and this one is no different. You must have started making guitars when your were three. Thanks for so much information but at 54 I can't hold this.LOL.
I'm definitely watching this one again
thank you for not using any background muisc/noise!
Thanks!!
Not enough views on this video at all! Great information, thanks.
Just have to say: that tune of your intro's sounds groovy!
Thank you!!!!!!
Thank you! We need to democratize more knowledge like this. Why should companies get to gatekeep this info? It should be shared by now.
Thanks for all of your videos Chris I have been especially enjoying and getting into pickup winding myself. Inspired by your videos thanks. One thing has been confusing me and I was wondering if you could do a video on getting 2 P90 pickups to hum cancel in the middle please. I am sure my magnet polarity is right as they are either north pointing out or south pointing out. I am winding my coils one clockwise and one anti clockwise I am also winding one from bottom of the coil to the top and sticking the other one so I wind top to bottom I’m not sure if I need to do this? I have put one ground lead on the bottom of one and on the top of the other bobbin. I am having to go into the pickup and put the ground onto what I thought was the hot lead to get the middle switch setting out of phase. Sorry it’s such a long question I am confused. Thanks Glenn
I fucking love the internet. It's unreal having access this knowledge at anytime, in your home!
This guy is a great player
Excellent info! (and I have no plans to make my own pickups :) )
Wow! Thanks a lot! Very valuable information! 👍🏻👌🏻🤝🏻🙌🏻✨🌿🍀🌍
You can measure the characteristics of inductor coils with an LCR meter, which will measure all the parameters of a coil including coil capacitance, series resistance, etc. The guitar pickup test with even a basic LCR would be simple given the application is not high current and there is no DC bias. Unfortunately, a good LCR meter for electronic design is very expensive. For specialty LCR measurements many times there are custom testing circuits because the application is not generic. For example, testing a high current choke or measuring capacitance with a dc bias (which will change its characteristics depending on the capacitor design).
Hi Chris!
Great video as always. Question for you... what’s the gauss range for let’s say the Fender Texas pickup set?
Thank you!
Great video, thank you. Any suggestions on how to go about making single string or 2 string humbuckers? for bass split output on regular and multi-stringed guitars? would they require same amount of turns? i build guitars and often make unique stups, id love to make pickups as well.
thanx again. m
This channel is like an encyclopedia of knowledge for guitars. Every time I have a question about making a guitar EVERY TIME there is a specific video on this channel about it. I have a question. Seymour Duncan says this about their SSL-1 pickups, which are designed to produce a classic Strat tone: The SSL-1 pickups use a special wind pattern to produce that bright, glassy, bell tone with all of the bounce and sparkle you would expect from the best Strat pickups from the 50s. Do you know what type of wind pattern they are referring to? Are they talking about scatter winding?
The term scatter winding is broadly used to describe any pattern which is not uniform. Pickup makers control how they scatter the turns in order to dial in a specific tone. Seymour Duncan uses different scatter winding patterns to achieve different tones. Exactly what they do is a trade secret that was developed over many years of testing.
the main parameter of the coil is inductance, not capacitance. but it works in the same way: more wounds -> less treble (like a low pass filter) + more output. the resonant frequency of the coil is calculated by the formula from the school physics, but it gives an approx result because of coil core and imprecise wounding. for accurate values of the frequency response of the pickup, you can use an oscilloscope and a signal generator.
I think you may have misunderstood why he was focusing on capacitance? Inductance, as it refers to pickups, determines the peak frequency of the pickup, or where it will ring the most. This is the peaky, mid-high frequency that a pickup has that is usually between 2khz and 5khz depending on pickup type. The inductance is measured in Henries. The capacitance will determine the HF roll-off point or corner frequency in which high-frequency content will roll-off. The capacitance and inductance are not 100% tied to each other though and subtle changes in how the pickup is made will affect each measurement.
Whenever the pickup coil wire lies directly next to another in a uniform way, the capacitance and will rise. This would be indicative of a machine wound coil that simply and very neatly wound the coil for a very neat and clean appearance. Compared to a highly random winding of the coil where a human purposefully makes each wrap of the coil as non-uniform as they can. Since the more randomized wrap would have less uniformity, the odds of the coil wire laying directly next to an adjacent wrap are minimized, and capacitance is reduced. The machine wound coil will have more wraps laying neatly next to one another raising capacitance and dulling the sound more. Assuming all else is the same, the inductance WILL NOT CHANGE.
" Inductance is directly proportional to the square of the number of turns of coil windings in the pickup". You can change the inductance by increasing or decreasing the number of coil windings, and or by changing the metal used for and or near the coil ( steel slugs, vs alnico, or having nickel or brass pickup covers ), and or changing the wire diameter. Changing the wire diameter changes the number of potential wraps and the resistance of the resultant number of wraps. This is why different wire diameters have different sounds. For the sake of comparing apples to apples though, if you have X wire dia. and you have Y parts that create the rest of the pickup, the only thing that changes the way that pickup will sound is the number of wraps and the way those wraps were laid.
Aside from that, there are construction differences. If you use a ceramic magnet with steel slugs it will sound different than if you used Alnico magnets assuming all else is the same. I would not say that the inductance is the primary factor that determines a pickups sound. It is one of those things that is truly a sum of all parts. Great sounding pickups from years past are likely a result of the randomness that humans present in how we do things. There was just likely many instances where the happy accident just happened to shine through the ages. Recreating the sound is now a HUGE matter of subjection and bias. But since we can never know wrap for wrap how an old coil was made, we may never get 100% of the vintage sound? So now we just control the parameters we know we can control.
Hi this video was very informative and taught me things I couldnt fond online. It cut to the chase and laid down the fundamentals of pickup making. I really liked it! One question - could you ptovide the name of the software and hardware equipment needed for analysing the frequencies produced by a pickup? A graph was shown briefly in your video and its something Ive been hunting for. Help? Thanks in advance!
I don’t know. The only reason one might analyze the frequencies of a pickup is to replicate it over and over. I never make the same pickup twice so analyzing the frequencies is not useful.
@@HighlineGuitars ok then. Thank you.
I think the series inductance from being able to fit more turns onto a densely wound coil is going to be mostly responsible for rolling off the treble (making the pickup more bassy)
Brilliant! My engineering brain is curious if it is theoretically possible to make a perfectly “flat” coil. No capacitance. I was initially perplexed by your description of frequency response. I didn’t like your phrasing “results in more bass…” or “more treble…” It’s relative from “flat” so the capacitance attenuates certain frequencies. There is no adding frequencies, just elimination or attenuation of frequencies. But, after watching a few times I saw that you were trying to talk in simpler more commonly understood terms. All good. I’m also interested, from a geeky analytical standpoint if there is a test jig that will induce a uniform, flat, full audio spectrum signal into the coil to measure the coils true frequency response. Rather than just relying on strings and all the mechanical variables to deal with there. At lease for this early stage to eliminate those rather fugitive unknowns. Of course how they sound when in a guitar is the ultimate proof but we’re talking about early design phase. Keep it up Chris. I’m a huge fan. Now I gotta put my $ where my mouth is!😁
Hi,
Great Videos! I checked all of them and have learnt alot as winding is my new passion ;)
I have a question, how do you know what value of capacitance is good for the pickup (I mean how to judge it is it high or low). I have proster multimeter and it shows 0.007μF for my humbucker, can it be true? I checked Seymour Duncan SH-5, and got 0.01μF. Is that mean my pickup is more "scattered" and might have a little bit more rich "highs" as capacitance seems lower?
I would appreciate your response.
Best,
Szymon
Hey, great video!
WIth this scatter wind... What about coil geometry? I noticed when coil is winded uniformly, shape of the coil is a bit thinner at the end and it can make it sound actually brighter.
Please, let me know what you think.
Very informative, thanks. What is the guitar hanging in the background? Looks like a tele style, really cool looking.
It's a Bravo carve top.
Great presentation, as always. I bought the plans last week, but now I wonder... I do mostly bass work. Is there a specific wire/magnet combo you would suggest for a good all around bass tone. Oh, I do mostly Fender knockoffs. P & J. Thanks again for your videos. Priceless.
I like 42 awg wire and Alnico 5 mags for my Fender style bass pups.
Very thank for this video. It s absolute great.
One question : here, this is about capacitance, but what about inductance ? How it is possible to adjust inductance ? Increase and decrease ? I already know the part with magnet, but the part with the coil ?
Thank you 🙏
The only way to increase or decrease inductance in the coils is to wind more or less wire onto the bobbin(s).
Hello, I was wondering how Mosrite (Ventures) pickups were made. I heard that they are of a different design, not winding the wire the magnet but using a sort of coil placed around the magnets and not hugging them(not shure about exact design ). Would be interesting to know why they sound the way they do.Thanks.
It would be interesting/helpful to see and hear some examples. Maybe you have this in another video...?
ua-cam.com/video/eUfNRuNccKY/v-deo.htmlsi=qPc6GLf0gA3QTFEi
@@HighlineGuitars tone-musings.blogspot.com/2024/05/relative-vs-absolute-usefulness-of.html
Thanks for the educational videos. If less inductance gives more trebles and mids, can we lower pickups inductance with a capacitor in series. And a capacitor in parallel will increase capacitance. Will it change the pickup?
It won't change the pickup, but it will change the tone.
Enjoyed the video and checked out your website. Do you sell any of your guitar pickups? How would I go about ordering one?
Only in the guitars I build. However, I do make custom pickups for people. If you're interested, contact me through my web site with the specifics: www.highlineguitars.com/
Considering that the pick-up coils are made of very thin wire, the MAIN DIFFERENCE with manual winding is that during winding the wire is partially stretched and thus becomes thinner in parts, while the original thickness remains in other parts. If you were to examine it under a magnifying glass, you would find that thinner and thicker parts of the wire alternate (due to tension and stretching during winding), which changes the property of the coil into 2 bit segments. First of all, the propagation of any signal through different wire thicknesses is not the same, so there are some changes every few cents. Secondly, due to the thinning of the wire in some parts, both its resistance and inductance change, so that in some sense it could affect the "color" of the sound.
I just looked at an old coil under a magnifying glass and the wire is all the same thickness.
Hello Master. Do you have any video about piezo pickups (for acoustic or electric guitars)? if not, Are you planing to do one? i am interested on the EQ for those pickups :)
No, not at the moment, nor am I planning to do one.
hey man! I've done making one of this, but why the output is like too weak, working fine if I doubled the preamp and sounding great though.
I need to wide a pick up to pick up a strictly 360Hz signal. Any advice on magnets and winding style.
Any advice for Toni iommi John birch hyperflux pickups?
Ironically there is a freq going in the background. Great vid man.
I'm pretty sure that the self capacitance of a pickup has no effect on the bass. A low capacitance pickup sounds brighter, so it may sound as though there is less bass simply because the pickup produces more treble. Another thing to consider is that if your volume control is at maximum the instrument cable capacitance is often quite a bit higher than the pickup capacitance and therefore dominates.
"the self capacitance of a pickup has no effect on the bass" -- this is exactly what he says.. @ 2:35
what you say, however, is valid and cool, regardless :)
(I'm not an expert)
Many many thanks for sharing with us your knowledge. I have a question for you: I own a Squier and it mounts (as a lot of other Stratos) a 52mm tremolo (narrower than 56mm vintage tremolos). 52mm tremolo guitars have pickups with polepieces distance of 50mm instead of classical 52,5, and I must say that the polepieces are perfectly under the string only in the middle pickups. 90% of Squier owner replace the guitar pickups, but it is impossibile to find good 50mm pickups on the market. Fender, Di Marzio and Seymour Duncan do not produce them (I wrote to each one of them). Installing a 52,5mm pickup set on a squier is possibile, but middle and neck pickups (especially this) have bass strings not aligned with underlying polepieces. Is it possible to say how does it affects the sound? Why only Chinese pickup maker produces a set with a 52, a 50 and a 48 picku (this set fits perfectly under the strings)?
Thanks and I apologize for the long question.
Buying off the shelf pickups with the specs you need will be tough to do. A custom pickup maker can wind a set for you with the pole spacing you want. However, they won't be cheap since the maker will likely have to fabricate the flatwork for the bobbins. The only Strat bobbins I have seen with 52/50/48mm pole spacing are plastic and not fiberboard if that matters to you.
@@HighlineGuitars thanks for your reply. I confirm what you say it is not easy finding these pickups with the specs I need. I found an eBay seller (earlpilanz) in the UK that sells flatwork in vulcanized fiber in 48, 50, and 52mm and I think I'll wind my pickup by myself. Your video are suporting me a lot many many thanks again.
Anyway it is unbelievable to me that Fender sells guitars with narrower polepieces, but does not produce high quality replacement pickups. Also a lot of American made Fender have the 52mm tremolo, but maybe differently from Squire they mount good quality pickups.
Grazie.
Awesome!! Thank you!
What would you recommend in terms of winding patterns, magnets, etc to recreate a glassy bell toney chimey stratocaster pickup set that sounds as close as possible to pre cbs tone?
I would put about 8,000 turns of 42 AWG heavy formvar wire onto a tall and narrow bobbin made with staggered and beveled Alnico V slugs. The winding pattern should be hand scattered.
Cool traverse
Interesting indeed, but hasn't inductance an influence too ? Side to side windings make for a significantly higher inductance, I know this from winding loudspeaker and loudspeaker crossover coils.
So it looks like the following parameters have their own impact :
- reststive impedance
- inductive impedance
- capacitive impedance
The 2 latter ones increasing treble rolloff, right ?
Has anyone tried changing the guage as they wound the coil?
and if you use 2 coil wires twisted together into a continuous strand or braided?
Hi, have you ever ranked from strongest to weakest the factors that have the biggest influence on the final sound/tone from a particular pickup?
No I haven’t.
Thanks for the video! Some of my experience:
Wound a pickup of AWG 42 Alnico V magnets in dual coil config (one coil at PUP1 = 11.5kOhm and the other at around PUP2 = 5.7kOhm) with two poles per string for a 6 string bass I am building. After doing some tests on an oscilloscope I ended up wit h inductance and capacitance of PUP1 = 56.65H (rather high), F = 7.3kHz and C1 = 377.6 pF; PUP 2 = 2.76H F= 10kHz and C2 = 18.4 pF. Any idea of the sound of a really high inductance pickup on a bass? In parallel these two yield 2.63H.
Something wrong with your measurements.There can’t be that difference in capacity and inductance.
@@iridios6127 thanks for the feedback. I figured as much, and I may need to change the way I do the measurements. Those pickups have since been dismantled to salvage my Alnico V magnets, and have since rewound some pickups one is 5.66kOhm and the other 6.01kOhm. I haven't measured them yet, but they are in a dual coil configuration into a G&L L2000 preamp, but a bit noisy in the passive config.
What about number of windings? Also impedance?
I had a 1959 Gretsch Tron pickup rewind and its now just 2.9 impedance? Is this normal? Its the single coil but big.
would you like sen me the [make the guitar pick up winder with size part]. Thanks
Can you please hellp? I made a lot of prototilype pickups and allways had low output signal.. i work wit 42,43,44awg and play with ohms from 7kohm to 15kohm. I only notice sound differences but they allways had low output signal.. i work with alnico 5 rods to ceramic and neodymium magnets. Allways same problem low output. They are about 25 to 30% quiter.. is it problem in windings or what? Once p bass pickups that i made like others sounds right and normal output, but i doo all the sme with others, and cant figure out what i do any advice big thanks!!
It's a mystery.