Home of Schuyler Dean Guitars and Nashville Pickups. These are 100% hand-made pickups and guitars made with processes from the 50s and 60s. For more information, please see my website.
How much wire do you use for 1 pickup? I wanna rewire my "mini humbucker" pickup (similar to Seymour Duncan's Everything Axe) with probably 0.06mm wire (between 42 and 43 AWG), but I don't know how much wire to buy 😅
Very informative, saved. I'm still a bit confused about the windings. Since they're both wound in the same direction, does one get flipped over when secured to the base-plate? Also curious about the spool of wire, and if you have that mounted to spin with the winding process.
In your experience what year Stratocaster pickups are not potted? I know my 1975 Stratocaster has lacquer dipped pickups and they didn't sound to bad. I suppose it would also depend on the tension of the wire while being wound if it will squeal or not; would you agree with this statement?
If I remove 4 poles and replace it with plastic ones, will the pickup just absorb the tone from the strings relative to the remaining 2 poles? Thanks in advance for the answer. :)
Question regarding the tape on the poles: Is that a vintage spec thing? For some reason it's stored in my (admittedly often-confused and potentially fallable) brain that the bobbins were lacquer coated before winding rather than taped. It's probably a barely there, imperceptible difference in coil geometry, but just more of a technical curiosity for me (on my quest towards omniscience).
1 min into your video, I have to say, the theory that same thickness insulator will yield the same characteristics is wrong. The dialectric constant of the insulating will influence the capacitance of the coil, so they'll only be the same if the dialectric property of the insulating material is the same on all 3 .... I hope you're gonna show us measurements of the 3 coils
My experience with a lot of different Strat pickups is this- To my ears, enamel and polysol sounds brighter and snappier to me than formvar, which sounds like it has less highs and less of that snap and attack that I like. That's with them all having the same alnico 5 magnets and DCR, so the wire insulation is the only variable.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried winding a pickup with two different types of wire in parallel. All you would have to do is run two strands at once and half the number of turns to fill the bobbin. I wonder what that would do to the sound.
It looks like the wire you are calling "Fomvar" is actually Plain Enamel. Google them and the color difference is obvious. The plain enamel coating makes the color dark.
and spoiler alert, through good IEMs they all sound largely the same any differences can be down to playing differences and can be compensated for... save your money and just get the cheap wire. Dude has major confirmation bias... and must have super human hearing....
Formvar has twice the insulation thickness (double-build) as poly and PE. Poly and PE have nearly exactly the same thickness of insulation and both kinds of insulation have nearly the same electrical permeability factor. So the difference in the latter two would have to be the wind itself. Formvar is going to sound different with the same turns because it has lower capacitance because of the larger space between the wires. But if all other variables are the same poly and PE wire should not sound "different".
For beveling the magnets, could you chuck them up in a drill and turn against a file? Seems that would give you perfectly even results around the whole circumference.
Nice! Lately I've been wondering about the shape of the coil and how that effects tone. My texas specials have a very flat coil shape, while my pure vintage 65s have a rounded or humped shape. Does anyone know how that might change the sound of the pickups?
Yep, that is the weak tinny sound I remember, and what me replace the gold foils on the old realistic 335 copy with some Les Paul pickups donated by a friend. I had a teis o guitar given to me once as well, the body was plywood.
i have always suspected with the tolerances not being as accurate and the production not being as "tight", the vintage wire that was called "42awg" was/is probably closer to todays 41awg. I have never wound a pickup but i know they sell "thicker wire and a few makers actually will wind with them.
Hey man, first time checking out, your channel is stumbled upon it tonight. Hope to catch more newer, recent stuff who knows might even pick up a set of your pick ups. I’ll be checking out some more stuff from you.
This is quite interesting, I have a question though, what if I wind a bridge pickup P90 and I wind 12k revolutions AWG42, it will be significant darker in the tone compared to a neck pickup, what if I try compensate that 12k revolution darker pickup with a capacitor of some sort soldered on the pot, to get the high output but with clarity.. would it work ? Thanks for the video.. :D
Very nice! We made a jig to mount over the guitar to test out pickups. Obviously it will not be as good as the custom guitar set up here since our solution the pickups over above the strings. But it might be useful for just quickly testing pickups. Let us know what you think, and how we can improve it. Thanks! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7xTFxupg-54.htmlsi=gtbuAozrxy9VKgQB
Based on the Impedance, Inductance, and Capacitance differences, one would expect some slight differences in tone - how much needs to be calculated and graphed. Variation in winding scatter alone would cause tone differences (and based on the video there was plenty of scatter differences as the feed was not exactly the same for each pickup). Qualities like "tighter lows" and "bell like highs" are 100% subjective and cannot be quantified. Therefore, I would love to hear each pickup tested, with around 5 different players, playing the exact same chord, and the output for each player put on a scope to look at the frequency response in aggregate. Overall great video and appreciate the effort!
You can "hear" the difference BY NOT PLAYING the guitar. You should hold the pickups neat a transformer or such. So all the noodling at the end ... seems you have ZERO understanding of physics.
Thanks for the video ! One thing I know is that Leo beveled the magnets because he did not like the shapies left by the cut. It was as simple as this. May I ask what kind of winder you have ,............... Thanks
It doesn’t matter to me if wax can possibly effect high end. I cannot play an unpotted pickup with the high gain amps I use. Technology exists for a reason. If anyone is such a tone snob and want to play with 1950s unpotted pickups, enjoy yourself. My wax potted pickup sound great without any microphonic feedback. You can also encapsulate the coils with epoxy resin like the real Bill Lawrence pickups.
Thanks for the clear simple tutorial! It appears you soldered the finish pigtail to positive, and the start pigtail to the base plate (negative), correct?
