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Making A Stacked Single Coil


Alarung

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Hey guys!

I've got a little black Korean Squier Strat sitting around that wants electronics tinkering, and I've been planning to rewind the pups. But I just had a though about the possibility of taking the single coils and transforming them into stacked pups. Is it as simple as putting a divider in the middle of the coil, winding the two halves in opposite directions, then wiring it up like a humbucker?

Quick Photoshop mockup

Stacked.jpg

Is that all there is to it?

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That's not all there is to it. I had a DiMarzio stacked humbucker and the poles only go through the top coil, not through both coils. And there's a grounded metal plate between the 2 coils.

Hmm...

Well, on an average humbucker the two sets of poles share only one magnet, correct? And in the case of your DiMarzio, wouldn't the metal plate conduct between the two coils, magnetizing both sets of poles anyway? If so, then wouldn't this have the same effect as what I'm proposing?

As I see it, my way would have 2 reverse polarity (correct terms?) coils sharing one magnet, and sitting right on top of each other. Theoretically correct?

I'm just thinking out loud with my limited knowledge of electronics, so if I'm wrong correction would be appreciated. I don't want to go ripping open pups if I don't really know what I'm doing! :D

Thanks guys! :D

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Both ways work. The reason the DiMarzio's are made that way is so that only the top coil is used for sensing the strings, electrically, they are still out of phase electrically and they won't cancel out the string sensing because the one isn't sensing. I believe this is done so that the clarity is like that of a single coil, go ahead, try removing the screw polepieces on a PAF type humbucker and see what I mean (I like it a lot, personally!). You would want to increase the number of winds on the air coil as to allow their inductances to be closer (ferromagnetic materials, those containing Iron, Nickel, and\or Cobalt increase inductance a lot!)

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Kyle, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you want the two coils to be physically identical rather than trying to match them electronically? My reasoning may be flawed here ( :D wouldn't be the first time), but since the lower coil functions only to generate an out-of-phase noise signal (a "dummy" coil, if you will), wouldn't matching the noise pickup pattern (and hence the physical dimensions) of the working coil be most important? That makes more sense to me intuitively, but that's the same part of my brain that tells me the Earth is flat, so it's not to be trusted without verification - I'd be interested to know which characteristic (electrical or physical) contributes most to hum cancellation.

See, I knew I should have been paying attention in Physics, instead of hitting on those girls in the back row. :D

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See, I knew I should have been paying attention in Physics, instead of hitting on those girls in the back row.  :D

No, hitting on the girls was much more worth your while :D , the further into physics you go, the more they tell you that everything youve been taught so far is wrong. (atleast, thats how we do it here in New Zealand).
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The biggest hum cancelling effect comes simply because the other coil exists. There are plenty of Dimarzio side-by-side humbuckers with drastically mismatched coils and they still cancel hum very well. It's the presence of the alternate coil more than the exact match. That being said, all the Dimarzio stacks I've measured have had equal resistance on top and bottom.

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I might want to add, I noticed on these Bill Lawerence stacked singles I have, that there is two coils, the one on the bottom being taller than the top, both with about the same width, and wired in series. I think this means they'll have the same inductance while having different peaks, preventing the two from canceling each other out sound wise. Just like the Dual Resonence technology DiMarzio has, only that involves varying guages of wire in each coil. They're driven by a pair of thin ceramic magnets in between the coils.

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