frank falbo

Yeah I don't mean scatterwinding pickups is marketing hype at all. Just that the term is being used that way. Like because scatterwinding has some sonic "improvements" over a perfect machine wind, folks like Stew Mac are playing off of it to try to convince you to buy some materials and start experimenting. It takes the pressure off the first time builder. But if a pickup maker refers to scatterwinding as why his pups sound "better" it's not hype necessarily. So I'm not talking about marketing pickups, but pickup making materials.

That's why I made the statement reminding everyone that pickups are cheap. If you factor in all the costs, with or without the Schatten machine, making a vintage single coil is going to cost around $15-$30. Street price for a good vintage single is $40-$60. So for all that work, you might not get something as good as a Duncan Vintage Staggered or Alnico your first several times out. It's not worth the labor time. But if I'm designing something unique, then I'll wind. Basically if you can buy something 99% close to what you want, it's worth just buying it. Unless you are really broke and $20 difference can make or break you. But then I'd still recommend scrounging up some broken pickups from local shops and rewinding them, rather than a scratch build.

And yeah, who cares which name brand pups are scatterwound or perfect wound? If I like them, I'll just buy them and play, right?

I think the term scatterwinding is quickly becoming a marketing term. For example, as Stew Mac starts selling pickup making supplies, I hear them talking about how scatterwinding generally produces a pickup with more "harmonic content" etc. (they even use the word "better") What they really want is for you to start thinking "hey, I could do this" and "winding by hand is better than a flawless machine wind because it's organic." (you know, machine=cold, human=warm) Then you buy their stuff.

Put all other variables aside, like coil size, magnet, and wire gauge for now, because the thread was on winding. Experimenting with tension, and wind application is far more ambiguous. You'll never be able to duplicate what you just did. Someone needs to create some kind of "learning winder". It should be easy for some super-scientist to create a winder that used lasers to record the physical placement of the wire, tension meters to record the tension, and of course, a counter to record exactly when and where the tension and "scatter" occurred. Then the winder could finally duplicate someone's hand winding over and over.

In my experience, slick, tight winds (not so tight you thin the wire) in perfect succession make for the cleanest, clearest sound. We don't always want that in a guitar pickup. Scatterwound coils (or for our purposes "irregular and amateurish" hand winds) do make a more interesting, rich sound. But what does that mean? Do you want to vary the tension, but still maintain methodical succession, or do you want uniform tension with random placement? The answer is "yes"! All variances have produced great sounding pickups over the years. They're just different. My personal "favorite pickups list" includes pickups with crappy, loose short coils and taught, perfect tall ones, and some in between.

As for thinning the wire, I would have loved to pull this 42 a little thinner on these last two pickups I wound, but the Stew Mac wire was dry and stiff. They're sending me another spool for some other reasons, so we'll see if it's different. There was no elasticity in this spool at all. So going tighter was just pulling the coil into itself harder, not applying wire "tension" where all the wire in the coil has a little bit of "pullback" tension in it. What I wanted, is like if you cut the coil after it was fully wound, the cut would open up a little because the wire would spring back a little. This wire was just pressing hard against itself. After I get this next spool I'll render a verdict on the Stew Mac Schatten wire.

You will get obsessed with it if you start. But as a beginner, don't try to make a pickup sound like something you imagined in your head. Envision the wind first, and then enjoy the sound second, whatever it is. The big companies have the resources to design and implement, but guess what? They do the same darn thing. These "gurus" still make 20 prototypes before settling on a design. So as much as anyone knows about the process, sometimes they still don't know exactly what they'll get in a wind until they plug it in and play their first chord, just like us.

Pickups are cheap, so unless I want to make something that isn't commercially available, it's not worth it to wind. You won't catch me reverse engineering the PAF or Strat single.

No counter necessary for this one. I did two single coils, one with Duncan 1/4 lb poles and the other with 1966 Fender poles. I wanted to try an idea I had, so they both have taps. They're bridge pickups, so I wanted them to tap when combined with the middle single. When I knew I was just about there, I'd take a resisitance reading by removing a little insulation and measuring what I had so far. Then you just put a little lacquer on it again. Really since the other winds are still insulated, you don't technically have to lacquer your raw section. I was lacquer potting these two, so I had it ready. Once you start winding you'll get a feel for what "x" winds/resistance looks like.

But yeah, counters are so easy to implement. With these two, I only needed to check the resistance for the tap. The tap had to be perfect. But the overall wind was just as hot as the coils could take. In other words, after the tap, I just filled the bobbins. So it wouldn't have mattered if I had a counter. Unless it was like a gas gauge: empty-full

I don't think I'll wind with a counter again. Although I'm thinking of doing my own 7-string pickups. If I do, I'll probably want to be more exact with those from one pickup to the other, and I'll use a counter.

Hey that fixed bridge model looks pretty cool. I suppose if you wanted to convert an older Kahler guitar to a hardtail that would be one way to do it, whether you filled the route or not.

I just wound yesterday on a drill. I made the mandrel so everything was free. The results are stellar and there's not much else to it. I did it all by hand. If you're careless, you can go too far to either side. So if you aren't confident about your "touch" then simply mount the drill and then mount two guard rails on either side of the coil width. That way you won't travel too far to the outside. That's literally all there is to it. Dedicated winders with counters and tension gauges are all extra items you don't need for your first...say...100 pickups or so...?

They're okay. The V1 is an average PAF substitute. Not as rich sounding as the real thing, or a Duncan 59/Seth, or some boutique PAF wind. But usable nonetheless. I've only heard the V2 a couple times, and I remember it to be equally lackluster. I have some guitars with V1's in them, and I'm not changing them out. So they're at least good enough to withstand my usability test, if that helps.

They're not rare at all BTW.

Nuts.

Jeremy you're comments are all fine but you're nuts if you think the bass should've had a thicker or bent top. The double lamination is what gives it beauty. If the olive top was directly against the Mahogany I might feel different. The tummy cut on the back looks awesome too.

I don't like Strats or RG's with an elbow line, but on Phil's bass the receding top gives the eye some symmetry from the bass to the treble side. And then the double lamination comes through as a pinstriping. That's what makes it acceptable to me. That's not poor planning, it's proper planning. But yes, if you take a widely accepted shape, and top it with an elbow line, it usually looks bad.

Hughes & Kettner is always making a 20-ish watt tube combo. They always smoke at ALL volume levels. They don't have to be cranked and they can get the gain from the preamp if you want it that way. The preamps are very good. And yeah, the Line 6 stuff is about as bluesy as Nelson back in 1992. The Crate vintage tube stuff is okay too, like the Peavey classics. But sometimes I think they get the right amp paired up with the wrong speaker/cab. So if you try one and it's not sounding right, go one "cab size" up or down. They have 1x & 2x12's, 1x15's, and some with 10's. I'm sure Peavey does the same thing.

But you have to try the H&K stuff. The ultimate setup for me would be the Hughes & Kettner Tubeman pedal (or Tube Factor) in front of a CLEAN old Fender. Like a Bassman/Bandmaster/Showman that you're not trying to overdrive. Or if you are, its just a little, to get the grit on your pick attack. One of my preamps is a H&K Attax, and after one or two fx loops it hits my 68 Showman head (lightly modded) and that combination IS my blues combo. I have other preamps for other sounds, but H&K is speaking my language. Until recently I used an H&K Tube 50 1x12 combo at church and it smokes. I brought some gear from home and now the other guitarist uses it.

The new affordable Fender supposed "blues combos" are a joke IMO. They're all marketing. I don't think they have the sound at all. Even the clean tones are wooly and ambiguous, even when compared to a CBS Bandmaster head.

http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/results...olini&x=27&y=11

These guys don't list it but they've already told me they'd order anything that I wanted from Bartolini. They get it from a distributor so there's usually good stock. Allparts is also a Bartolini reseller. I don't know if they'd have the 112 but it's worth asking. There are some other internet dealers too. Bartolini lists these guys on their site too:

http://www.lamusicservices.com/

I'd try that "guitarelectronics" first because I've spoken to them and they seem like great folks.

I don't know if an S body can take the whole depth of a flip top battery compartment. If you were going to route it you probably have to just make a rectangle with a cover plate, or make a custom elongated trem cavity cover. The S doesn't have recessed covers, so you could just as easily make a longer cover. You could also fill the middle and rear screw holes, and just keep the front two. Then make new holes that are balanced out over the whole cover.

Wait, did Wes and I mention you don't have to do that? If you wanted 18 volts you'd have to do that though.

I can't give you the science because I don't know. But I do know that the fatter pole piece will carry the magnetic field up to the top differently. So it must change the way the magnetic field responds, as well as the aperture. Think of the difference between a Tom Anderson with the 1/4" poles and a traditional pickup. I'd say that the thick Evo poles are more like the slug coil of a traditional humbucker because that's about what size they are.

I can only tell you what I've experienced. I feel like the thicker pole compresses the sound a little, and makes for a slightly harsher, more agressive sound after the initial attack. The Tom Andersons are really smooth sounding, but they're using neodymium magnets and he's winding for that kind of sound.

It will (or at least should) fit in between the volume pot and the 5-way switch, vertically. Otherwise it should also fit if you clean out the wiring and put it across the back of the volume pot. Usually that's a clutter area because the wires come in from the pickups there. But if you send the wires to the left and right once they come in, you should be able to lay it flat right there. You might also have to resolder the grounds on the back of the pot so they're nice and flat. Maybe even move them all to the sides of the pot, and move some/all of them to the tone knob. It is very doable without routing any wood away.

If you're putting in a battery compartment, right behind the trem cavity would be best. It's still thick there. You don't have room in the spring area. There's less room there than on a Strat. You could try to route so it went under the springs but you'd go through to the pickup cavities. Which is okay I guess.

It's money well spent, because you can just move it to another guitar later if you dump the Charvel. You'll never regret owning a system 112. It's great in a Strat, Superstrat, basically anything. It's good enough to enhance a guitar that is lacking, but it also lets the natural tone of a good guitar come through. Usually pickups only do one or the other.

While that's true, you have to imagine that the guitar was at least constructed well. So I'd rather see its weaknesses for its strengths. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or put another way, one man's polished turd is another man's tootsie roll.

I've got a Stew Mac spoke wheel adjustment hot rod here to trade if anyone wants it. What I need is a slimmer dual acting rod, like the LMI or Allied rod. The problem is I always end up ordering from someone else. Yesterday I needed some Stew Mac stuff.

So is anyone out there getting ready to make an LMI or Allied order? Or do you have a similar rod from one of the other suppliers?

Also, do we have anything set up like an order sharing program? Like when someone is doing an order, they let everyone know? Maybe I'm an idiot and I need to check the supplier section more, or whatever. Or maybe I just need to pay the shipping for one lousy rod.

You know, you'd be surprised what you can coax out of a guitar like that with an active Bartolini system. If you put a System 112 in there you would probably have a keeper. You'd find playing with the boost knob addicting. Myself I'd prefer an all Mahogany carved top Soloist, Ebony board. Maybe with a Walnut or Koa top and two hums. But I digress.

They don't have to fit 6.81 on each coil. Part of the dual resonance is having a mismatched wind in addition to mismatched wire gauge. I'm not saying that's what they're doing, because I don't know the anatomy of the Evo. But I have one here and one coil reads about 6k while the other is almost 8k. So assuming they were using AWG42 for one of the coils, it would probably be the 6k one. Neither is wound all the way to the outside. There's plenty of room for more winds on each. A little taller coil, and you can get whatever you want on there. Another part of the Evo sound is the larger pole pieces. They are the solid threaded ones like the Super Distortion/Super 2. The PAF Pro has the standard thin bolt with the fat head on top.

As for the pickup, it sounds like you want a Fred. But if you're intent on rewinding a Dimarzio, start with a Fred or PAF Pro. It sounds to me like the fat pole pieces in the Evo are partly contributing to what you don't like about it. Underwinding it with an Alnico magnet source will probably yield a sound that is still thin, and doesn't have the attributes you like from the PAF Pro. So I would rewind PAF Pro coils to Evo specs if I were you, and alternate wire gauge, even if you can't confirm that's what the Evo does.

I can't believe you guys are talking about pot values when this guitar is clearly a dead fish. You might as well be playing a Steinberger. It's all about the guitar. Everything you're describing about the tone can be attributed to the guitar's construction methods, woods, tremolo, and probably the "sweet low action".

Clearly if you had active value pots left over in the guitar (in this case only the 100k tone) that would suck away precious signal. But to switch between 250k pots all the way to 1 meg pots or even NO pots will not "fix" the guitar.

I'm not an EMG fan, but that guitar is probably only going to really be usable as an EMG or active Bartolini loaded scorcher. You've got midrange compression and tone loss going on everywhere on that guitar. The Maple neck through will compress and comb away a lot of mids and low mids at the junction itself. The Floyd will inhibit transference of those same frequencies to the body, but even when the sound gets to the "body" there's a big Maple neck running through the core. So once again it's compounded. If I were you, I would basically look at that guitar as a Steinberger and choose your electronics under that premise.

I don't own any EMG equipped guitars, and I would love a carved top soloist neck through just for the nostalgia. But if I got one I'd probably dive all the way in and have active Jacksons or EMGs because its a losing battle to try to make it sound like a LP or bolt on Ibanez RG, Fat Strat, etc. You're fighting the guitar every step of the way. It's not bad, it's just a one-trick pony. If it were a Mahogany neck and body it might be different.

It's the same break angle you have on a strat tremolo. It's not a problem. The only time I've drilled at an angle is on string throughs with a tune-o-matic or wooden bridge. Then I installed the ferrules at the same angle so they were recessed at an angle too. My drill press can move in all directions, so I just set the angle and proceeded normally. Actually if you try to drill at an angle the bit will walk so I drilled a little cup hole straight down just about 1/16" first so the bit could nestle into that on it's way in.

Yeah, I think you're taking the word "cancelling" too literally. Remember: "Sound first, efficiency second." Countless famous tones and albums have been made with inefficient gear. To us, the word "hum-cancelling" simply means that the rejection of hum is taking place. To what degree is far less relevant. But to have two coils on that aren't cancelling hum together usually compounds the effect. So ideally, when possible, you combine coils that will cancel hum with eachother, and let everything else take care of itself. Jester's right, too. If you have an absolute definition of "hum cancelling" then no pickup could ever truly achieve it. One coil would have to exist simultaneously inside the other in a parallel universe (oops, shouldn't have used the word "parallel" - what about a series universe?)

You could just do a downsized strat style, like a dinky. I mean I've never measured Jackson's dinky strat body, but between that, and the Washburn Nuno, I think you could do something that still looked offset, rather than an LP Jr. Try to design something so you're using less wood behind the bridge and more up by the neck.

No experience with "idigbo" but if you are going to use Mahogany as a fretboard, I'd grain fill it and high gloss poly it. I don't think it's a great idea but you'll never know until you try. It won't hold fret tangs and barbs well, because the pores are large and plentiful, and it tears and shreds easily. An alternative might be to radius the neck and use a thin curved Rosewood board, like the old Fenders. That way you'd have more mahogany, but a Rosewood playing/fretting surface.

In my experience, most of the hum cancelling is brought on simply by combining two RW/RP coils. The equality is far less important than the actual combination.

Dimarzio makes pickups with over 4kohms mismatch between coils and they're fine. Remember, make pickups for tone first, and efficiency second. It's agreed that the Steve's Special or Megadrive will have more hum than a matching coil pickup, but it's 100% usable, and quite simply the only way to get that S.S. sound.

If I were making a mismatched humbucker, I'd wrap each coil in shielding tape for good measure. If you minimize the amount of noise that penetrates each coil individually, you'll reduce the amount of hum that needs to be cancelled, right?

How would a mahogany neck/1 piece maple body sound? I would guess a little brighter than a maple topped maple neck guitar?

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I have a guitar here with a Mahogany/Maple/Mahogany laminate neck, Ebony board, and a solid Flamed Maple body. I can't even begin to tell you guys about the acoustic sound. It's as if the guitar literally shouts at you when you play it. It is not too bright, tinny, twangy, or any other preconceived Maple predjudice. And I had a Maple/Rosewood neck on it when it started. It still wasn't twangy. One day I'll make an unplugged acoustic recording of this guitar compared to another similar guitar. It's quite amazing.

As mentioned, it's a great way to tighten up down tuning. I'm making a solid Quilt 7 string now that is fantastic. And I'm not tone deaf either. I have many guitars with many woods and only a few are Maple. I think Maple is best suited for a body if it's slimmed down. Both guitars I mentioned are slim. Hollowing out Maple is okay, but it actually increases the twang factor IMO because now you have that wood reflecting in on itself. (think about all Maple acoustics) The magic of an all Maple guitar is in keeping the mass together. And the tight lows means you can put warm, sweet pickups in there and not get muddy.

For a standard Les Paul, it is weight prohibitive, although I've played some Mahogany Gibsons that would tear your shirt. But an LP shape, slimmed down to 1 3/4" will a fully carved top, tummy cut, and sculpted heel would be a great guitar. I also soon want to use Maple and carve it out from the back like a Parker. So you'd have a carved top, and then you'd sort of follow that carve from the back. Kind of like two scoops taken out of the back or like a semi-hollow with no back. If I did it right I'd get some midrange projection, and actually get some lower frequency vibrations too.

Yes I'm aware of the differences between Hard and Soft Maple. My guitars are Hard Maple, and I think Soft Maple has a greater twang factor. In dampening the extreme highs it actually pronounces the upper mids, whereas Hard Maple has a flatter response across the mids and highs. Don't write this wood off! Instead figure out how to design to it's strengths.