Pickups Magnetic Decay
There are a lot of things that can be done to a guitar to improve or restore it. An old tired pickup can be restored by recharging its magnets. Contact with electric fields of transformers in amplifiers can gradually weaken the pickups magnetic field and the pickup loses its power. Leaning the guitar against an amplifier exposes your pickups to external magnetic fields. Over a period of time this reduces the pickups output. Recharging a pickups magnetic field restores a vintage pickup to original strength.
The huge magnets in speaker cabinets are also a source of external magnetic fields. Setting your instrument on top of a speaker cabinet may keep it safe from physical harm but expose it to slow magnetic decay. Over a period of years good pickups can become weakened.
Many great old guitars suffer from weakened pickups. However this condition can be repaired at our shop.
Resistance
One indicator of pickup performance is its resistance measured in ohms. The rule of thumb is that a pickup with more resistance is hotter sounding and more powerful. High resistance pickups tend to sound hot and produce a stronger signal. Lower resistance pickups tend to sound cleaner. A 5.5 ohm pickup will produce a clean sound and a 10 ohm pickup will produce a stronger dirtier sound. Some distortion pickups run as high as 16 ohms.
Generally speaking more turns of wire on the pickup produce more signal strength and a hotter sound. You can make a pickup switchable by a process called 'coil tapping'. One could wind 6000 turns of wire onto the bobbin and result in a standard clean vintage sound but then wind another thousand or so turns to create a second output which would produce a hotter sound. I wire the pickup to an on/on mini toggle switch so the player has the option of clean/hot from the same pickup. This is a popular and useful modification, it is versatile.
Pickup Windings
The way the magnet wire is wound onto the pickup bobbin has a lot to do with the sound quality of the pickup. Sadly, many foreign copies of American guitars feel and play pretty good but the sloppy windings on the pickups rob the instrument of true professional sound quality. Re winding a pickup is a good way to improve a guitars sound. A 'copy' guitar can be greatly improved by re winding its pickups.
2
In the 50's all pickups were hand wound. Due to the music explosion of the 60's the big guitar companies invested in mechanical winding machines to keep up with demand. It was quickly realized that the uniform windings produced a sterile clean sound. The older pickups that had a little (a little, but not too much) sloppiness due to human error were actually more harmonic and pleasing to musicians. There's a big difference between a 50's era pickup and a 60's era pickup. They look the same but sound different. The harmonic character of the hand wound pickups is a much sought after feature. Every one in the market is producing 'Vintage' pickups that produce this sound. They are frequently called 'boutique' style pickups, or vintage replacements
Wire guage
The type of wire used to wind a pickup affects its sound. Generally AWG 42 or AWG43 copper wire is used to wind pickups. Pure copper wire is always best. This is another place where 'copy' guitars lose. They are often wound with cheaper wire that is not pure copper or not as pure as it should be.
The insulation on the wire also has an affect. Older wire had a pretty thick varnish insulation on it and newer wire has a vinyl base insulation that is thinner. With thousands of turns of wire this minor difference affects the induction of the magnetic field in a way that can be heard by the human ear. In fact an electric circuit may show the same resistance physically but harmonic quality to the human ear is different. If you wind a bobbin with 6000 thousand turns of old fashioned 'formvar' wire in 42AWG and an identical bobbin with 6000 turns of modern wire 'polyvinyl' insulation also 42AWG these two pickups will always sound different. Electrically the same but harmonically different. Its the little things that make a big difference in pickup winding.
At Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars we can make your pickups...Hot!...or...Raw!...or make them ...Sing Sweetly. Or we can coil tap so you can get both sounds from the same pickup. Its your pie, and we'll put ice cream on it for you.
There are a lot of things that can be done to a guitar to improve or restore it. An old tired pickup can be restored by recharging its magnets. Contact with electric fields of transformers in amplifiers can gradually weaken the pickups magnetic field and the pickup loses its power. Leaning the guitar against an amplifier exposes your pickups to external magnetic fields. Over a period of time this reduces the pickups output. Recharging a pickups magnetic field restores a vintage pickup to original strength.
The huge magnets in speaker cabinets are also a source of external magnetic fields. Setting your instrument on top of a speaker cabinet may keep it safe from physical harm but expose it to slow magnetic decay. Over a period of years good pickups can become weakened.
Many great old guitars suffer from weakened pickups. However this condition can be repaired at our shop.
Resistance
One indicator of pickup performance is its resistance measured in ohms. The rule of thumb is that a pickup with more resistance is hotter sounding and more powerful. High resistance pickups tend to sound hot and produce a stronger signal. Lower resistance pickups tend to sound cleaner. A 5.5 ohm pickup will produce a clean sound and a 10 ohm pickup will produce a stronger dirtier sound. Some distortion pickups run as high as 16 ohms.
Generally speaking more turns of wire on the pickup produce more signal strength and a hotter sound. You can make a pickup switchable by a process called 'coil tapping'. One could wind 6000 turns of wire onto the bobbin and result in a standard clean vintage sound but then wind another thousand or so turns to create a second output which would produce a hotter sound. I wire the pickup to an on/on mini toggle switch so the player has the option of clean/hot from the same pickup. This is a popular and useful modification, it is versatile.
Pickup Windings
The way the magnet wire is wound onto the pickup bobbin has a lot to do with the sound quality of the pickup. Sadly, many foreign copies of American guitars feel and play pretty good but the sloppy windings on the pickups rob the instrument of true professional sound quality. Re winding a pickup is a good way to improve a guitars sound. A 'copy' guitar can be greatly improved by re winding its pickups.
2
In the 50's all pickups were hand wound. Due to the music explosion of the 60's the big guitar companies invested in mechanical winding machines to keep up with demand. It was quickly realized that the uniform windings produced a sterile clean sound. The older pickups that had a little (a little, but not too much) sloppiness due to human error were actually more harmonic and pleasing to musicians. There's a big difference between a 50's era pickup and a 60's era pickup. They look the same but sound different. The harmonic character of the hand wound pickups is a much sought after feature. Every one in the market is producing 'Vintage' pickups that produce this sound. They are frequently called 'boutique' style pickups, or vintage replacements
Wire guage
The type of wire used to wind a pickup affects its sound. Generally AWG 42 or AWG43 copper wire is used to wind pickups. Pure copper wire is always best. This is another place where 'copy' guitars lose. They are often wound with cheaper wire that is not pure copper or not as pure as it should be.
The insulation on the wire also has an affect. Older wire had a pretty thick varnish insulation on it and newer wire has a vinyl base insulation that is thinner. With thousands of turns of wire this minor difference affects the induction of the magnetic field in a way that can be heard by the human ear. In fact an electric circuit may show the same resistance physically but harmonic quality to the human ear is different. If you wind a bobbin with 6000 thousand turns of old fashioned 'formvar' wire in 42AWG and an identical bobbin with 6000 turns of modern wire 'polyvinyl' insulation also 42AWG these two pickups will always sound different. Electrically the same but harmonically different. Its the little things that make a big difference in pickup winding.
At Emily Caroline Hand Crafted Guitars we can make your pickups...Hot!...or...Raw!...or make them ...Sing Sweetly. Or we can coil tap so you can get both sounds from the same pickup. Its your pie, and we'll put ice cream on it for you.