When it Comes to Pickups, Wire is Everything
Voicing a pickup isn’t just a matter of selecting the right wire, insulation, and number of turns — how you lay the wire is at least as important. Among other things, this determines the pickup’s distributed capacitance, which refers to the air space formed between the layers as the coil is wound. Voicing a pickup isn’t just a matter of selecting the right wire, insulation, and number of turns — how you lay the wire is at least as important. Among other things, this determines the pickup’s distributed capacitance, which refers to the air space formed between the layers as the coil is wound. This property affects the resonant frequency of the coil and dictates the high-frequency roll-off point, so it’s one of the factors that allows for fine-tuning a pickup’s high-end response.
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Guitar Pickup Wire Winding Techniques
The winding technique helps determine each pickup’s “voice.” It’s a delicate balancing act of tonality, a constant give-and-take controlling the complex interaction of wire type and one of three winding techniques:
- Machine Winding – a machine spins the bobbin and moves back and forth at a regular pace, distributing the wire evenly across the bobbin.
- Hand Winding – a machine spins the bobbin, but the magnet wire goes through the hands of an operator who distributes the wire along the bobbin. This is how the earliest pickups were wound.
- Scatter Winding (Also called Random Wrap) – a machine spins the bobbin, and the magnet wire goes through the hands of an operator who distributes the wire along the bobbin in an intentionally scattered or random pattern.
Each technique has its pluses and minuses. Machine winding can be controlled with wire gauge, bobbin size, tension and pattern, and like any formula, if you know what you want, a machine-made pickup from a reputable maker can give it to you. Hand winding emulates machine winding by attempting an even distribution of wire and tension in the coil, but there are anomalies created by human intervention; anomalies: both wanted and unwanted.
Scatter winding gives every pickup a unique sound. The tension of the wire is purposely varied as it moves through the operator’s fingers, reflecting the ability to control the tension within the coil by the person winding the pickup. The result is a clearer, more open tone that has the impression of being louder purely by the amount of extra detail and dynamics present. But this technique can generate unwanted side effects in the tone. A scattered or random winding may exhibit a propensity toward introducing more unwanted micro phonics (undesired electrical signal noise) as opposed to a neatly wound version. This is because with a neatly wound model, the wires land next to each other in an orderly pattern and would be less likely to move around with vibration. Forums on guitar pickups seem evenly pitched on machine wound vs. scatter wound.