Guitar pickup winder

[Prashun Patel]

Has anyone made a faceplate pickup winder for your lathe? I’m looking for a quick and dirty way to mount, wind, and count the coils.

[Dave Fritz]

Is this what you're trying to make? https://www.amazon.com/Mojotone-R3PUW401-Pickup-Winding-Machine/dp/B01LWJRO8U/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=guitar+pickup+winder&qid=1658581891&sr=8-2

If so I can see why.

[roger wiegand]

My son was talking about doing this, but hasn't yet. I think he bought some sort of recording laser tachometer to count windings. Seemed like it would be pretty easy to screw a pickup carrier to a block of wood you could hold in a chuck on the lathe. He may well have discovered it was easier to just let Lindy Fralin do it for him instead ;-)

[Prashun Patel]

I’m only doing this with my son so we can learn how pickups work.

I’ve made a wood plate that I will screw the housing to (as you suggest). I got a counter too. Will have to figure out how that works .

[roger wiegand]

I’m only doing this with my son so we can learn how pickups work.

I’ve made a wood plate that I will screw the housing to (as you suggest). I got a counter too. Will have to figure out how that works .

There's a really nice science fair project in there (speaking as a one-time judge of such things)-- number of turns, wire gauge, wire material, winding patterns; compare what the oscilloscope sees with what listeners can hear-- I like it!

[Maurice Mcmurry]

A sewing machine is more apropos. I made one with a drill, an eccentric wheel, and an Add-A-Matic.

[Edward Weber]

Stew-Mac has a much more affordable option that the one linked to above.
https://www.stewmac.com/luthier-tools-and-supplies/tools-by-job/tools-for-electronics/pickup-building/schatten-automatic-pickup-winder-traverse/
For the price, I'm not sure whether I would bother building my own.
Plus right now, there is free shipping and 10% off which In my mind, makes it a pretty good price.
Good luck

[Prashun Patel]

It's not hard to build. This part was free. The tail stock centers and holds it just fine.
I got a magnetic counter for maybe $20 that works just fine. The magnet embeds in the edge of the disc.
I will show a pic of the completed winding.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mol3-ga9KY3tpZV9SkEBb7Uo9dz7Uu1lh5cwU-QXPiBM7FvKDjLyvrf5gGd-aWN-tjarpLftx2N2XPHLgw4UtPmy2b15_JVv38DI4V6sLlRwnvF4qw EJBS1UOwkywv37nhMjE4PsqTrlGCaFgRJKb70NAVhyM79-WvY3X1O7xCGH04601WAkKN05TyNDNFc1DbaghBixytS9ABtNuH W6nJn8WvJ9wHHs_XRe3k5bvyIuT51n8bwL_za2uKBRb7vWnznw LZBKHYn0bXRJamiqVl-2gBgJqeybu8iZRk1rQvzwbL1KNHo2vu6bxKO80VfM_re4X4J_N FX4GygTcV8c-J-FpUssUjVo-ytlGMZDohbL8yTou56fXY9lkvSwQDzZrlD3vqPN-fNXx49NnLVCsIyzJUoh4uOPWLBhOlKzCpDQS5RLAAXrn-RZIJMTGd51QsQX20-mtsHIeILWIH3Sdjk8HrjwNHJMSaaAV8iWSRr5MnqxKNXshpNyd 0LpuTeHKj4VNC2nMlwiE0Wn_t-KJiP9qNd7VTqKb-AjYyTse8AcLiFq8Gvgy1jTzu68m83zuJHr1LDmZvWlG6WLEq4a NQmDyuFkGpPAGhfbaLVZuFiWdpy6BwnRlS07MwFCVeADype6E4 6ltd51XPF1IQvcfDMJrodjuzIz8t0PJdPrnwERgKIcek-aeqHWcQfH2kySbWFoP67YeDGHxkGDhLtDvuD9HQjEWnUFbqTl_ NSTtBUdbVWO2BwJ4QHG4hpUeH2EChaig0kYWarvRvE5NZ3wN1o OH8hk9M9xt96m=w1258-h943-no?authuser=1

[Maurice Mcmurry]

There is a folk legend I have heard from several knowledgeable builders that tells about certain vintage Telecaster and Stratocaster pickups being traced back to a young lady working for fender who got bored laying down perfect turns and started to wander around a bit. I can not find it documented.

[Rob Luter]

There is a folk legend I have heard from several knowledgeable builders that tells about certain vintage Telecaster and Stratocaster pickups being traced back to a young lady working for fender who got bored laying down perfect turns and started to wander around a bit. I can not find it documented.

AKA "Scatter Wound". It became a thing some years back. It's a marketing tool as much as anything. While it does change the electrical characteristics (capacitance) of the pickup, it's not repeatable and the impact on sound is usually subtle and unpredictable. Kind of like the impact of 100 other construction and materials variables. Sometimes not. Vince Gill has an old Tele (the white one) and he raves about the bridge pickup, saying it really rips. and he's probably played 100's of Telecasters. Manufacturers of Humbucking pickups also pair coils with dissimilar windings to impact what frequencies are cancelled out. Gibson Burstbuckers are a good example. From their website:

On the shop floor of the original Gibson plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the earliest Gibson "Patent Applied For" humbuckers were wound using imprecise machines, resulting in pickups with varying degrees of output and tone. The BurstBucker™ line of pickups represents Gibson's drive to recapture the magic of the original "Patent Applied For" humbuckers. First introduced in the early 1990s, the Gibson BurstBucker™ — Types 1, 2, and 3 — successfully captured the subtle variations of true, classic humbucker tone with historically "unmatched" bobbin windings and Alnico II magnets. They produce an airy, full tone, and when overdriven they achieve a magical distortion with the slightly enhanced highs that made the originals famous.

So in other words, they made the randomness less random, but captured the magic of the randomness. Sounds like Marketing word salad to me.

Disclaimer: I have a set of Burstbuckers in a '58 Les Paul reissue. The set I have sounds great, much like the PAF pickups of yore that had the "magical randomness".

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I would enjoy seeing what Prashun comes up with. I used my drill rig for choke coils in stereo speaker crossovers. I hope to get back to trying to make a pickup. Chris Kinnmans myths busted page is interesting. His take on scatter is different from what Seymour Duncan says. Most of this is over my head. I would like to get some training.