Seymour Duncan interview in Guitar Buyer

[HJM]

There's an option in profile to set timezone I think!

[Brow]

Seymour Duncan used an old record player to re-wind his own pickups back in the day.

I don't think he ever manufactured pickups using that method tho, as like HJM said, it'd take ages to wind 1 pickup  :)

[dave_mc]

well, yeah- a pickup has what- 5 or 6 thousand winds?

5000/78

= 64minutes, or just over an hour...  :twisted:

[Ratrod]

is it me or is the forum an hour ahead of the actual time??

either that or i've been at work an hour longer than i thought, or am seeing future posts before they happen :p

All times GMT + 1 hour.

Don't worry, you're not working longer. :)

[Skybone]

apparantly, SD used vietnamese children to wind them with their teeth, until Nike offered the kids more money to make cr@ppy trainers instead..

Careful...... :lol:

Yeah, Nike's have reasonable quality control... ;)

[Steve-Mr Pig 2U]

I believe PAF's were hand wound until the late 50's, when Gibson bought two automated machines, even then they still hand wound some. Some people will try to tell you otherwise but we know that this is true.
As a side note, No PAF's were made after September 1960. They became Patent number pickups. Shorter Alnico V magnets were used and the coils were symmetrically wound.
Seymour is correct in saying that no PAF’s were scatter wound (not intentionally any way)

[willo]

Seymour Duncan used an old record player to re-wind his own pickups back in the day.

I don't think he ever manufactured pickups using that method tho, as like HJM said, it'd take ages to wind 1 pickup  :)

Yeah, I like this idea though...stick on a record, sit back and listen to Duane Eddy or whoever was popular, sit back and by the time the album's finished, the record player has wound your pickup for you! Awesome! :)

I believe PAF's were hand wound until the late 50's

Seymour is correct in saying that no PAF’s were scatter wound (not intentionally any way)

I thought scatter winding/hand winding were the same thing? I don't pay too much attention to the technical stuff I must say, for me something either sounds good or it doesnt (simple!), but are scatter winding and hand winding two different processes then?

I always assumed that they were the same because the winding was randomly scattered as a byproduct of winding by hand...

[Steve-Mr Pig 2U]

Scatter winding can only be done by hand, but not all hand wound pickups are scatterwound.... less confused? I thought not!

Scatter winding a pickup is quite a time intensive proccess, so not many hand winders actually do it, but the tonal benefits are more than worth it.

[hobleguitars]

Not sure that's entirely true - I'll confuse things a little more. With a computer and various suitable tools, you can program a machine (built with a record player, for example) to scatterwind the pickup, so no human hand has to have touched it, yet it would still be completely random/scatterwound. Me and my dad were going to do this at one point, but then I just decided to build guitars.

So scatterwound pickups don't have to be made by hand, and hand-winding pickups doesn't necessarily mean their scatterwound. Nit-picking, or what? 8)

[indysmith]

is scatterwinding just winding it randomly then? what difference does it make? why don't you just get a machine to do it?

[Steve-Mr Pig 2U]

Scatter winding CAN NOT be done by machine, all the big companies have tried it, and it doesn’t work. If it did, don’t you think some one would be doing it?

Computers cannot replicate a human brain or any of its functions, fact.

No offence intended, but you can’t make statements like 'computers can be programmed to scatter wind', if you've never scatter wound a pickup before yourself.
Sorry to contradict you so strongly, but I spend every day of the week winding pickups and I can assure you it is not something that can be programmed into a computer.

Scatter winding isn’t just random winding, it’s an integral part of the winding process where the wind pattern is broken down and the uniform layering is separated, stopping capacitance building in the coil.

[HJM]

In theory you could map the movements of your arm while it moves and then repeat the pattern perfectly, but it would loose the random human element that everybody wants with a handmade product. Scatterwound pickups are all very slightly different, I like that, a machine would struggle to do that part of the equation.

[dave_mc]

i think (and i could be wrong  :oops:  ) that hand wound pickups are more random than machine wound, but still not as random as intentionally scatterwound

so, basically, as has been said before, all scatterwound pickups are handwound, but not all handwound pickups are scatterwound   :twisted:

[HJM]

And a lot of so called hand winders use automated shut-off machines like gibson did....

[dave_mc]

^i know, i realise that "handwound" can be very ambiguous- what the winder considers handwound might not be what  you or i do...