Making a pickup: What are the variables?

[PK]

Just to increase my understanding of pickups I was just wondering, when the guys at BKP create a new pickup, what are the variables they can play with in order to create a good sounding pickups? And what is the impact of these individual variables, if there is such a thing.
There is:
Magnet
Number of winds and the way a coil is wound
Wire type
Polepiece types
Difference between two coils

are there more?

And does using maple spacers and the material that the bobbins are made of affect the sound?

thanks for helping me understand pickups a little better!!

[Slartibartfarst42]

As far as I'm aware, the material the bobbins are made from won't impact the sound, or if they do it will be fairly marginal. It seems to me you've pretty much covered the essentials and in all of these things, it's about balance. The magnet is clearly important and here it always seems to me like it's a trade-off between tone and articulation. AII magnets deliver a fantastic tone in my experience but can get a bit soft in the bass, especially under gain whereas ceramic magnets give a far tighter bottom end but can be a bit sterile. Wire is the other major factor for me. 42AWG is the traditional wire on PAF pickups but the thickness of the wire means you can only wind them so hot and this wire always seems to give a more rounded sound to my ears. You can wind pickups using 43AWG that bit hotter because it's thinner and it has a lovely aggressive hairiness in the sound that's produced. The sound seems more defined than 42AWG but that in part might be because 43AWG is usually used with AIV and AV magnets whereas 42AWG is usually used with AII and AIV magnets. The Riff Raff for instance has loads of definition with 42AWG but it uses an AV magnet. There are just so many variables that it must take a lot of experimentation, even though you know that some things will help you in a certain direction. I've had a lot of success getting neck pickups made with AII magnets but with either 42.5AWG or 43AWG. This combination just works for me but even getting these pickups custom made for me, there are still variables I can't control because I'm not making them myself and I don't properly understand how these things work. I know that the degree to which you offset the winds on each bobbin will have an impact but I have no idea exactly how that works. Then there's the whole issue of mixing magnets. The Juggernaut uses an AV magnet flanked with ceramics and I just don't like it. I prefer my own bridge pickup that is AVIII flanked with AV magnets but as good as that is, I still think it could be improved if I could change it to be an AV flanked by AVIII instead so that it was the AV that became the main power of the pickup.

I think that once you've covered magnets, wire and offsets, it all becomes pretty marginal. I believe that there is a tonal difference between normal flat polepieces and screws or bolts for polepieces but in my experience, it's so marginal that you can easily compensate on your amp or even your guitar. I always use screws for polepieces, simply because I like the look and I like the ability to adjust each one.

[PK]

I would be really interested to see what coil offsets would do.
If I'm correct the 2 coils of a humbucker basically acts as a filter. Could you say the a pickup coil is basically a Resistor, Capacitor and Coil in parallel?

Also, would it be a cool experiment to have, for instance, a A2 center with ceramic flanks or any weird combo like that?

Not that I have any plans of making pickups myself, but a while back I had this crazy idea of taking a A5 bucker and widing it like a PAF with 42AWG wire to say around 7.5k and on top of that add another 7.5k of windings with 43AWG.
This way you get 3 pickups in 1 if you start combining.

[ericsabbath]

There is:
Magnet
Number of winds and the way a coil is wound
Wire type
Polepiece types
Difference between two coils

magnet grade, polishment, dimensions (height, length, width), charge, positioning
some have multiple magnets of the same size, others have multiple magnets of different sizes, others have multiple magnets of different grades
wire gauge and insulation type
I believe the polepiece length might matter too
coils can be different in many ways
I suppose you're talking about winding symmetry/asymmetry (different number of turns), but it could also have different wire and polepieces on each coil
not sure the coil material could make any difference, but the coil height certainly does, even in guitar speakers
baseplate material or the absence of it also make a difference

[Kiichi]

I would be really interested to see what coil offsets would do.

IIRC, the more similar the coils are, the more mids you get. That classic humbucker middy thing. The more the coils are offset they more the single coil character and scoop comes in. To put it in a quick way.