"Scatter Winding" (Also called "Random Wrap") - a machine spins the bobbin, and the magnet wire goes through the hands of an operator (named Seymour) who distributes the wire along the bobbin in an intentional scattered or random pattern. All scatter wound pickups are hand wound. Not all hand wound pickups are scatter wound.
Scatter Winding has a few effects on a pickup's tone.
First of all, when you scatter wind a pickup, you’re not placing the wire as close to itself on each layer as you would with a machine. The effect is to create more air space in the coil. This lowers the distributed capacitance. The best way to think of distributed capacitance is like a little tone control in the pickup. When the capacitance is lowered, the result is that more treble will come through and the resonant peak of the pickup will increase slightly.
Secondly, each scatter-wound pickup will sound slightly unique. You can scatter-wind ten pickups with the same wire and number of turns, but each will sound different.
^^
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/glossary.shtml - from the horses mouth.
ooh and guess what service Seymour Duncan offer in there custom shop?
Coil Winding-hand or scatter winding “Call for Quote”
point proven.. scatterwinding is not sales bullshitee, it works it's proven seymour duncan even does it himself and probably would do on every pickup if it didnt cost him 5 million a year in manual labour when he can just pay the electricity bill for a few machines hes probably long paid for.
