"Ask Bud!"
Question:
Would you explain the differences between the various pickup designs, such as humbucker, dual-coil, single-coil, etc.?
Answer:
There are a variety of configurations in which you can wind pickups.
Single-coil pickups, like The Wallace TrueTone, typically have a single row of pole pieces with 1 continuously wound coil in the pickup. Single coils are typically noisier than humbucking (dual coil) pickups.
Humbucking (dual-coil) pickups use 2 separately wound coils in the pickup.
Both the standard George L's and the old Lawrence 705's have 2 separate coils, each wound around a flat bar instead of individual pole pieces. The 2 coils are positioned side-by-side.
The new Lawrence XR-16 pickups use stack coil winding techniques. The Lawrence has double rows of pole pieces.
Bill Lawrence also has experimented with a side-winder, single pole-piece, humbucking design. This Lawrence arrangement has the coils wound side-by-side instead of being stacked.
All these humbucking (dual-coil) configurations use 2 coils to cancel out hum and other noise.
The humbucker's output is usually stronger than that of the single coil; and the humbucker tends to be more mellow, also.
Different configurations, materials, wire gauges, and winding techniques will cause different amounts of wire to be used to achieve similar tone. For example, George L's E66 (10-string) has a DC Resistance of 17,500 Ohms, while their 10-1 (10-string) has a 19,300 Ohms DC Resistance, and the Lawrence XR-16 has a 30,000 Ohms DC Resistance.
You can also change tonal characteristics when you make pickups by changing the following items:
- Material used in the magnets (Alnico, cold-rolled iron-steel alloys, ceramic, etc.)
- Diameter & size of the pole pieces, etc.
- Wire Gauge.
- Shape of the coil.
Most of a pickup's tone is based upon the configuration and the wire gauge. All of the pickups discussed here sound great and have approximately the same frequency response characteristics.
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