Hand winds

[captcoolaid]

What qualifies as a hand wound pickup. Would it be non CNC or is there more to it than that.

 

[Fixxxer]

How did the other winder you worked with at one time classify it?

 

[BillB1960]

I thought hand wound implied that the wire being wound onto the bobbin was hand guided as opposed to machine guided. IOW the bobbin spins on a machine and the wire is hand guided onto it.

 

[Jakeislove]

My guess?! "Handwound" is very subjective term.

 

[polifemo]

The way David/Zhangbucker does his Pure Handwounds:

(from the Zhangbucker web site)


"Handwound vs. Pure Handwound
There is a lot of confusion out there about what exactly constitutes a “handwound” pickup. There may be some disagreements out on the fringes of the winder community, but at least 90% of us consider a pickup handwound if the traverse of the wire back and forth on the spinning bobbin is hand-guided. It is still a handwound pickup if the bobbin is turned by machine. In fact, hand-guided/machine-turned is no subtype or exception; it is the essence of handwound. Probably 99.999% of handwound pickups are made with machine turned bobbins. Anyway, by this definition, ALL of my pickups are handwound.

But I have a line of humbuckers that falls into that .001%. My Pure Handwound line differs from my regular wind in that the wire is wrapped on the bobbin ENTIRELY BY HAND. There is no machine used to turn the bobbin or anything else other than a clamp to hold the bobbin in place – my hands and the wire are the only moving parts. It’s a lot of work but the sound difference is worth it. The regular wind has great dynamics, harmonics, sparkle, clarity and detail, and is very sensitive to height and polepiece adjustments. The Pure Handwound significantly magnifies all these qualities and somehow even adds some sustain to the mix. The string separation is as good as it gets, which means you can strum a Pure Handwound neck pickup as hard as you want, mud-free. Faked double-leads, like when you play southern rock but you’re the only guitar player in the band, sound almost like two separate guitars.

I’d like to pretend I’ve studied all this in a lab with oscilloscopes and I could give you charts and graphs explaining it all, but I really have no idea why this works. It just does. I got the idea from opening up a Timbucker a few years ago and discovering a wind pattern that to my mind could only have been laid on the bobbin by hand. A machine turned bobbin couldn’t create this pattern, what I call the crop circle of wind patterns. Tim White, creator and purveyor of Timbuckers, has since called it quits and I’ve never talked to him about whether he did in fact lay the wire on by hand or otherwise independently verified that he did, although hand-wrapping would explain why his waiting list was nearly 2 years by the end (hand wrapping takes a lot of time). I also make no claim to be able to duplicate his pattern – I still don’t know how he did it.

What I do know is that, like his method, whatever it was, my hand-wrapping technique also creates patterns that can’t be duplicated with a machine turned bobbin and the results are extremely close to his, especially in terms of clarity, dynamics, detail and string separation, mine sounding maybe a touch smoother on top than his.

The regular wind is getting closer all the time and if I ever figure a way to get that sound with a machine-turned bobbin, you can kiss the Pure Handwound line goodbye because it would save you money and turnaround time and me a lot extra work. Til then, the difference is worth it. Humbuckers are so far the only type of pickup line where I offer the Pure Handwound option. I have made some PH Strat and P90 pickups and there is a difference, but not enough to be worth the extra work for me or the extra money for you. Part of the essence of the PH sound is single coil clarity in the treble, and single coils by definition already have that. But I reserve the right to change my mind if I can find a different PH pattern that further enhances single coils.

I strongly recommend your Pure Handwound be made with no cover because even the best covers shunt some of the PH magic to ground. Plus it’ll save you the cost of the cover".




Don´t know how much of a difference this makes I only know that my Pure Handwound Pagey 2´s are simply amazing!

 

[WolfeMacleod]

Handwound = handguided, regardless of what (IE: a machine) spinning the bobbin.
Always has been, always will be.

I'd like to see a video of "Pure handwound" being...wound. From start to finish. I know how long it takes just to wind a couple hundred turns by hand. No F*ing way am I going to do 5-6000 turns by hand unless it's absolutely necessary (coil having no bobbin). I don't care how much you pay me.

 

[polifemo]

Just to clarify my post:

I´m not saying that this is THE way to wind pickups!
There are great machine winded pickups, there are great "hand guided/hand winded" pickups and my pure hand winded Zhangbuckers are great as well

The way David describes it on his site must be considered as a "100% hand wind", that´s all.

Personally I don´t care as long as it sounds good

 

[HogmanA]

 

[SKATTERBRANE]

The winding pattern or lack thereof, and the tension, loosness or tightness of the wind, number of winds, all matter when it comes to tone. In fact, I submit that it is the wind itself that plays the single most significant factor in a pickup's tone, once you get into the boutique realm. The quality of components have reached a level that most boutique winders have either had their parts made to their specs and/or are buying parts from a handful of high quality sources, certainly less than 20 or so sources for the various parts.

Some parts are pretty bad and most boutique winders avoid certain sources.

The budget pickups usually have all their parts and often times labor, from China. Some winders even pay to have their bobbins prewound in China! Others actually have them made completely in China.

 

[Zhangliqun]

Handwound = handguided, regardless of what (IE: a machine) spinning the bobbin.
Always has been, always will be.

I'd like to see a video of "Pure handwound" being...wound. From start to finish. I know how long it takes just to wind a couple hundred turns by hand. No F*ing way am I going to do 5-6000 turns by hand unless it's absolutely necessary (coil having no bobbin). I don't care how much you pay me.

200 turns takes about 2 minutes. One full bobbin would take about about an hour if I go non-stop, but as you might expect, I rarely go nonstop. I take breaks and do other work for a while in between, then get back to it.

 

[captcoolaid]

By the way this was just a question. I am NOT a hand winder although I do control the traverse entirely on the fly. I do not use CNC at all. But the winder does the traverse. And here is a secret shhhhhhh the bobbin does not move on my machine.

 

[SKATTERBRANE]

I glue the bobbin to a table and run around the room until it is full.

 

[captcoolaid]

Do you ever fall I would get dizzy as hell at around 100 turns. crashing into everything. Gawd it hurts

 

[Zhangliqun]

Training for the winder triathlon are we?

 

[copperheadroad]

200 turns takes about 2 minutes. One full bobbin would take about about an hour if I go non-stop, but as you might expect, I rarely go nonstop. I take breaks and do other work for a while in between, then get back to it.

Dave
I wouldnt mind seeing a little clip of you doing your "Pure Hand Winding"
not to try to steal or replicate or pry any ideals ,I'm thinking you still need to mount you bobbin on a faceplate ,right ? even if you spin a faceplate by one hand & guide the wire with the other hand .............I'm just trying to visualize the best way to do this .......& it is definitely not for me

I own a cnc winder that can do random,alternate patterns as well as single pitch ,& it can replicate scatter wound style
Technically hand guided is hand-wound .I guess all hand-wound pickups are scatter wound to some extent

 

[Zhangliqun]

As I say on my site, hand-guided is what's considered handwound. Hand-guided is handwound. I am not disputing that for a second.

"Pure Handwound" was just the best I could do to come up with a name to differentiate this process from the standard hand wind. "Hand-Wrapped" might be better but the name has stuck and if I change it now, the PH fans will freak out and wonder why I did away with that line.

It's not even as complicated as you imagine. The bobbin is held in place by a clamp. I hold my left thumb and forefinger at each end of the bottom flange of the bobbin to prevent the wire from wrapping under -- and just wrap the wire on with the right hand. I have no video camera but if you want to video it, come on down. But I guarantee you'll be VERY bored.

As for how to get the right pattern with this process, that's a bit more interesting, but it's classified.

 

[snaredrum]

funnily enough i've talked about this in the pub with my dad, Zhang.

the best i could explain it was like a "ok, so you go left for a hundred turns, then criss cross every fifty, then go right" for 5,000 turns.

he was... um... shall we say in awe of your tenacity?

 

[Zhangliqun]

As for a CNC winder being able to do this, if the operator is willing to program it in there turn by turn, I think it can be done pretty easily. But your standard mechanical non-computerized winding machnine can't do it, that's all I mean by not being able to get this pattern and resulting sound with a machine-turned bobbin.

 

[Zhangliqun]

funnily enough i've talked about this in the pub with my dad, Zhang.

the best i could explain it was like a "ok, so you go left for a hundred turns, then criss cross every fifty, then go right" for 5,000 turns.

he was... um... shall we say in awe of your tenacity?

Not sure if that's a complement or insult but I'll assume the former.

It takes a little getting used to and though I say it's a lot of work, it's not as bad as you think. Once you have the moves down, you're not even really thinking much at all. Just turn on the radio for a ball game or talk radio or your favorite music station or favorite CD's and the time goes by pretty quick. And of course take some breaks here and there as you get tired.

 

[snaredrum]

Not sure if that's a complement or insult but I'll assume the former.

It takes a little getting used to and though I say it's a lot of work, it's not as bad as you think. Once you have the moves down, you're not even really thinking much at all. Just turn on the radio for a ball game or talk radio or your favorite music station or favorite CD's and the time goes by pretty quick. And of course take some breaks here and there as you get tired.

oh it was indeed a compliment.