Dougie
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I recently had the fun of taking apart a DOA mini humbucker from about 1964. This would have been used on an Epiphone guitar as Gibson made those pickups for Epiphone in those days.
The early minis are known for their super cool tone which is nice and rounded and full, nothing like the thin sounding squealy later minis that went on the LP Deluxe guitars of the 70s. This was mostly due to different materials, different magnets and different winding wire, but leave it to say that the old minis sounded so good because they were wound with the same plain enamel wire as PAFs, they used the same magnets as the short magnet PAF, and Gibson wasn't afraid to fill the bobbins completely full.
Many of these early mini humbuckers have DCR measurements well over 7.5k, minis with readings as high as 7.97k are not uncommon. There, is the question. How did they get these readings on such small bobbins?
Modern 42ga AWG magnet wire reads about 1.6Ω per foot, 43ga reads about 2.1Ω per foot, but the wire that came off the dead coils of the 1964 mini humbucker reads 1.866Ω per foot.
That would explain how the same number of turns of vintage 42ga wire would give a much higher reading as opposed to modern wire!
Now, did Gibson buy wire back then that was that far out of spec because they could get it cheaper? And did some of this wire get used in other pickups like the PAF and therefore explain how some of those come out reading 9.3k and others much lower even though they both have 5,000 turns on each coil? Or were they just winding pickups with the wire as supplied and not paying much attention to it's quality control?
I mean it wasn't then and isn't now rocket science, but it sure makes you wonder.
I cannot get modern 42ga wire to duplicate the vintage mini humbucker readings. About the most you can get on a mini bobbin is 4700 turns, which gives a reading of 3.55k, considerably lower than readings you would find in a vintage mini that read 7.8k overall.. Sure I can use 43ga and get the dcr up there but it's not the same, the capacitance and inductance is not the same as the off-spec wire used in the early minis..
The early minis are known for their super cool tone which is nice and rounded and full, nothing like the thin sounding squealy later minis that went on the LP Deluxe guitars of the 70s. This was mostly due to different materials, different magnets and different winding wire, but leave it to say that the old minis sounded so good because they were wound with the same plain enamel wire as PAFs, they used the same magnets as the short magnet PAF, and Gibson wasn't afraid to fill the bobbins completely full.
Many of these early mini humbuckers have DCR measurements well over 7.5k, minis with readings as high as 7.97k are not uncommon. There, is the question. How did they get these readings on such small bobbins?
Modern 42ga AWG magnet wire reads about 1.6Ω per foot, 43ga reads about 2.1Ω per foot, but the wire that came off the dead coils of the 1964 mini humbucker reads 1.866Ω per foot.
That would explain how the same number of turns of vintage 42ga wire would give a much higher reading as opposed to modern wire!
Now, did Gibson buy wire back then that was that far out of spec because they could get it cheaper? And did some of this wire get used in other pickups like the PAF and therefore explain how some of those come out reading 9.3k and others much lower even though they both have 5,000 turns on each coil? Or were they just winding pickups with the wire as supplied and not paying much attention to it's quality control?
I mean it wasn't then and isn't now rocket science, but it sure makes you wonder.
I cannot get modern 42ga wire to duplicate the vintage mini humbucker readings. About the most you can get on a mini bobbin is 4700 turns, which gives a reading of 3.55k, considerably lower than readings you would find in a vintage mini that read 7.8k overall.. Sure I can use 43ga and get the dcr up there but it's not the same, the capacitance and inductance is not the same as the off-spec wire used in the early minis..
Materials from yesteryears were definitively different.
