Dylan McKerchie — humbucker

The Resonant Peak of a Pickup, What is it? and Does it Matter? The Resonant Peak of a guitar pickup is one of these terms that we don't hear quite as often as DC resistance. The interesting thing is, The Resonant Peak is more or less the sum of all the other measurements. What do we Mean?  The DC Resistance tells us how many windings are on the coil based on the wire gauge and bobbin size. The Capacitance of the coil gives us an idea how it will process high frequencies based on the losses that happen within the...

Hard Mounted Pickups Vs Rings.... Hard Mounted Pickups Vs Rings... What does it do to the tone? Lately we have seen a lot of guitars being released with the pickups mounted straight to the body with no pickup rings or pick guards. Some people really like the cleaner look, but wonder if it affects their tone. The first thing to remember is the basic workings of a guitar pickup. We discuss this in detail HERE. The short version is that the string disturbs the magnetic field and causes an excitement of electrons in the coil wire that creates an AC...

One of the hottest topics on the internet is 250k vs 500k pots and why we choose what we choose..... The answer seems simple... But WHY? The common answer to this debate seems easy. 250k pots for single coils and 500k for humbuckers. Let's get into why these have become the most common choices. Basic Rules of Electronics 1. Electricity always takes the path of least resistance to ground... ALWAYS. 2. Anytime there is a path to ground for your guitar signal, high frequencies are the first to go. The simple guitar circuit would consist of the pickup, two wires...

What does Scatter wound actually mean? The term "scatter wound" is one of those buzzwords we hear all the time. I have clients ask me regularly "How Scatter wound are your pickups?" So what does this even mean? As we saw from our blog post on handwound pickups, the tension, traverse, and speed (at least at our shop) are all controlled by hand. This differs from a machine wound pickup where all of these variables are automatic. For this discussion we are mostly concerned with traverse. This refers to how many winds per layer are put on the coil and...

Pickup Output When we are pickup  shopping, this seems to be the Thing we are most concerned with. Usually, the DC resistance of the pickup is what we refer to as the "output" of a pickup. Is the the only thing we should be concerned with when pickup shopping? What affects pickup output? The DC resistance of the pickup refers to the resistance of the wire that is used on that particular pickup. More wire resulting in more resistance is one possible measurement of output of THAT PICKUP. There are other factors that affect output. The strength of the magnet...