Dylan McKerchie — single coil

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...

That Nasty Hum I am sure we have all heard the annoying hum from a single coil guitar. This is because the pickups in our guitars become antennas for radio interference. Any time you coil a wire it is possible for this to happen. Remember the old AM radio antenna? it was a simple coil of wire wrapped around a core. Our guitar pickups are the same thing multiplied by thousands. While it is not common (it IS possible) to pick up radio stations with our guitar, the most common noise we can hear is the 60 hz hum from...

What does "Out of Phase" mean? This is of course another term that we hear often. Maybe we have replaced a pickup and experienced it... That quacky thin sound when we turn both pickups on at the same time. Most of the time it is not on purpose, although this tone does have it's place. What causes it? In electric guitar land the term "out of phase" refers to a cancellation of sounds that happens when two pickups that have either opposite winding direction, or opposite magnetic polarity are turned on at the same time. The video below will illustrate...

How Electric Guitar Pickups Work... For some reason, this subject has a shroud of mystique surrounding it. The truth is, how electric guitar pickups work is very simple. An electric guitar pickup is a magnetic transducer. This means that it changes the motion of the string to an AC voltage that can be sent to the guitar amp to be amplified. How does it do this? The most common types of pickups consist of a magnetic core that has a very fine wire wound around it thousands of times.  Single coil pickups like those found in a Stratocaster or Telecaster...