Another avenue to explore is series and or parallel connection of coils within pickups and between pickups - my Bailey Workshop course Tele has a 4 position switch giving the usual three positions (bridge, both in parallel and neck) plus both connected in series - the series position is louder and fuller than the parallel one.

Sounds like good fun. It will be interesting if you record the results as you go along with different wire types, capacitance, impedance and sound quality. Like a proper science experiment then we can all crib your hard work !

Also to look at active electronics.......

For the cost of a decent pair of pickups I have a winder and enough components to build 10 pickups - if one doesn’t work then bin the wire and build another one...

Can't disagree with you it's not an absolute requirement to do complicated calculations but anyone who works to a high standard as you obviously do will start with something basic and want to improve it to a higher standard, which I totally understand. Bass and 6 string pick ups work by being tuned to different frequency ranges so it's necessary to be in the correct ball park. A bass pick up will sound a guitar top E but not very well.

Videos will only mention the basic process and not go into theory as most people would switch off. Commercial products are as you said about production cost/profit and are often are a compromise to cover all applications so you probably wouldn't find a pick up designed specifically for studio or live use. But it does happen for microphones. 

More windings will give a higher output but also amplify the noise which wouldn't be noticed in a rock concert but would show when playing low volumes at home so it's possible to design one for an application.

Darren

@mattbeels

As far as I know scatter winding produces a higher resonant frequency which gives a fuller range of sound

I can understand why people would want to do a self build pick up but it should be different to an off the shelf commercial product to make it worthwhile. It's important to start with a definite idea of the frequency range required and the application it's going to be used in e.g. live performance or studio recording/home playing as one will have a higher output with more windings and the other will have a lower output with fewer windings.

I don't have the calculations for capacitative reactance and frequency to hand so if anyone does it would be useful to see them as a starting point.

Interesting home build project: In theory it's possible to wire a single coil for balanced line output by making the case from metal and connecting to ground with the two ends of the winding being signal connections to a stereo jack socket. This would have the same noise cancelling effect as a humbucker and would probably only work with a mixing desk that had an input level control to avoid input clipping, however it would give a cleaner sound and signals are often boosted over long cable runs to avoid loss and then reduced at the output end.

That’s one of the selling points from say, Bare Knuckle pickups. Scatter wound pickups have their own unique quality, apparently. 

A pick up might not be as sexy as a whole guitar but I think there would be a real extra level of satisfaction in having made it yourself.

Amen. It’s difficult to keep up, but the recent thinking was that the random windings of a manually wired pickup were always superior to a factory/computer generated coil. 

I won’t raise the Chinese Elephant in the room...

However there's a drawback to self building electronic stuff, experts have already worked it all out using sophisticated equipment so unless you need something that's not commercially available it's a bit pointless trying to build something better.

Hi Rocknroller,

I think you may be missing the point. The ‘experts’ you mention are also constrained by budgets that means that whatever pick up they design has to be manufactured for about 10% of what you pay for it in the shops. The same logic could be applied to making our own guitars. Just because there are big companies out there making mass produced instruments doesn’t mean that we can’t build something equally as good, if not better, ourselves. A pick up might not be as sexy as a whole guitar but I think there would be a real extra level of satisfaction in having made it yourself. It’s not an easy next step, and certainly not for everyone, but I can really understand the desire to have a go and experiment. The beauty of this forum is the ability to tap into, and share, other members’ interests (obsessions!) and learn from them, as, collectively we can try out far more ideas than we could individually.

Merry Christmas one and all and here’s to a new year ahead!

Darren