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Wire & Magnets
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Wires & Magnets by Mike Rose, Gemini Pickups
The basic designs of pickups have been more or less constant for many years. During the last 50 years or so, there have been no totally new pickup configurations, the only significant developments being rail style pickups and noiseless strat pickups. Rails are really only a variation while noiseless single coils offer hum cancellation rather new tonal possibilities.
Working within the basic designs (strat, tele, humbucker and P-90 models), what can the pickup maker do to make their products distinctive and offer the guitarist something new.
For any of the four main types of after market pickup, the main factors for the designer to vary are the coil and the magnets.
Magnets can be varied by material. Alnico 2, Alnico 5 or Ceramic are the commonest and listed in order of weakest to strongest. Magnets can also be varied by size, larger magnets producing a stronger magnetic field. Stronger magnetic fields produce a stronger attack and a slightly brighter sounding pickup than weaker magnetic fields. They also produce more output.
There are a small number of pickups made with different magnet arrangements than the originals, mostly single coils with bar magnets, either for cheapness, or to produce a less focused, fatter sound. A typical example of the latter would be a P-90 magnet arrangement on a hot wound single coil to produce a P-90 style sound.
The magnets always work together with the coil winding to determine the overall sound. Many pickup makers only use two gauges of wire, along traditional lines. AWG 43 for tele neck pickups and broadcaster style bridge pickups, AWG 42 for everything else. AWG 43 is also commonly used for high output humbuckers and hot P-90's.
 In fact, a much wider variety of sounds is available by using different wire gauges.
The resonant peak is the frequency at which the pickup transposes at maximum efficiency. For almost all pickups, this is above the primary frequency of any note on the guitar. Consequently, it affects the perceived brightness but not the string to string volume balance.
Thicker wire produces a pickup with a more pronounced resonant peak and a steeper q curve. Thinner wire produces a pickup with a less pronounced peak and a flatter eq curve. You could say that heavier wires produce a pickup with more character.
Given that the sizes of pickups are fixed and most were designed for AWG 42, the practical application is that heavier wire produces pickups with more bass and treble but less mids. Thinner wires produce pickups with more mids. Wire 1 gauge thicker or thinner than the original design can be used for most pickups designs. In a few cases a 2 gauge difference will be successful.
Thinner wire produces less output at the same impedance and is brighter. At the same number of turns, it has higher impedance, more output and is darker. The maximum number of turns is also higher.
The difference in volume is not a linear function of impedance. A pickup wound to a low impedance with heavy wire has nearly as much output as a thin wire pickup with 40 - 50% higher impedance.
I use 5 different gauges of wire, AWG 40, AWG 41, AWG 42, SWG 46 (equivalent to AWG 42.5) and AWG 43.
The easiest example to understand the effects of wire gauges and magnetic field strength is the strat pickup.
These are the specs for the bridge units of my strat pickups
All magnets are 5mm AL V except for the Krakens which use 6mm AL V DG.
In one sense, all of these except the Nymph have equivalent windings in that they are wound near to full capacity.
The Nymph and Chimera are both within the tonal range of typical strat pickups, the nymph being the brighter of the two.
The Minotaur sounds like a strat crossed with a P90. The mids are dominant, the attack softer. The use of an intermediate wire gauge allows this with standard magnets. An equivalent AWG 43 winding would be both darker and thicker toned using the same magnets and would tend to sound muddy.
The Kraken sounds more humbucker like but due to the stronger magnetic field retains the attack and focus of a strat pickup.
The Spirit is very open sounding, slightly warmer than a typical strat sound but because of the higher proportion of lower mid and bass compared to upper mids, drives a valve amp much better than the Nymph or Chimera.
You can find out more about Gemini Pickups at their website - www.geminipickups.co.uk
Disclaimer
P-90 is a trademark of Gibson Musical Instruments
Strat and Tele are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. Gemini Pickups is not affiliated with any of these companies. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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