Looking for suggestions on scatter winding pickups

[Jim Bonnell]

I recently started winding pickups and found I really enjoy it. I've read a couple of books that I learned a lot from. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it I learned enough to realize I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing. I must have got lucky on the few I've done so far due to the fact that I've had several players try them and they really liked them. I understand that the purpose of scatter winding is to have more random rows to introduce air or more open space in the coil creating a small degree of microphonics allowing it to pick up some nuances of the body wood itself. Hopefully I have that right. I'm hoping you all can give me some suggestions on technique. I'm sure there is much more of an art to it than just going back and forth willy nilly. I would really value any other pickup tips you would me willing to share. Thanks a lot.

[Greg Robinson]

Hi Jim,

Actually, the purpose of scatter winding is usually to minimize parallel windings, this has the effect of reducing parasitic capacitance in the coil, and helps to give an extended high frequency response, and shifts the resonant peak of the pickup higher. Also, the fact that an un-ordered scatter wind results in a physically larger coil also reduces inter-winding capacitance.

Any mechanical loose-ness to the winding that result in microphonics could be equally achieved with reducing the tension on a parallel wind. It might be a bit harder to achieve a NON-microphonic scatter wind, but it's probably easier to control the LEVEL of microphonics with a scatter wind after you've wound a few and gotten a feel for it.

Also, how thoroughly you wax-pot a pickup will help determine the level of microphonics a pickup exhibits. If you want it to be slightly more microphonic, you might take it out of the bath before its finished bubbling. If you want to eliminate microphonics, you might look into a vacuum impregnation chamber.

Anyway, a bit to get you started thinking. I'm sure some others will weigh in soon.

[Mark Swanson]

Sometimes it's hard to fit enough wire on a bobbin, like a telecaster front pickup or a humbucker (depending as much on the size wire you use). I feel that gaps and loose windings are never a good thing. Also, no matter how orderly you try and wind a pickup, if you are doing it by hand-feeding a machine then the pickup is scatterwound, there's nothing you can do to change that. The whole term "scatterwound" is mostly a buzz-word tossed around by the big pickup makers who do use very precise machines and wind a perfect coil and they must have found a way to add more random factors to their winding methods. But we little guys who wind by hand ALL end up with scatterwound pickups. There's not much to it in my opinion.

[Greg Robinson]

I tend to think of scatter wound pickups, at least in terms of hand wound ones anyway, as being really intentionally randomly wound, rather than a more neat, evenly layered coil. It might be subtle, but with practice the usually tendency is to wind more even coils, and then it can be a conscious choice to "scatter wind". For a beginner starting out it probably won't be though!
The difference may be subtle with hand wound coils, but I think it can make a difference.

[David King]

You can also use "Heavy" insulation aka double or triple build to reduce coil capacitance and treble losses but as Mark pointed out the physical coil size will be larger so you may end up with less wire and less output if your bobbin is limiting you.

[Veronica Merryfield]

added to which proportionally more of the coil is in a weaker field. Capacitance reduction is the big factor for scatter winding and although hand winding tends to be more scattered for a non-scattered wind than a machine would pickup, there is still a significant difference between a hand tight wind compared to a hand scatter wind.