For pickup winders

[WorktheWood]

If you were going to make a dual coil pickups, like two jazz bass single coil style, how many turns would you give each half? I would imagine if you wound them just like a regular single with 8500-9500 turns and wired it in series it would be a very hot and dark pickup. Any opinions?

 

[Ironfingers]

You may be better served by asking this in the pickup forum...

 

[WorktheWood]

Thought about it but it seems people are just asking about brands of pickups and I only saw one pickup maker involved in that forum and didn't want to ask him. I was hoping some builders would respond.

 

[mapleglo]

I have only just started winding my own pickups, but I have done a little research on the issue. The number of windings are only one part of the whole. The shape, type and strength of the magnets, the gauge of the magnet wire, and even the pickup cover all influence the final product.

That said, many pickups will measure out to between 5k and 12k ohms per pickup, and 8500 - 9500 winds, depending on the wire gauge, will be up there in DC resistance. So for each half of a dual coil, you'd want to do fewer windings, at least according to my research. I've only done a single coil type, so I'm guessing with regard to the dual coil.

 

[xaxxat]

Good tool for estimating the number of winds:

Invalid Link Removed

 

[khutch]

If everything else is the same and you want to have the same output level as an 8k turn single coil pickup then each half of the split pickup should have 8k turns. The output of a pickup coil is N*dB/dt where N is the number of turns and dB/dt is the time rate of change of the magnetic field coupled through the coil. If the geometry of the split coil is the same as the single coil as far as the coupling of the magnetic field from each individual string is concerned then dB/dt is the same in both cases, therefore the number of turns should be too.