Sidewinders, Multi-coils and other hard to find pickups

[BTL]

Fralin offers a Split Jazz, and I'm not sure that there would be any advantage to four coils vs. two:

Split Jazz Bass Pickups by Lindy Fralin: Noiseless Jazz Bass Pickups

 

[sunbeast]

Here's pics and clip as promised.

View attachment 2384255

View attachment 2384256

Soundclip at

Maihinnousu - Lataa - MPU - 4 coil A5 J-pickups

First neck, then both parallel, both series and last is bridge.

Anyone winding a 4 string multi-coil in a "J" format?

 

[A9X]

This was a great thread. I learned a lot, had some of my ideas confirmed and got a few more ideas to mull over. I hope some of the main participants are still around as I'm going to muse on it all and come back with some questions that I hope you guys will be kind enough to answer.
I have a recent thread asking about highest fidelity EMG45 pickups for a project.
Highest fidelity, highest detail EMG45 sized pickups. Suggestions please...
I might pony up the $ now for some QTuners then get to experimenting with winding my own. At least then I'll have a good reference.

One last question; how are the Wal pickups wound? Just basic format is what I'm looking for.

 

[BassikBrad]

Yes, this thread has suddenly died. I am very interested in the enormous potential for Multi Coils & I'm
surprised that bassists don't show more interest.
@big_teee was an interesting contributor who suddenly disappeared in 2015. Don't know why ?

Are there other MC winders in the US ? I know only of Sentell.

As for the basic format of Wal pickups, I only know that they have two separate coils per string.
Hopefully, there is someone out there who could enlighten us.

 

[Passinwind]

25017346[/URL], member: 324244"]Yes, this thread has suddenly died. I am very interested in the enormous potential for Multi Coils & I'm
surprised that bassists don't show more interest.
@big_teee was an interesting contributor who suddenly disappeared in 2015. Don't know why ?

Are there other MC winders in the US ? I know only of Sentell.

My friend and sometime associate Marco Cortes (Marco Bass Guitars) builds them occasionally, but none of his pickups are available separately from his basses. I have a set of his neo sidewinders in my fretless Marco, which he whipped up after trying the Q-Tuners in another fretless of mine.

 

[BassikBrad]

My friend and sometime associate Marco Cortes (Marco Bass Guitars) builds them occasionally, but none of his pickups are available separately from his basses. I have a set of his neo sidewinders in my fretless Marco, which he whipped up after trying the Q-Tuners in another fretless of mine.

Please excuse my ignorance, but what are Q-Tuners ?
Does he work on multi coils apart from sidewinders ?

 

[Passinwind]

25016680[/URL], member: 37658"]

One last question; how are the Wal pickups wound? Just basic format is what I'm looking for.

This is all I have:

 

[BassikBrad]

This is all I have:

View attachment 4185200

Is that an actual real Wal pickup ?

 

[Passinwind]

Please excuse my ignorance, but what are Q-Tuners ?
Does he work on multi coils apart from sidewinders ?

Q-Tuner is a Dutch pickup company famous for estremely hi-fi sidewinder builds with neo magnets, often potted transparently. And yep, Marco has done both Wal and Roland style independent coils per-string and a huge variety of other stuff I probably shouldn't elaborate on.

 

[Passinwind]

Is that an actual real Wal pickup ?

Reputedly, but I just lifted it from an old TB thread I can't find at the moment.

 

[sunbeast]

This was a great thread. I learned a lot, had some of my ideas confirmed and got a few more ideas to mull over. I hope some of the main participants are still around as I'm going to muse on it all and come back with some questions that I hope you guys will be kind enough to answer.
I have a recent thread asking about highest fidelity EMG45 pickups for a project.
Highest fidelity, highest detail EMG45 sized pickups. Suggestions please...
I might pony up the $ now for some QTuners then get to experimenting with winding my own. At least then I'll have a good reference.

One last question; how are the Wal pickups wound? Just basic format is what I'm looking for.

I know I have read that Wal pickups are wired differently depending on the bass.
The active basses as I understand it have the two coils per string RWRP and run in series, and the preamp has inputs for each of the 4/5 series-connected string pairs to run parallel with each other via a buffered mixer section (if I remember correctly).
The passive Wals have the coils wired more like a typical humbucker for more output- I think the 4/5 coils from each side are run in series with each-other and wired in parallel with the other series-wound side, and the coils of the two sides are again RWRP with each other (also what I think I remember reading, but could be wrong).

 

[Freekmagnet]

@big_teee was an interesting contributor who suddenly disappeared in 2015. Don't know why ?

You can find big_teee over at the pickup makers forum.

Pickup Makers - Music Electronics Forum

He's a moderator there and really active in that forum. He only came over to Talkbass every so often.

I am very interested in the enormous potential for Multi Coils & I'm
surprised that bassists don't show more interest.

Most guys just want a plain old P or a Jazz pickup. Multi-coils are interesting, but they are more difficult and more expensive to make. Functionally, multi-coils are not any better or worse than a well-designed single coil pickup - they're just a different design. Unless a guy just wants to have that particular sound, it just doesn't make sense to spend the extra money.

Yes, this thread has suddenly died.

Most of the guys on TB who are making pickups hang out over here now:

Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread

Are there other MC winders in the US ?

@MPU makes multi coils, but I think he's in the EU. I think @slowburnaz has made them as well, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[BassikBrad]

You can find big_teee over at the pickup makers forum.

Pickup Makers - Music Electronics Forum

He's a moderator there and really active in that forum. He only came over to Talkbass every so often.




Most guys just want a plain old P or a Jazz pickup. Multi-coils are interesting, but they are more difficult and more expensive to make. Functionally, multi-coils are not any better or worse than a well-designed single coil pickup - they're just a different design. Unless a guy just wants to have that particular sound, it just doesn't make sense to spend the extra money.



Most of the guys on TB who are making pickups hang out over here now:

Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread




@MPU makes multi coils, but I think he's in the EU. I think @slowburnaz has made them as well, but I'm not 100% sure.

Thanks for all that info you provided, I have started wading thru' the, Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread.

Your comment about MC sound is interesting. I have listened to some demos & I'm not that impressed, except for the Wal ones, but I wonder how much of that is created with the Wal pre amp filter. None the less, I still think the
potential is there.

 

[Freekmagnet]

Thanks for all that info you provided, I have started wading thru' the, Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread.

Your comment about MC sound is interesting. I have listened to some demos & I'm not that impressed, except for the Wal ones, but I wonder how much of that is created with the Wal pre amp filter. None the less, I still think the
potential is there.

Yeah I think there's a lot of elements that go into the Wal design. The pickup, the preamp, the way it's constructed - there's a lot that goes into it.

A guy in the Luthier's Corner built a Wal clone a while back. I don't remember exactly how it went down.

BTW, I neglected to mention @Bruce Johnson as far as guys making multi-coils in the US. Reason being he only offers them in his basses, but if you're just looking for more info, he definitely knows about them.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Yes, I've developed some multi-coil pickups. I made them for the forward pickup of my Series IV model Scroll Basses (2006-2018). I showed the design and construction of them in the Magnets & Copper Wire thread. I don't currently make them, but I am working on a new version of the same basic design for an upcoming new model Scroll Bass.

For my multi-coils, I went a different direction than most of the other guys. My reason for going multi-coil is to fit the pickup to match a very round 4" radius fingerboard. I needed the pickups to correctly reach the arc of the strings. I also wanted the pickup to be powerful enough to operate passive; no preamp on board. And I wanted it to be Hi-Fi design, high clarity and flat EQ.

I made the coils long ovals, aligned along the strings. Three 1/4" dia x 3/4" long A5 rod magnets per coil, and tall narrow coils with a good formula of turns, inductance and resistance. A side benefit was the very long sensing aperture along the length of the string. The set of four are full humbucking; they alternate in magnet polarity and connection of the coils. They are all wired together in series.

How do they sound? Very good, just what I wanted for this application. But, I could have made a 2-coil pickup with almost exactly the same sound, or better. And I have. My current AMB-2 model uses a 2-coil pickup that has more power, clarity and definition than the 4-coil. Here, I needed the 4 coils specifically to better fit the 4" fingerboard radius.

The point is, putting a separate coil under each string doesn't, by itself, cause some magical improvement in the sound. A multi-coil pickup is more expensive and complicated to build, and the crowded space limits what you can do with the design of the magnets and coil geometry.

Wal developed their pickup with eight little separate coils because they wanted to feed isolated string signals into a complex filter network. And they have to use the filters and a powerful preamp to get a good sound out of it. The Wal sound doesn't come from just having eight little coils.

 

[BassikBrad]

Yes, I've developed some multi-coil pickups. I made them for the forward pickup of my Series IV model Scroll Basses (2006-2018). I showed the design and construction of them in the Magnets & Copper Wire thread. I don't currently make them, but I am working on a new version of the same basic design for an upcoming new model Scroll Bass.

For my multi-coils, I went a different direction than most of the other guys. My reason for going multi-coil is to fit the pickup to match a very round 4" radius fingerboard. I needed the pickups to correctly reach the arc of the strings. I also wanted the pickup to be powerful enough to operate passive; no preamp on board. And I wanted it to be Hi-Fi design, high clarity and flat EQ.

I made the coils long ovals, aligned along the strings. Three 1/4" dia x 3/4" long A5 rod magnets per coil, and tall narrow coils with a good formula of turns, inductance and resistance. A side benefit was the very long sensing aperture along the length of the string. The set of four are full humbucking; they alternate in magnet polarity and connection of the coils. They are all wired together in series.

View attachment 4185969

How do they sound? Very good, just what I wanted for this application. But, I could have made a 2-coil pickup with almost exactly the same sound, or better. And I have. My current AMB-2 model uses a 2-coil pickup that has more power, clarity and definition than the 4-coil. Here, I needed the 4 coils specifically to better fit the 4" fingerboard radius.

The point is, putting a separate coil under each string doesn't, by itself, cause some magical improvement in the sound. A multi-coil pickup is more expensive and complicated to build, and the crowded space limits what you can do with the design of the magnets and coil geometry.

Wal developed their pickup with eight little separate coils because they wanted to feed isolated string signals into a complex filter network. And they have to use the filters and a powerful preamp to get a good sound out of it. The Wal sound doesn't come from just having eight little coils.

Thank you, this one posting has clarified my thinking about multi coils, particularly the last paragraph.

As I prefer, up to know, passive systems, you have confirmed what I suspected would be required to get the best
out of the simpler multi coils. I can see that much time, effort, ingenuity & focused application is required to advance the development of the concept & time is always a limiting factor ! Again thank you.

 

[slowburnaz]

I don't know that I completely agree with Bruce that you *have* to have filters to achieve a good sound.... I think I've been able to achieve a good sound using 8 coils and wiring 4 under-string pairs (2 coils in series), with those 4 pairs in parallel with each other.

This sample is using that sort of configuration, a single multi-coil pickup in a Sterling By Musicman 4 string:

I've got it hooked up to an EMG BTC-HZ preamp in that clip. I think it sounds pretty good.

As for going completely passive with something like this... I'm not so sure, and I've yet to try it. The DC resistance for a pickup like this measures right around 1K Ohm.


But, what Freekmagent says is certainly true: they take much longer to wind, and are more expensive to make. Is it worth it? Depends on what you're looking for, I guess.

 

[dwizum]

@slowburnaz have you tried that pickup in any other configuration - maybe all 8 in series? Or something else that would get the DCR higher? I think it sounds really great as you have it now - really punchy and bright, I guess like you'd expect for parallel coils. I wonder if you could do a series option with a switch to get a darker option? Maybe even set up a bass to run wired like you have it through a preamp, and a switch that kicks it into series and passive?

 

[slowburnaz]

@slowburnaz have you tried that pickup in any other configuration - maybe all 8 in series? Or something else that would get the DCR higher? I think it sounds really great as you have it now - really punchy and bright, I guess like you'd expect for parallel coils. I wonder if you could do a series option with a switch to get a darker option? Maybe even set up a bass to run wired like you have it through a preamp, and a switch that kicks it into series and passive?

Not this pickup exactly, but I have tried the same coils wired like a standard pickup with each row of 4 coils in series, wired in parallel with each other (around 4k), and with all in series (around 16k). Parallel was nice, but I thought all in series was probably a little too dark for my tastes.

 

[BassikBrad]

I don't know that I completely agree with Bruce that you *have* to have filters to achieve a good sound.... I think I've been able to achieve a good sound using 8 coils and wiring 4 under-string pairs (2 coils in series), with those 4 pairs in parallel with each other.

View attachment 4186281
View attachment 4186283
View attachment 4186282

This sample is using that sort of configuration, a single multi-coil pickup in a Sterling By Musicman 4 string:

I've got it hooked up to an EMG BTC-HZ preamp in that clip. I think it sounds pretty good.

As for going completely passive with something like this... I'm not so sure, and I've yet to try it. The DC resistance for a pickup like this measures right around 1K Ohm.


But, what Freekmagent says is certainly true: they take much longer to wind, and are more expensive to make. Is it worth it? Depends on what you're looking for, I guess.

That looks & sounds good. Is this made by you ?