I've been having a blast making single coil pickups, but I'd quite like to have a go at making a humbucker.
As I understand it, a humbucker is effectively 2 single coils as one, and as the magnetic orientation is opposite on each one, it cancels the hum. Here's what I was going to try:
- Make 2 bobbins exactly the same, for alnico 5 magnets as I normally use
- Have the magnetic poles facing the opposite direction in each one
- Wind one of the coils clockwise and the other anticlockwise
- Have fewer winds on each coil than on a single coil. I was going to try for 5000 on each rather than 8000 as I usually do for a single coil
...and this is where I start to get confused. I'm not sure how to wire them up etc.
Does anyone have any experience of doing it this way? I'd love to hear about it if you do.
Cheers!
Rick
Replies
So as we can see, there is almost too many ways to do it. We must be careful to only reverse the phase on the coils once. Or at least an odd number of times heh. Run the winding machine backwards (not really practical, at least for me) or solder it backwards. Or turn it over when fitting it into the winder. Or turn it over after it's wound. Or step through the looking glass with one of em.
I wind using a hand cranked drill so reversing direction is easy... only it seems much simpler to just swap the termination poles.
"Wind the coils in the same direction" has absolutely nothing to do with current flow, it is for an efficient coil construction process only.
Current flow direction is determined by wiring connections.
That's it!
Diagram of combination 2 on the guitar wiring site will be the one you want to follow.
Windings are the same, magnets are opposite, one hot is wired to the other coil ground, remaining wire connections to the guitar (vol pot, tone, grounding) are the same as for a single coil.
I.e. I can start them both at the left hand termination pole, wind in the same direction and just make one with the left as ground and the right as hot and the reverse with the other, as long as the magnets are facing the opposite direction?
and I would then solder the 2 ends of the coils (one being hot and one being ground) together and the remaining ones would be your leads to go to the pots etc?
Apologies for my lack of understanding - this is all quite new but its beginning to make more sense!
Cheers.
I've made a little diagram:
Your pic is exactly right, i.e. thats how Gibson ones work.
The coils DO need to be in reverse direction to each other as well as the magnets being flipped.
A little basic understanding would help. Any noise generated by coil A should be generated pretty much exactly in reverse in coil B, Because they are reverse phase from each other, so this is essential for the whole thing to work. Now the current that we actually do want, that created from strings moving should be pretty much cancelled out too right? Thats where the flipping of the magnets comes in. By re-reversing the magnetic activity that comes from the strings, (but not that from nearby step down transformers, mobile phones etc etc) that part of the signal is attenuated rather than cancelled when the signal from the coils is combined.
NB you don't actually have to run your electric winder in reverse to do it, you can just solder up the other way, i.e. I usually use the inside (start) of my coil as ground and the outside (end) of it as hot, you can just reverse this. Or you can just mount the bobbin backwards in the winder, facing left for one and facing the other way for the other..
When you understand this you can see how you can make a single coil pup noiseless simply by getting a second unit, ripping the magnet off, stuffing it inside the guitar somewhere (not necessarily anywhere near the strings), wiring it backwards and combining it with the first. This is known as a 'dummy coil' and this idea was around long before humbuckers.. in amplification and electronics radio etc etc for noise cancellation. What Seth Lover and Gibson did was realise the thing about flipping the magnet as well as the phase.. (you might have heard of people 'single-fying' their buckers by taking out the screws on one side? thus making that coil a 'dummy')
cheers PK, i'd read about this elsewhere on here a while back but didn't grasp it at the time...slow learner..;)
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