Behold! The Handwound Pickups!

The thing with musicians (or rather a niche group called tone snobs, myself included...) is that, we love details. We love the very little details of pickups, hardware, wood and that drives people mad. But for us, it's a pleasure seeking the right tone. We strive hard to get everything "right". And that's why handwound pickups matter a lot to us.

Now to get this straight, handwound pickups are not to be confused with hand-fed machine wound. Those are a different story. Handwound pickups are done, as it's name suggests, by hand. The coil wires are wound on the coils by hand. This is why handwound pickups are special. The tension of every coil wound around the bobbin is pulled at inconsistent tension, as well as the scattered positioning of the coils. Machine wound pickups are consistent in tension as well as having a very orderly winding pattern of the coils. 

Okay let's face it, they're both the same materials and same method used, simply copper coil windings on a fibre bobbin. So how is it possible that there's a difference tonally? It's due to the coils having inconsistent tension as well as the scattered winding pattern that causes a really cool electrical phenomena (read "Mojo" y'all tone snobs!) to occur. The increased space or distance between the windings lowers the distributed capacitance, as in Seymour Duncan's words.

"When you scatter wind a pickup, you’re not placing the wire as close to itself on each layer as you would with a machine. The effect is to create more air space in the coil. This lowers the distributed capacitance. The best way to think of distributed capacitance is like a little tone control in the pickup. When the capacitance is lowered, the result is that more treble will come through and the resonant peak of the pickup will increase slightly. "

 - Seymour Duncan

My first experience with handwound pickups are with Alexander Pribora pickups. The funny thing with most run-of-the-mill Fender pickups is that, they're really good pickups. They do the job covering single coil grounds, and the quality is consistent. But once you hear how the handwound pickups sound, you'd immediately notice the flaws in standard pickups.

Here's what I heard after comparing the handwound pickups 2 times with Fender pickups, one is a Tele, the other one is a Strat. The guitars were played clean only, paired with a flat-EQ-ed Fender Princeton amp, which has amazing warm cleans by the way. Pickups were set the same height, which is the bass side approximately 1mm above the pickguard, and the treble side set to 2mm.

1. I was playing with the neck pickups first. The mids and treble on the handwound pickups were so "relaxed", but not "slacking off". Very smooth and sweet. Upon going back to the Fender pickups (namely, the CS Fat 50s in the Strat and American Standard Tele), I was greeted with nothing but harshness. The harshness could be attributed to single coils, I understand. But the Fender pickups weren't even loud. They're just harsh. 
2. The expression range. The handwound pickups handle that very well, taking hard strums easily without going into the middy braaannnggg, while every light pick makes the most musical notes, so crisp and clear, yet solid. The Fender pickups were compressing every strum, even light strums, into just braaannnggg. Picking was fine, I understand why most people like that glassiness. SRV and Hendrix were big advocates of that tone, but it was too much for me in a vintage Strat context. 
3. The all important inbetween positions. The American Standard Tele did an amazing job on the middle position. The handwound pickups in my friend's Tele was bigger on the bass notes, rounder on the treble, totally different character, both respectable. The Strat though, was a hit on me. The American Standard Strat with Fat 50s sounded plain awful. Too much clang, there's only treble and no body at all. I'll be honest, any ceramic single coil guitar with a 5 way switch can nail that tone. I tried turning down the tone knob, it helped a little, but it felt like the treble was just too prominent in any other settings. Turning down the tone knob made the tone fatten-up in the mids, but that's not what those positions were about. The handwound pickups, on the other hand, was pure bliss. That scooped, vocal-sounding Robert Cray sound was there, without any resetting on the amp. It was the guitar, my fingers on the strings, and that's it. Effortless job. I'm done here. 

I'll let the video do the talking....

Shoutout to Alexander Pribora Pickups for making amazing pickups!!

For any stage-performers, maybe the nuances and expression range doesn't matter so much. But do yourself a favour and give these pickups a try. You'll be surprised.... And thankful at the same time! Who doesn't like a great tone anyways?

This is Bernard, signing out for the night.