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Hand Wound Pickups and Loaded Pickguards
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
General
Setting up FAQs
The term "handwound" is a common term in pickup building, but can be a little misleading. Pickups are made by wrapping thousands of winds of thin copper wire around a magnet or magnets. This is typically accomplished with a pickup winding machine, which is a small motor that spins a bobbin while the wire wraps around it. Given the extreme lengths of wire needed, it would take a ridiculous amount of time to actually wind a pickup by hand.
The term "handwound" has to do with the scatter of the winds, or how evenly and consistent the wires are laid next to each other as they move back and forth across the bobbin. Machine wound pickups lay the wire very consistently, in both spacing and tension, as the bobbin rotates. Hand wound pickups are a bit more random and imperfect, due to it being guided by a person's hand holding the wire as it feeds to the bobbin. These imperfections actually result in a finished sound that many players prefer, with lower capacitance and more tonal character. That's not to say that machine wound pickups are inferior, they are just different and it all comes down to a player's preference.
"Hand-scattered" may have been a more accurate term, but just like how a guitar's "tremolo" arm actually controls its vibrato, these names become accepted over time when used often enough.
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It is a reference to my home town of Milwaukee, WI.
"Actually, it's pronounced 'mil-e-wah-que', which is Algonquin for 'the good land'."
-Alice Cooper in Wayne's World
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