Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

So what is the difference between scatter wound and non-scatter wound pickups? what does the scatter do or not do compared to "convential' pickups?

This might help explain scatter, or not!

Or, it could be the way the pickups are wound so that the wire in the bobbin is not layered evenly to give the effect of hand winding. This makes the toaster sound more vintage-like.

Thanks Jeff (I think), will need to get a beer and tech dictionary to sit down and read the web site.... hahahahhaha

I have seen references to 'Fender pickups scatter wound to 50's patterns' implying that there was a pattern of some sort so it was not a totally random winding... so what would be the vintage sound? I just pop a Toaster into the neck position on my 4001 (sounds really good!) - got it from Mike Parks and his description said it was scatter wound. I had seen the scatter wound before and never paid much attention to it. Then my son asked me what that meant and I realized I didn't have an answer.

So is this the kind of thing like between a Horseshoe and and a Highgain? hard to describe but really really cool???

I have not done a side by side comparison, perhaps some one else here has to give a more precise description of the tone. I put a scatterwound toaster in my 4001V63, which opened up the sound more to my liking, but the original toaster in it was of the 12KΩ variety so it really can not be compared.

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

For a given DCR (length of wire in the coil--say 7.4k of 44ga), a fixed bobbin size, and the same pole-pieces, there are only a couple of things that change between scatter wound and packed winding. First is the capacitance of the coil which is lower for scatter wound. But there is also a slight reduction in inductance because scatter winding uses slightly more wire per turn around the bobbin than packed winding. Inductance is a function of the AL of the core (pole pieces) and the number of turns. Higher inductance means more bass response (but we only care about 60+Hz on guitar and 40+Hz on bass, so there's a practical upper limit). As the above article shows--the primary effect of all of these parameters is on the shape and position of the resonant peak of the pickup.

I've got a Tele wired with a 5-way switch. One of the switch positions is simply the bridge pickup with a 1M resistor paralleled with a 1.6nF (that's nanofarad = 0.0016uF). This lowers the resonant peak which also cuts a little more high end--the result is a distinctly different sound than the normal bridge only position which is the classic Tele twang.

analogpackrat wrote:I've got a Tele wired with a 5-way switch. One of the switch positions is simply the bridge pickup with a 1M resistor paralleled with a 1.6nF (that's nanofarad = 0.0016uF). This lowers the resonant peak which also cuts a little more high end--the result is a distinctly different sound than the normal bridge only position which is the classic Tele twang.

Does this make it more Strat-like?

12K toasters have more mids, and they're a hotter pickup than a Scatterwound.

Scatterwound is an overused descriptive, it's not like the old ball-of-twine your grandma used to keep in her sewing bag

Most pickups that are wound at any decent RPM are scatterwound by default, the wire won't lay down straight at 600-RPM and over.

Scatterwound can be much better described as lower TPL or "turns-per-layer". Each winder tweaks the TPL recipie to achieve the best character for the given pickup.

jps wrote:Does this make it more Strat-like?

Not at all. It gets more in the neighborhood of a slightly dark P-90 or hi-gain without the hot signal. I hate describing sounds with words... BTW, the pickup in question is a Duncan STL-1b.

paologregorio wrote:12K toasters have more mids, and they're a hotter pickup than a Scatterwound.

Yes, but that is simply because the natural resonant frequency of the pickup shifts (relative to the normal 7.4k pups--scatterwound or not) due to increased capacitance, inductance, and DCR.

Wow thanks everyone - once again great help in understanding something here in the forum. I now think I understand the scatter wound pickup. I really appreciate the education! You all are great!