MIMF

I'm just winding my first pickups.....

Built a winding "lathe" and have no problems with that other than it could spin faster although that's easy to fix....The problem I have is with the wire feed, I understand that it's not possible to roll the wire off the spool as it's too heavy so the common way seems to be to feed it off the end of the spool, whilst doing this I occasionally feel lumps travel between my guiding/tensioning fingers initially I thought this was lumps in the insulation but I'm kinda now thinking that it's twists/tiny loops in the wire caused by how the wire comes off the spool... It doesn't effect the performance of the pickup (which I'm very pleased with) it's just disconcerting when winding the pickup and I'm not sure what consequences it has regarding the performance of the pickup.

I guess I'm asking if other people get the same thing and what the best way is to avoid it?

Thank you
Chris

Turn the spool over so it is standing on the other end and your twisting should cease.

Chris, this is a first for me but I suspect you are winding off a small spool that was re-spooled from a larger one. Barry's suggestion is brilliant and I hope it works for you. And congratulations by the way on your first pickup! Once you are committed you can buy 5" or 6" spools which won't suffer this problem.

Well here's the pickup winder, mainly built out of an old video recorder, I did use the tape position counter geared down as it only counted up to 100, but have replaced it with a 9,999 counter which is much better...It's a little slow as it takes about 15 minutes to put on 6000 winds but I can add a larger pulley to the motor.

So far I've built 6 pickups with varying winding counts and all seem to work really well so I'm pretty chuffed at the moment!

Thanks for the advice regarding wire spools, I'll try up-ending the smaller spools I have, then when they run out I'll buy a big spool..

Thank you
Chris

There is something magical about winding your own and hearing them for the first time.