Groovy new toy errr tool..

When I first saw this toy on the Stewmac site, I thought what a great idea... Bloody expensive when you factor in the Aussie dollar which put me off buying it straight away...
Anyhoo, after a lot of thought and Miss Fe crunching the numbers it was decided to jump in and buy one.

So I present to you the nut and saddle dressing tool.

Basically, this is an adjustable vice on wheels.

How does it work?
OK, in the first pic you will see the two height adjuster screws. The inside pair are for nuts and the outer for saddles.
The notches on the head are exactly 1/4mm apart... Thats some fine tuning!
And the two on the side are to tighten the vice jaws. Fantastic!

First, you adjust the height screws to leave the desired amount of bone to be milled off.
Second, on a known dead flat surface you place a piece of adhesive sandpaper and run the tool back and forwards until the wheels make contact.
And now we have a perfectly square bottom on our blank.

It would normally take me about an hour to do 10 blanks by hand, and even with a fence it can be a pain to get that bottom dead square.
15 minutes including tool setup and I had milled 20 blanks!

Do I love it? Yes. This is one of the best tools I have bought in ages and for anyone who cuts as many nuts as I do, this is a must have!

wow what an awseome tool DB, will have to check it out next man cave visit

Great piece of kit, was looking at one but i was gun shy, dont do enough nuts.

I am going to out source the nuts i get orders for anyway, i think i have 3 teles at the moment a special order Teisco and this 12 string i have here, can sling you and order if you like?, i just havent got the time seeing as i am branching back exclusively into pickups and wiring, just about to spend half a lifes earnings on a second winder. Havent got time to do pickguards either, but i dont do alot, i buy them in usually but i get the occasional can i route it different job. Stick to a bit of tech work, setups etc and electronics.

No worries Tony, flick me an email with dimensions etc and it can be done.

On a different note, what pup winder have you lashed out on? I have been eyeing off the new Mojo winder on the SM page, but I very rarely wind pups and I think that, no, I know that the Minister for War and Finance would flense me alive and possibly roast my boy bitz over a slow fire if I bought one :p

Mojo winder is nice, has a gauss tester on the top, machine a little slow, i bought a Thomas winder a couple of years ago now, after my old homemade winder kicked the tin , bought a gauss meter and had a months beer on the change, thats a lot of change, i have an account there at Mojo but cant get a discount lol.

I will still scatter wind on the Thomas and also have a more Automated CNC machine, i can scatter wind or go Automatic, people want scatter winds so i will still do them. I will be able to do any pickup people might suggest as i will now have software to design it
to exact specs, and i can leave it run by itself as i turn another set on my old winder, or make up wiring looms Time to step up to the plate mate woof lol.

Tony what is the advantage of scatter wound pickups ? I assume you mean the windings don't go on parallel/in line on the bobbins?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Tony what is the advantage of scatter wound pickups ? I assume you mean the windings don't go on parallel/in line on the bobbins?

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Hey Wok where i was taught its just a load of old pfft

Scatterwound is really just another sales pitch, you are random winding multi layers of wire as apposed to the exact same number of winds per pass on the cross section of the bobbin that a machine does. What matters is the count of turns per square and the relation between the length and cross-section of a coil.

People think scatter wound has some sort of mojo to it, the coils can be a bit more random and inconsistent and theres no way your going to sit there and wind 20 coils a day by hand, thats where the automated machine comes in, consistency.

A couple of points straight from my notes: Electricity doesn't distinguish between layered and random wound coils, what matters is the count of turns per square and the relation between the length and cross-section of a coil.

A well wound coil is a well wound coil regardless if it's wound with professional equipment, or a sowing machine.

Some people like the inconsistency of scatter wound coils, some dont.

ok thanks for the explanation Tony. Winding my own pickups is something I want to do in the future build a winding machine

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

ok thanks for the explanation Tony. Winding my own pickups is something I want to do in the future build a winding machine

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Buy plenty of wire when you start Wok, my mates 1st crack at it was 200 turns before he broke it, he got progressively more turns until he worked his tension and traverse properly, he winds a set of strats in about an hour these days. Nothing worse than 6000 turns in and ping, or you notice your outside the bobbin, then its time to go to Bunnings to buy beer haha

cheers for the tips Tony, when the time comes to build a machine and if you are still on the forum I might ask for some more tips and maybe a plan to build one if you have it thanks

I had a feeling the whole scatter wound thing was a load of drivel..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Tony what is the advantage of scatter wound pickups ? I assume you mean the windings don't go on parallel/in line on the bobbins?

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From my understanding, the advantage of scatter-winding in pickups is that you don't end up introducing something called Stray-Capacitance between the windings which would have a detrimental affect on tone, a pickup can be thought of as a large number of turns of wire around a metal core, in Electronics this is called an Inductor, I won't go too heavily into the theory of it since there's some complex mathematics involved, anyway, if the pickup was wound so that all the windings were neat and orderly, each winding would have a very small capacitance in parallel with it forming what's called a "Tank Circuit", this would resonate at a very high frequency, frequency resonances would show up as sharp peaks in the response of the pickup and in some cases the pickup would actually feed-back at these frequency resonances, so, to combat this pickup makers started winding their pickups with scatter-windings all jumbled up.


Remember that a pickup doesn't put-out much current when it's outputting a signal, it's more of a voltage signal, in Electronics, a circuit such as the typical pickup circuit in an electric guitar, that puts out a low-current voltage-signal is what's called a High-Impedance circuit, and stray capacitance effects are more pronounced in High Impedance circuits.

Sorry Doc erm no, no one started scatter winding for a reason, other than expense, Gibson were using machines and Fender were using hand winders. In 1956 Fender employed Abigail Ybarra or Abby shes still winding today (suppose to be retired) and what a sweetheart, she is and personally hired by Leo. Her hand winds are worth a fortune. In 65 Fender moved to machine winding, and they dropped their winds from and average of 8000+ to about 7650 they switched from Formvar to Plain Enamel.

Even the most advanced coil winders need modification to wind elongated pickup bobbins. Oblong bobbins pull different lengths of wire during the phases of each rotation. This requires synchronized changes in tension during each rotation to avoid pressure points at the narrow ends of the bobbin. These pressure points can cause shorts in the coil which create eddy currents.

These Eddy currents or shorts are the only thing relevant in a pickup, besides good winding, its why i dip my bobbins in Poly U so the wire can never short on the poles.

Abby is still winding pups?
Gee, dear lady must be pushing 90! What a legend she is :)

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Originally Posted by dingobass

Abby is still winding pups?
Gee, dear lady must be pushing 90! What a legend she is :)

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Apparently she sneaks into Custom Shop, cant stay away

https://youtu.be/8M2a1yUmvEQ

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tonyw

Sorry Doc erm no, no one started scatter winding for a reason, other than expense, Gibson were using machines and Fender were using hand winders. In 1956 Fender employed Abigail Ybarra or Abby shes still winding today (suppose to be retired) and what a sweetheart, she is and personally hired by Leo. Her hand winds are worth a fortune. In 65 Fender moved to machine winding, and they dropped their winds from and average of 8000+ to about 7650 they switched from Formvar to Plain Enamel.

Even the most advanced coil winders need modification to wind elongated pickup bobbins. Oblong bobbins pull different lengths of wire during the phases of each rotation. This requires synchronized changes in tension during each rotation to avoid pressure points at the narrow ends of the bobbin. These pressure points can cause shorts in the coil which create eddy currents.

These Eddy currents or shorts are the only thing relevant in a pickup, besides good winding, its why i dip my bobbins in Poly U so the wire can never short on the poles.

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Oh I see, That's something I didn't know.


I was coming at it from an electronics background point of view.

^ And this is why I love this forum.
Folk sharing their knowledge freely and in the spirit of friendship.

And whilst we are on the subject of hand made gear, here is a vid of the Fender factory...
Back when they built by hand...
http://youtu.be/nswcAPvH0P8

Makes you wonder how these guys spraying nitro etc with no shirt or face mask got on in later life, no one cared back then of the consequences.

I was thinking the same thing..
Different time and place, I guess they still had yet to find out why spray painters were dying younger than the average age..
Just think about it, car manufacturers, furniture makers, electrical goods etc were all spraying with nitro back then.. Scary stuff!

Thanks for sharing this video DB, interesting viewing and yes the OHS was a bit slack back then!

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