Silver Wire Pickups

[Veenture]

While I agree there's a noticeable difference between the pickups, I don't think silver, cryogenic wire is the only way to get a louder, more present tone - probably the cheapest being to change the volume and tone settings on your amp.

My budget book loves you, Mel!

[mrmomo]

I agree, guys.
I think my vol and tone controls will wear out long before I have silver wire pickups.
Maybe titanium?

[oipunkguy]

well I'm sold on them, except I cant afford the price lol. but if I have 500 bucks to burn on a pickup, i'd get them in a heartbeat. of course it still leaves me to the original question. where do i find silver wire????????????????????????

[Brinkman]

Aaron-

The thing to keep in mind before you let the silver bug bite you is that the conductivity (or rather, inverse resistivity) of silver is only 6% better than that of copper. Here's the math:

Resistivity copper = 16.78 nanOhms/meter
Resistivity silver = 15.87 nanOhms/meter

16.78/15.87= 1.05734089 (or 6% difference resistivity)

This is the equivalent of constructing two pickups, one consisting of 100 turns of copper wire and another with 94 turns of copper wire and then to be expected to pronounce a difference in performance between the two. This is regardless of the fact that a 6% tolerance is a better than average engineering parameter. Put simply, practical engineering tolerance would dictate that more sloppily-wound silver pickups would be electrically indistinguishable from more efficiently-wound copper pickups (diamagnetism aside). Yet the cost of silver wire far exceeds that of copper, and by a much larger margin than that of six cents on the dollar. Talk about diminishing returns.

Beyond all this talk is many others, one of which is the issue of enamel. This is the stuff that insulates the magnet wire (the stuff we wind pickups with) from adjacent turns of magnet wire on the same bobbin. This insulating material can be one of many materials of varying insulating (aka dielectric) strength. The most common are of varying types of polymer insulation, from Formvar to polymide. But much better than all those is the more modern Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene aka PTFE). Electroactive polymers vary on the range of 2 to 12, and Teflon, being the best among them, is at 2 (lower being better). It should be no surprise is is also the most expensive and perhaps even more esoteric than silver.

Since the frequency response of a pickup is more or less dictated by the strength and positioning of the magnets used, the strength of the inductor (as dictated by the dimensions of the bobbin, gauge of the wire and number of turns) as well as the thickness and material used to insulate the wire (which predicates the degree of parasitic capacitance) it should be no surprise that two wildly different pickup "recipes" result in two distinctly different sounding pickups. With an understanding of how resistance, inductance and capacitance all conspire to shape a pickup's frequency response, it might be more intuitive to also try magnets of differing form (such as the horseshoe magnets of old Rickenbackers) or of a stronger magnetism, such as neodymium.

In other words, there's better ways to waste your money than on silver wire.

[Veenture]

Excellent rundown, mr. Brinkman...think I'll stick to copper myself

[juan_10]

Seems to me , even if it's copper , dropping the thing into liquid Nitrogen and cryogenically freezing it will make the pickup sound better once it thaws out .
I suppose it comes in a Thermos flask from the liquid nitrogen shop.

[Brinkman]

I would like to apologize to anyone who reads my former post as being a lecture. In the recent past I was rather curious about silver as an inductor material and teflon as a high-dielectric enamel and wanted to share the impression I gathered. I even went so far as to get a price quote from somebody who could supply teflon-enameled copper wire. Here's the quote:

What would be the price for the following?:
#42 AWG teflon-enameled solid copper magnet wire: single & heavy enamel
#43 AWG teflon-enameled solid copper magnet wire: single & heavy enamel

Awg 42 single $200.00 set up plus $750.00 per pound
Awg 42 heavy $200.00 set up plus $788.00 per pound
Awg 43 single $200.00 set up plus $788.00 per pound
Awg 43 heavy $200.00 set up plus $828.00 per pound

Delivery 6 weeks

With the sort of money I make, I wasn't even curious what the cost of teflon enameled silver wire would run me.

My last post was a little long and somewhat incoherent because it was getting late (for me), but I meant to stress that a lot of different factors conspire to create the "sound" of a pickup, which is really just a simple electromagnetic transducer. The induction and capacitance form a tuned circuit of sorts, with a resonant peak in the low kHz (audible) region followed by a roll-off of a certain slope (or "sharpness"). Change the recipe and you change this transfer function, or "frequency response" as I clumsily worded it last night. Decreasing the amount of capacitance or inductance raises the frequency at which this peak occurs; decreasing the resistance of this tuned circuit raises it's "Q" (makes the peak "sharper"). The only given in pickup winding is this: the more the number of turns, the higher the inductance, capacitance and resistance.

There's also a few winding tricks that could be explored, such as bifilar windings, but I've already rambled on too much. So I should just shut it.

[MWaldorf]

but I've already rambled on too much. So I should just shut it.

Far from it. I found your explanation both clear and fascinating. If you've got more advice, share away!

[JimPage]

Brinkman, Mel and the others probably understood a lot more of what you posted than I did, but it was fascinating to read. Part of the attraction of this forum is the wide range of experience, knowledge, musical styles, and even geographic locales of the participants.

It's really a very cool place and I learn so much from it!!!

--Jim

[oipunkguy]

Brinkman wow. thanks for the good advice, and I agree with the others add more to the conversation. question for ya. after Teflon, what is the next best coated wire to buy? and maybe this is a stupid question, but what's the difference between enameled wire, and plain enameled wire? plain enamel meaning the brownish colored wire that is what people look for on vintage PAF pickups.