Full Review: Formvar vs. Plain Enamel vs. Poly Pickup Wire

[@HighlineGuitars]

I wound several poly humbuckers to the exact same specs. They all sounded different. When I switched to an auto traversing winder with more precise tension control, the tone became more controllable. I think if you were to perform this test with an automated or CNC winder, you could eliminate the variables of hand traversing and finger tensioning that can differ significantly from one coil to the next despite one's best efforts to keep everything the same. Also, the way you magnetize to slugs is critical. Even the slightes variation from one bobbin to the next will have consequences on the tone.

[@ResoBridge]

I agree. I have bought several sets of the same Fender pickups. The construction was nothing special - plastic bobbins, machine wound. I measured all the sets and there are quite large manufacturing variations in coil inductance and self capacitance between the sets. I find it very hard to believe that pickup winders who champion the practice of hand guiding the wire can produce consistent pickups. The pole magnet strengths also vary quite a bit, although one problem with measuring pole strength is that pickup magnets are relatively small and the field shape means that density changes very quickly depending on exactly where you try to measure it. You only need to shift the measuring probe by a thousandth of an inch to get a 10 or 20 % change in the measurement.

[@AlmostGrewMyHair]

Formvar sounded great everywhere.

[@guitarpickupdatabase]

You may want to consider getting a different LCR meter for testing Inductance - I've been made aware that it doesn't test at a low enough frequency to provide correct readings. I use the DER EE DE-5000 and measure at 100hz. Same thing for capacitance.

[@conwaygritty542]

Really good and informative video. One of the best pickup comparison vids I've seen, and done correctly.

[@fatboigeoffy938]

Thanks for this vert informative video. I like this "formvar' 42's..sweet bottom end. 🤘😊

[@johncruz9357]

Can we get different mags with different types of wire. Very well done!

[@thechannel8811]

Incredibly informative video, and the tonal difference in the audio came out very clear. Great content!

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks!

[@sowiloi]

I liked the formvar in the bridge and the Enamel in both neck and bridge. To me, PE has a little more midrange power ;) I started winding a few years ago and mostly stick to PE Wire because of a thinner insulation...

[@jasonhall3923]

Great video, like the down to earth approach when talking about tone, in my experience that is not the norm. To me the Formvar had more punch, plain enamel and poly sounded really close to each other and had a rounder balanced sound. On a side note like the increase in video frequency and the information or little details you to talk about like higher capacitance equals less clarity, and in the previous video Hum-Canceling Single Coil that 43 AWG sounds brighter than 44 AWG. Keep up the good work.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks Jason, it's my goal to release a video at least once a week now!

[@gbass7328]

Really good experiment. But, I hear that the Formvar is the most clear and dynamic. Hopefully that's not bc of some other factors. Agree with others that the magnet strength in this test should have been tested too.

[@jamesemerson4102]

Nice demonstration and very helpful. I have Formvar pickups in my strat and was happy to discover that I did also prefer them in this demo. The formvar's sound a bit fuller to me than the others, not as narrow. Although sometimes more narrow/aggressive is what people like! interesting stuff

[@davidf8749]

Really interesting. The difference, to me, was very subtle and I don't know how important this would be when playing in a mix or after EQ. One experiment I would like to see is the difference in sound between underwound/normal/overwound pickups. I would guess the underwound would be brighter and favour the neck position, whereas the overwound would be darker and favour the bridge position.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks David! I would say wire type is more about "feel" and how it reacts with the amp. Maybe I'll make an overwound/underwound video next!

[@bsr007]

Great craftsman type videos here - thanks! I think the Formvar was the best of the 3.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks, I agree!

[@Kris-P343]

I know it's hard to analyze listening via KZbin...my take away. Formvar was clear with a bit of a nasally tone, Plain enamel very clear although a bit thin sounding. Poly seemed a bit less dynamic and slightly flat.Thanks for doing this comparison!

[@bryantherocker]

LOL

[@t_sosh]

Question regarding the tape on the poles: Is that a vintage spec thing? For some reason it's stored in my (admittedly often-confused and potentially fallable) brain that the bobbins were lacquer coated before winding rather than taped. It's probably a barely there, imperceptible difference in coil geometry, but just more of a technical curiosity for me (on my quest towards omniscience).

[@johnbotsford6897]

Are noiseless tele pickups just stacked humbuckers?

[@vhfgamer]

I wonder if anyone has ever tried winding a pickup with two different types of wire in parallel. All you would have to do is run two strands at once and half the number of turns to fill the bobbin. I wonder what that would do to the sound.

[@Drunken_Hamster]

Try double-billed poly-nylon. Also middle position, but turn the mounting thing around so it's as far back in the middle cutout as possible.

[@Timewins.]

How many windings did you give them

[@edcolins5498]

Liked the formware for neck, and plain enamel for bridge position !

[@hangingchad_]

Yeah, enamel seems to smooth out the harshness of the bridge. Ron Ellis's best selling Strat pickups, the 50/60 set, uses formvar for neck and middle pickups and enamel for bridge, and I see why. But for me, formvar is best everywhere.

[@lordlucan529]

Great test, could really hear the difference, thanks. With the variations in inductance, some of that could be down to manufacturing variations in the slugs, and the positioning of them relative to the coil. It would be interesting to wind the coils on plastic bobbins, and use the same magnets.

[@creationinspired200]

Would you do another video but with wax potting?

[@davidclink2032]

Given amps, pedals, and chords used in pop music I doubt anyone but Mel Bay could tell the difference. I'm struggling with winding given the wire breaking. (Getting good at soldering hair) i insulate repairs with poly. Liked your comment re just enough tension to hold wire. Question: the small sleeve where wire connects to bobbin came out. Can I just wrap wire in hole and solder it or do I need that sleeve?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

You need the eyelet, otherwise the solder will not hold to the flatwork

[@davidclink1425]

@@SchuylerDeanPickups where can you buy these eyelets?

[@orwellophile]

@@davidclink1425 Hahah, you and me both buddy. You can buy the flatwork from China, but unless you want to buy individual set of mixed ingredients the fibreboard doesn't come with eyelets, possibly because it's attached using a special tool like a rivet? I'm going to 3D print the flatwork while I get in some practice, and leave a groove in copper-holding-holes. I'll put a loop of copper from some CAT-5/6 cable in each one, and solder at low temperature (after tinning the wire at high temp to break through the insulation). I think if I get it right, the heat from attaching the wire to the copper loop will be just enough to secure the loop in the flatwork.

[@trailb4u]

Formvar difference may be due to larger dimension of cool due to thicker insulation. I wonder how single build formar would compare to the enamel coated wire.

[@sempercompellis]

i have always suspected with the tolerances not being as accurate and the production not being as "tight", the vintage wire that was called "42awg" was/is probably closer to todays 41awg. I have never wound a pickup but i know they sell "thicker wire and a few makers actually will wind with them.

[@kaisenelectromatix]

Is each pickup wound thousands of revolutions?

[@pattyoneill91]

So, I'm really trying to make an exact PAF vintage like 50's Lp type deL

[@redcatstw]

Hi, what kind of magnets did you use to build the pickups? Very interesting explanation for beginners. Thank you

[@DougMen1]

My experience with a lot of different Strat pickups is this- To my ears, enamel and polysol sounds brighter and snappier to me than formvar, which sounds like it has less highs and less of that snap and attack that I like. That's with them all having the same alnico 5 magnets and DCR, so the wire insulation is the only variable.

[@peetemmeetem4677]

Based on the Impedance, Inductance, and Capacitance differences, one would expect some slight differences in tone - how much needs to be calculated and graphed. Variation in winding scatter alone would cause tone differences (and based on the video there was plenty of scatter differences as the feed was not exactly the same for each pickup). Qualities like "tighter lows" and "bell like highs" are 100% subjective and cannot be quantified. Therefore, I would love to hear each pickup tested, with around 5 different players, playing the exact same chord, and the output for each player put on a scope to look at the frequency response in aggregate. Overall great video and appreciate the effort!

[@GJP1169]

What do you mean by aggressive that is not a technical term . That sounds more subjective. You should have used the same exact turns on all the coils

[@acikast]

Plain enamel - the juiciest tone IMO! Great video, thanks for posting!

[@justinpaquette224]

What kind of lacquer do you use to dip bobbins in, to insulate poles?

[@levijessegonzalez3629]

A question about potting. Some say that only potting the bobbins and not the winding is the best way to keep tone. Thoughts? I had someone build a lot of pickups for me and I requested all unpotted. They sound awesome! However I can't play live with them. No way. So my question is basically what's the LEAST intrusive potting method?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Levi Jesse I pot all my Fender style bobbins in Lacquer so that they are protected from the coil. If you want to reduce noise, you have to wax pot the coil because that is the source of the noise.

[@orwellophile]

What Schuyler said, but the very literal answer is to use wax but not a vacuum, which is what Seamour Duncan call "semi-potted". It's less invasive because all the air isn't being sucked out by the pressure differential. However most small builders probably wouldn't use a vacuum process anyway. Are you sure they wouldn't sound just as awesome potted? If you had said "they feel alive" (as in they respond to the sound coming back out from the amp -- fun stuff) then yeah, you'll lose that.

[@autodidacticprofessor869]

Formvar has twice the insulation thickness (double-build) as poly and PE. Poly and PE have nearly exactly the same thickness of insulation and both kinds of insulation have nearly the same electrical permeability factor. So the difference in the latter two would have to be the wind itself. Formvar is going to sound different with the same turns because it has lower capacitance because of the larger space between the wires. But if all other variables are the same poly and PE wire should not sound "different".

[@un-limited7009]

Thanks graet video. Some day can you flip a magnet and build an out of phase Humbucker?

[@rayclark6596]

So I completely respect, DTT, but in the start of the video 0:19, he says the plain enamel .042 has the exact same insulation thickness as the "poly" so you shouldn't be able to hear a difference. News flash, you can. It's significant. I think I like the "poly" on the bridge better, but it's definitely a different tone.

[@goneflying140]

I wish you would demo them with some distortion so we could hear more character....

[@monstroguitars4550]

Very cool video. I'm doing some research at the moment for my first pickup build. Currently building my winder and had wire choice on my mind. Thank you for this. Building a tele set of singles. Going with the formvar........ I think lol

[@GCKelloch]

You sure that poly wire insulation is the same thickness as the PE? The standard polyurethane wire (Elektrisola) on the Remington sight is listed as "heavy" and just slightly thicker than the HF wire. The high-end level sounds closer to the HF on the bridge. The PE sounds warmer. Maybe just less highs, but could be stronger fundamentals. Other variable might be at play, but at 1/16" from the strings even a difference of less than 1/64" between each example would be audible, as half or twice the distance is a ~6dBV change.

[@levijessegonzalez3629]

What year did fender go to enamel? I've heard some 64-66 strats with a FAT ASS sounding neck pickup like I've never heard in my life. Maybe that has to do with wire construction?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

They switched sometime around the CBS takeover, it would be right around that time. Some neck pickups were wound hotter than the bridges making them sound super fat.

[@hgostos]

PE is the sound of those late 60s recordings... those high-mids are difficult to miss

[@mrfrontranger7911]

to my ears on yt the poly sits right in the middle i like using poly ,seems to stretch and not break. very cool demo

[@raulgrangeiro]

Excellent video! Very well made! Thank you, God bless you!

[@PippPriss]

I only heard a real difference between Heavy Formvar and the other two. so this matches exactly what Dylan stated. Maybe incredible slight difference between Plain Enamel and Poly, but looking at your wound bobbins, that also might explain the difference (totally different appearance and hence, electrical properties). But anyhow, incredible good video! Thanks for the effort placed into this!

[@awertyuiop8711]

What is the thickest gauge you can wind a coil with? I wonder what it would sound like.

[@orwellophile]

Very, and very hard to hear.

[@levijessegonzalez3629]

The vintage fenders now probably have a Loose coil? Right? So of you like the tone of them now, wouldn't it make sense to build a repro with a looser coil as well? If you have any insight into that, how would you describe mid 60s strat pickups? Is decharging poles necessary to get a vintage equivalent

[@guybuddy1]

Coils don't come "loose".

[@bolldemar]

Thanks for the experiment, very usefull. It will help me to choose the next set of pups.

[@zmix]

Question: Within these three pickups, there is a variance of 60Ω, 70mH and 0.0008µf. What is the typical range of these variances when you wind 3 'identical' pickups?

[@skullheadwater9839]

spot on analysis, plain enamel sounded better with most clarity. My question is " was this because of variations in winding process" perhaps that coil had a better pattern of overlap or something. But I don't know, I just figure that could be a variable.

[@shredgd5]

Plain enamel and poly are very similar, but poly has less bass/low mids. I agree with all your other descriptions.

[@SONATALUTHIERIA]

Onde posso comprar essas bobinas de fios ? Algum site específico ?.

[@JannisDIY]

2.2 H and 33nF will give a resonance frq at about 600 Hz.. You can’t measure the capacitance this way.

[@xfup]

Bottom line is market value. If your pickup sounds the same as my pickups, but I use wire that costs 1/3 of what you use in your pickups does not mean I can charge 3 times what you charge for pickups. If someone pays me an over inflated price, that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't mean that I am being fair does it?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

All I know is that when I am buying something that is "vintage spec" I expect the builder to use the best vintage spec parts available. All handwound pickups pretty much cost the same, so if I offer my customers something with cheaper wire that I don't think sounds as good I am doing them a disservice.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Nobody said you can charge 3 times more for something that is 1/3 of the cost to make.

[@ecstasteve]

welcome to the "tone market" which is exactly the same as the "speaker cable" market for "audiophiles". If they will pay it... I will sell.. that's what Kevin Costner said, right?

[@alejan10]

I can´t hear any difference between Enamel and Poly

[@chrisbirch4066]

Where do you buy the wire

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

RemingtonIndustries.com

[@andreaperelli5323]

ok now i understand why they use to wire pickups with plain enamel back in the day, sounds amazing

[@zscools4915]

Witch wire yo think is better and recommend for bass guitar pickups? Any video of winding stacked bass humbucker?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

42 AWG Poly for bass. I make side-by-side humbuckers.

[@zscools4915]

@@SchuylerDeanPickups OK Thanks.

[@gristlevonraben]

The poly was the clearest, but yeah, also nearly clipped, less reverb. But that can be added. If a person wanted the best tones, I'd go with poly.

[@teddysundin2992]

Formvar sounded best to my ears. Poly was more nasal and "cheap"

[@jcadlols]

I think it would be interesting to make a voice coil to act as a surrogate string. You could then use software like Room EQ Wizard, usually used to characterise the frequency response of speakers and do a frequency sweep. You would be able to measure the relative EQ of each pickup - ie linearity of the frequency response, distortion, etc in a way that’s independent to guitar setup.

[@orwellophile]

I had a similar idea, though you've thought it through further than I have. Honestly, I was still stuck wondering if using the speaker coil to act on the pickup coil would be okay, or whether there would be more verisimitude in taping some short pieces of guitar string to the outer paper part of a larger speaker. At Seymour Duncan they have a mechanical strumming mechanism, and they perform 10 identical tests with it.

[@jcadlols]

@@orwellophile yeah that's a good point. I guess directly vibrating strings could be more representative. The tricky part with that would be getting a full frequency sweep and keeping the results independent of guitar setup.

[@jcadlols]

@@orwellophile kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKiwaGqcotaJbdU I should have known people would have already done it haha

[@orwellophile]

@@jcadlols I held my iPhone vaguely near my pickups and was shocked to hear hifi quality audio coming out of my monitor speakers. I didn’t check bass response. It might simply be enough to ensure accurate repeatable positioning of the coil, and perhaps adjust the “eq” (the results) until a replayed recording of a real strum matches the original.

[@WayneKnight_Rider]

Schuyler, where do you source your wire (specifically Formvar)?

[@igooralencaar]

7:35 neck formvar 7:41 neck plain enamel 7:46 neck poly 7:52 neck formvar 7:58 neck plain enamel 8:02 neck poly 8:08 neck formvar 8:12 neck plain enamel 8:17 neck poly 8:22 bridge formvar 8:28 bridge plain enamel 8:34 bridge poly 8:40 bridge formvar 8:45 bridge plain enamel 8:49 bridge poly 8:53 bridge formvar 8:57 bridge plain enamel 9:04 bridge poly

[@MrGoddamnitandrew]

Love the video, super informative. Really curious to see this same experiment on bass pickups.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks Andrew!

[@bokchoiboi9016]

What woods is your guitar made of?

[@dzidolgitara]

why didn’t you deplete actual spun while playing ??????/

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[@iridios6127]

Sounds almost identical. For me.

[@Edwin-E]

nice comparison

[@CarlosCampos-ce3gp]

hello, Can I change the polarity of a pickup? how?

[@orwellophile]

Re-polarise the magnets by running them through a set of strong magnets aligned the way you need, and repeat until your Gauss meter is happy. Or -- and I've never tested this -- turn the pickup upside down, which will reverse both the polarity and the winding direction... Not sure whether you should also swap the ground and signal wires too.

[@waynegram8907]

Schuyler Dean, how many wire turns to get that SRV texas twang tones? 6000 turns and higher Rolls off and kills all the midrange frequencies I have been told

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Not sure. More turns = more midrange and volume though.

[@nicolasrivera5310]

Poly sounded sterile, lifeless. Plain Enamel is the clear winner for me and true to vintage tone.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Nicolas Rivera I agree!

[@ResoBridge]

But ... all the early 'vintage' Fender pickups were wound with heavy formvar wire. Fender changed to using plain enamel (oddly an older type of insulation) in 1964. if the poly and plain enamel insulation are the same thickness I doubt very much if you can hear a difference. Plain enamel and poly may differ in dielectric permittivity but the difference is probably going to be small.

[@1969MARKETING]

if that test were blind and you had to choose. there's no way you would have been able to tell the difference. when a test is done showing which one is playing there's always going to be bias. not to mention in the video he already swayed viewers by saying he liked enamel the best. i would LOVE to see a new test completely blind without bias. no way you could ever tell the difference between the three and anyone who got them right would just be a lucky guess since you have a 33% chance of getting it right :)

[@ResoBridge]

@@1969MARKETING All good points. There are right ways to conduct comparative listening tests and I don't think have ever seen a KZbin video that follows them. Most of these comparative test are just pretexts for the channel owner to make a video which might result in some revenue and self promotion, however poorly thought out it might be. It is usually too much work and expense to do these sort of tests properly. Just as a caveat - I know for a fact that insulation coating thickness influences pickup capacitance and therefore self resonance. If you are very careful in winding two pickups one with plain enamel and one with heavy build formvar the formvar pickup will have a higher self resonance. As long as you do not swamp that with a long high capacitance guitar cable and the amplifier is clean and fairly bright I'm pretty sure you will always hear the difference.

[@frafilipoart4082]

Exactly what I wanted to say​@@1969MARKETING

[@gerardoromano3436]

Hi, Formvar is a norwegian word ? Thanks in advance, you a have a great great channel!

[@TomGlander]

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The never ending pursuit of tone. I don't hear anything seriously different between any of them.

[@wjombat]

I think that if you had not labeled the wire types in the sound clips, no one would be able to tell the difference.

[@sopedro01]

PE and Poly are very similar. FormVar more fuller. Good test.

[@Ian_sheridanuk]

All about the same. And fine.

[@jannatinkarlen8702]

where do you get those wire from?

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Remington

[@kennethsmith1744]

I like the thick coated wire best sound

[@roelschouten8834]

would you be able to tell me where you get your coil wire from please. I'm a guitar builder in NZ and would like to make my own pichups

[@guybuddy1]

hey so did you start winding yet? if not, just a quick tip- DO NOT buy the really good shit right away, you're going to waste at least a pound of wire just trying to get a hang of it and make a good even looking coil. just buy the cheapest shit off of ebay or some chinese manufacturer. anything with a insulated copperwire(42awg) should work. once you get comfortable winding, go buy any of the wires in the video from a proper manufacturer i.e. Remington.

[@roelschouten8834]

@@guybuddy1 Thanks man, just finished making my winder. I'm currently building a 7 string multi-scale for a client, and he wants P-90s, so I will have to have a go at making/designing 7 string P-90s

[@guybuddy1]

@@roelschouten8834 That's cool that you made your own winder! P-90s are great too, and not that difficult making them sound great. Just fill the bobbin up with 42awg and try not to over power it with strong magnets. Good luck with your project!

[@roelschouten8834]

@@guybuddy1 thanks man, i really appreciate your help. I'll be using Alnico 5, but might tame them down a bit with not fully charging them

[@huss03]

7:35 Formvar 7:41 Enamel 7:47 Polyurethane 7:52 Formvar 7:57 Enamel 8:03 Polyurethane

[@andrewflanders262]

The capacitance measurements are way off. Pickups have capacitance in the picofarad range. That's not a suitable LCR meter for measuring guitar pickups. Get something like a DE 5000 and look online for how to use it with guitar pickups. The primary difference between them will be capacitance, so it's very very important to have accurate values there.

[@cgavin1]

Definitely a noticeable difference between the three. Poly is articulate and has a pronounced punch and treble peak. Enamel is pretty much the same as Poly except in that treble peak, where it falls a little lower and is more even accross all 6 strings. The formvar has a more pronounced low and mid-range. Which is probably a characterstic of the physical difference in insulator thickness. Good video. I think you can probably account for a fair amount of that extra treble from poly by degussing your magnet and adjust the poles.

[@GCKelloch]

Lower Gauss doesn't reduce treble, but it does minimize harmonic variances per pos via string pull. I prefer lower Gauss for that reason. A low C cable would smooth out and extend the highs. BTW, there is no way the internal pickup C is in the 34nF range. There would be virtually no highs as the tone would roll off at ~500Hz. Strat pickups average 100~150pF.

[@knl_m]

in the late 60's fender war using both poly and plain enamel...i can hear just a little difference in formvar. To me it is all about the insulation thickness, but i would like to experiment different wire insulation too. awesome vid.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

Thanks!

[@Harpblues]

Hello, very good test. Formvar if you need little more bottom, enamel if sparkle, poly sounded somehow dead?

[@77Kaczoszka77]

Super test thank you a lot.

[@ecstasteve]

I want to see waveforms not a whiteboard. I'm listening on cranked studio speakers. unless you have measurements that have the string height to the magnet measurements down to the micrometer it's just a fun game and not science. what is the spread of the magnetic field/strength over the pickups?.. were all poles zeroed out as equal? too many variables.. I TOTALLY APPRECIATE you running the experiment. The differences are noticeable but not outside the scope of the other variants. If you rewrapped the same exact bobbin each time and set it into EXACTLY the same spot in the guitar ... that might be closer to science.. "3 identical strat pickups" really isn't a thing ;)... still.. killer vid and thanks for doing it.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

I got all the measurements as close as I could.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

I find it strange how many guitar-focused videos use electronica-techno soundtrack music.

[@CaryChilton]

for me, the bottom line is if you got a really bright app and ask guitar and you like everything but you wanna tone the shit down a little bit then you use the formvar wiring... But if you're relatively happy with your guitar word in the AMEX, I'm talking about tube amps you're not modelers, of course then playing an animal is probably good enough since for instance most marshals, or a little wussy and taming, that low end is a good thing

[@ResoBridge]

Thanks for doing this interesting experiment. I suspect you have the decimal point in the wrong place for pickup capacitance. The capacitance of a Strat pickup might typically be 130pF or 0.13nF. You have to make this measurement at high frequency, say 100KHz so the impedance of the coil is high enough to get a reasonably accurate measurement of self capacitance. I'm not convinced the meter you are using can give you accurate measurement of coil capacitance. Output is directly proportional to the number of turns on the coil. Resistance is not a measurement of output, it is simply that the more turns you put on the coil the higher the resistance. I get really tired of people saying things like 'resistance output' or this pickup has a 6Kohm output. Inductance is a better indicator of how much signal a particular pickup will produce ... and even then inductance is not a measurement of output. Even with exactly the same number of turns on several coils using the same wire from the same spool you are likely to see variations in coil resistance due to variations in the copper, any wire stretching from tensioning and in coil temperature. Coil resistance varies a lot with temperature, you can hold a pickup coil in your hand for a few seconds, put it down, measure the resistance and watch it change as the coil cools down. When using wire with different insulators from different spools and therefore manufactured at different times, a larger difference in resistance is to be expected. All pickup coils have a main resonance due to the coil inductance in parallel with the coil self capacitance in parallel with the instrument cable capacitance (with the volume at maximum). Any other variations in a pickups frequency response are due to frequency cancellation related to the coils dimensions and its interaction with the magnetic field changes from the vibrating strings.

[@DrKevGuitar]

Correct re: capacitance measurement. Two small coils in series could have such a low capacitance, e.g. Fender noiseless pickups, but almost all standard single coils are in the 80 pF to 150 pF range. If the LCR meter is not capable of measuring at 100 kHz or above e, the numbers will be far too low, as we see here.

[@plexibreath]

I'm very surprised. I started this video with a confirmation bias favoring Plain Enamel, ended up favoring the Formvar by quite a margin. Go figure.

[@SchuylerDeanPickups]

All three are great for their own reasons.

[@stevetottosy1477]

I liked PE. Dylan is a good view too.

[@arnaldobonilla-ortiz21]

Keep up the good work. Thanks

[@glennmoss7719]

Great video man thanks

[@stamppedals3536]

I don’t think that capacitance your mesure is real. Calculated capacitance is below 200pf

[@stevesoldwedel]

Appreciate you making this. I just bought some plain enamel wire having watched this (and a previous video where he did a blind test and it was the one that sounded best to me there, too). My only critique would be to make your tests blind, too, and then reveal which was which at the end. Still, even without that, your test confirmed what my ears told me with the other vid. Thanks!

[@luginonluginon2602]

WHICH IS BETTER IS SUBJECTIVE WHEN IT COMES TO SOUND BUT THEY ALL ''SOUND'' DIFFERENT. Another problem is that PE wire and Formvar aren't the same as they have been in 50's 60's 70's. I use both and do like PE and but they are different, chemical compound is different and anyone of you dudes can check that out. So how much is ''vintage'' that is questionable. IMHO pickups from the past are unique not just due to wire moreover the vulcanized fiber was different to. I'm not saying old were better just different that is fact, Good video.

[@danielsanichiban]

1 min into your video, I have to say, the theory that same thickness insulator will yield the same characteristics is wrong. The dialectric constant of the insulating will influence the capacitance of the coil, so they'll only be the same if the dialectric property of the insulating material is the same on all 3 .... I hope you're gonna show us measurements of the 3 coils

[@bradt.3555]

And you could wind 3 pickups all with the same wire and have just as much difference, pretty much none. In a band mix even more none.

[@guybuddy1]

Yeah, IF you're super sloppy of course.

[@bradt.3555]

@@guybuddy1 ,Sloppy playing, winding? Not sure what you mean. I guess my point is you can't hear the insulation, the electrons don't know the difference. It's all how the wire goes on.

[@guybuddy1]

@@bradt.3555 Well, both. If you're inconsistent at something, you're getting inconsistent results. Also, Heavy Formvar wire has double the thickness of insulation compared to a Plain Enamel wire, which makes the distance from wire to wire larger, resulting in different Capacitance and Resistance. TBH I can't explain why Plain Enamel vs Polysol wouyld make a difference because they both have the same thickness of insulation and that seems to be the biggest factor in tonal differences in this case.

[@bradt.3555]

@@guybuddy1 ,Could be the wire under the insulation. My point is it boils down to resistance, capacitance, & inductance, the composition of the insulation makes no difference, tho as you said thickness does matter. You could also have 2 pieces of wire with the same insulation but if the wire inside is of a different alloy it could affect it.

[@juanokita4401]

3 are acceptable to me 🤔

[@jalexander510]

It looks like the wire you are calling "Fomvar" is actually Plain Enamel. Google them and the color difference is obvious. The plain enamel coating makes the color dark.