Tornade MS pickups are faithful reproductions of the vintage models, hand wound using the same magnets and wires (brand, type and diameter) than the ones of the golden era (50’s-60’s).
Nowadays, a few boutique manufacturers communicate on the fact that their pickups are handbuilt, suggesting that they are scatterwound, whereas they are wound using machines (CNC) with an automatic guidance.
However, they do hand assembled their pickups, but how could you proceed differently?
As a final result, pickups winded through automatic guidance machines, provide poor dynamic, less tonal complexity and harmonics.
Technical explanations :
Handwound doesn’t mean that we manually make 8000 turns around the pickup, but that the wire is hand guided between thumb and index while the coil spins through a mechanical process, as you can see on the video above. That’s how Fender used to make their pickups until Leo Fender sold the company to CBS in 1965. Since then, all the process was made through a mechanical process, for profitability matters.
It seems to be a detail of no importance you would say, but definitely it does matter a lot! As a matter of fact winding with a machine creates regulars and tights loops while hand guided winding will, on the contrary, make wide and irregulars ones.
The more the loops are tight, the more the circuit’s capacitance will be high. Handwinding a guitar pickup will lower that capacitance, which, as a result, will increase the frequency bandwidth around the resonance peak.
In the end, a pickup wound with a machine (C.N.C), will provide poor harmonics and, most of the time, will sound harsh, pretty much like the actual production of telies and strats pickups.
Nowadays, parts used for P.A.F 59 replicas making, are mainly produced by Asian countries (mostly China) and, to a lesser extent, by the U.S.
U.S parts are 4 to 5 time more expensive than the Asian ones. It goes without saying, that Chinese parts are made with higher tolerance margin, unlike the U.S ones. By the way, a few U.S manufactures, are still using the 50’s-60’s production methods.
All the pieces used in our pickups (screws, magnets, coils, wires etc) essentially come from the best U.S manufactures.
At Tornade MS, we are particularly attentive to the parts selection, in order to constantly improve our production, and provide the best sounding P.A.F 59 replicas.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for any further information.