HRW pups

[Guest HRB853370]

I tried searching the forum for this topic, but it returned no results. Are HRW pups proprietary to Heritage? And are they hand wound? Somebody told me that HRW stands for Heritage Ren Wall. True or false? I asked Ren about these once and he declined comment on them, as if they were "military classified". Any info is appreciated!

[eljay]

1. yes, proprietary to H; 2. nobody knows . . . ; 3. i think so

[Gitfiddler]

HRW's are proprietary to Heritage and only available as a factory option, not for resale.

 

I get the impression from Ren's close-to-the-vest responses over the years, that he's been burned as an inventor. He does hold a few patents for his creations. Even if HRW's are modified Schallers, he is not giving any hints as to what his secret sauce is in them.

[Guest mgoetting]

These are Heritage Ren Walls. He designed the modifications and has legal rights to them. Schaller makes them I'm told. I don't know if they are hand wound.

 

Hand wound doesn't mean better to me. I could be wrong, but winding pups sounds like a job a machine might do better.

[Vincelewis]

These are Heritage Ren Walls. He designed the modifications and has legal rights to them. Schaller makes them I'm told. I don't know if they are hand wound.

 

Hand wound doesn't mean better to me. I could be wrong, but winding pups sounds like a job a machine might do better.

 

I have HRW's in a few of my Heritages, and love them. Ren developed and wound them them, and was allowed by the guys up there to offer them as an option while retaining the rights to them, which is unusual this day and time. They have a much more even progression from bass to treble rather than the G brand extreme tone change. If there are some available upther, the I say go for it..Vince

[barrymclark]

These are Heritage Ren Walls. He designed the modifications and has legal rights to them. Schaller makes them I'm told. I don't know if they are hand wound.

 

Hand wound doesn't mean better to me. I could be wrong, but winding pups sounds like a job a machine might do better.

To be honest, I can see how a completely hand wound pickup could produce a superior product in the hands of a skilled pickup builder that easily rivals a machine wound. What I mean by completely hand wound is that even the winding machine isn't powered by electricity but, at very most, a hand cranked device. It would be a long, painstaking process to be sure, but every wind would get expert attention. Again, it would require the expertise. In the hands of the unskilled or less skilled, I agree. Automation is what you want but it will come at a price.

 

Knew a fella who wound a humbucker with a modified bicycle crank. haha. GREAT quality. The wraps were some of the most even I had ever seen. He said it took a couple of hours per coil. I don't doubt that at all!

[Patrick]

To be honest, I can see how a completely hand wound pickup could produce a superior product in the hands of a skilled pickup builder that easily rivals a machine wound. What I mean by completely hand wound is that even the winding machine isn't powered by electricity but, at very most, a hand cranked device. It would be a long, painstaking process to be sure, but every wind would get expert attention. Again, it would require the expertise. In the hands of the unskilled or less skilled, I agree. Automation is what you want but it will come at a price.

 

Knew a fella who wound a humbucker with a modified bicycle crank. haha. GREAT quality. The wraps were some of the most even I had ever seen. He said it took a couple of hours per coil. I don't doubt that at all!

 

I've done a great deal of research on new and original PAF pick ups. The hand winding you reference, and the lack of precision resulting in the hand winding, as compared to machine wound, is said to be precisely the reason for the variance from one pup to another and thus the character of the PAF pup. Many other aspects of manufacturing those PAF Humbuckers was also less than precise as well.

[drfie]

Whether by hand or machine the problem is even tension throughout the cycle. What naturally happens when winding an oblong object is that the tension on the ends greatly excedest the tension across the sides. That's bad electromagnetically and therefore bad for tone. Also scatter winding seems to produce better results than precision layering. When folks say hand wound, they are usually referring to a machine that is hand controlled with respect to where to lay down the wire. Pickup winders use sophisticated tensioning devices to make sure the winds are uniform. Don Mare, pickup winder extraordinaire, believes that anyone who wants to wind pups needs to do at least 100 to get a feel for how to do it correctly.

 

dan

[Gitfiddler]

Maybe the secret ingredient in HRW's is the winding process (scatter winding, machine winding, etc.). But what if it is a MAGNET mod. Aren't there all sorts of subtle tonal differences derived from aged, degossed (sp), reversed, alnico, etc. magnets?

 

A while back, Throbak posted that he bought one of the old pickup winding machines that was left at Parsons Street. Now he makes some of the best PAF p'ups available.

 

Windings or Magnets or Voodoo magic...Ren does something to those Schallers. Whatever it is I really like the results.

[barrymclark]

I've done a great deal of research on new and original PAF pick ups. The hand winding you reference, and the lack of precision resulting in the hand winding, as compared to machine wound, is said to be precisely the reason for the variance from one pup to another and thus the character of the PAF pup. Many other aspects of manufacturing those PAF Humbuckers was also less than precise as well.

To clarify, I mean the overall quality of the individual build and not a pickup being exactly the same from one pickup to the next. From my short time in pickup winding, what I see scatterwinding doing is two things: changing the geometry of the wind as well as changing the number of winds on a bobbin. Both of those, of course, can have massive impact on the sound characteristics of a pickup.

[barrymclark]

Whether by hand or machine the problem is even tension throughout the cycle. What naturally happens when winding an oblong object is that the tension on the ends greatly excedest the tension across the sides. That's bad electromagnetically and therefore bad for tone. Also scatter winding seems to produce better results than precision layering. When folks say hand wound, they are usually referring to a machine that is hand controlled with respect to where to lay down the wire. Pickup winders use sophisticated tensioning devices to make sure the winds are uniform. Don Mare, pickup winder extraordinaire, believes that anyone who wants to wind pups needs to do at least 100 to get a feel for how to do it correctly.

 

dan

This is me thinking out loud:

 

Certainly the issue I have found with machine winding is indeed the tension as it rounds the short end of the bobbin. Everything from getting too tight there or too loose along the long ends to where it there is the risk (at my level) of a 'jerk' and then you just have to start all over. The precision layering, in my mind, will allow for a taller and thinner wrapping therefore getting a different tone than a fatter wind of the same number of wraps. That scatter winding will make the width of the coil vary. My first coil, was GREAT. Got all 5000 winds all pretty in the bobbin. My next one was like crap. It was about overflowing. WAY too much scatter.

 

The original PAF's, if memory serves, were not scatterwound at all and were basically wound until the bobbin was full. Of course, full could mean anything from instance to instance leaving what pickup archivist find to be a 2k variance from pickup to pickup. The PAF inspired pickups of today seem to go with resistances just under the middle of what people have found at just above 8 or right at it. I don't disagree with it. I like that sound with AlNiCo 2's.