The pickup market is saturated. And there’s a reason for that as it’s s a relatively easy business to start. After all, a pickup is at its core, a coil of wire wrapped around a set of magnets. Simple, right?

Not quite.

While anyone with a bit of technical skill can build a pickup that makes noise, building a pickup that delivers great tone requires a deep understanding of the science behind magnetism, coil structure, and resonance.

After years of research, testing, and buying pickups from countless builders, I’ve identified 4 crucial questions to ask any builder before you buy:

1. How Do You Charge Your Magnets?

Magnets are the heart of a pickup. If they aren’t t properly charged, the pickup won’t deliver consistent performance.

What you should look for:

Charged using an electromagnet.
Magnets should be saturated to their appropriate gauss level to ensure balanced string response and optimal output.

Why it matters:

Undercharged magnets lead to weak output and string imbalance.
If magnets are charged using simple hand methods like rubbing with a strong magnet, the magnetic field is often uneven, resulting in poor tone.

Fact check:

Magnet charging with an electromagnet is industry-standard among respected builders. Properly saturating magnets ensures the pickup produces a stable magnetic field across all strings.

2. Can You Provide a Bode Plot for the Pickups Resonant Peaks?

A bode plot visually represents the frequency response of a pickup specifically its resonant peak, which significantly influences the pickups tone.

Why it’s important:

Resonant peaks determine the pickups brightness or warmth.
Without this data, you’re re essentially buying blind.

Think about it: would a company like Apple or Samsung release a product without thoroughly testing its performance?

Fact check:

Bode plots are commonly used in electronics to analyse frequency response. While not every boutique pickup builder has this data, those who take their craft seriously will have tested their pickups to understand how they sound across different frequencies.

Pro tip: You don’t need to interpret the graph yourself, just knowing the builder has this information indicates they’ve done their homework.

3. Do You Scatter-Wind Your Pickups?

Scatter-winding is often used as a buzzword in the pickup world. By definition, all hand-wound pickups are scatter-wound to some extent.

The truth:

Scatter-winding affects a pickups capacitance, inductance, and high-frequency response.
If done intentionally without understanding the science, scatter-winding can lead to inconsistent or unpredictable tonal characteristics.

Fact check:

Scatter-winding is a historical technique that can produce pleasant, more complex overtones when done correctly (e.g., PAF humbuckers and early Fender pickups). However, haphazard scatter-winding can cause performance issues, particularly in pickups designed for high precision.

4. Do You Hand-Wind Your Humbuckers?

Humbuckers rely on two coils of nearly identical specifications to cancel noise (hum-bucking).

Why precision matters:

For humbucking to work correctly, coil resistance, turns count, and winding tension must be consistent.
Hand-winding coils makes achieving that level of precision incredibly difficult if not impossible within a reasonable timeframe.

Fact check:

True humbucking requires well-matched coils. While some boutique builders hand-wind humbuckers for a more “vintage” feel, the best noise-canceling performance typically comes from machine-wound coils that ensure near-identical specifications.

Why Green Pickups?

I founded Green Pickups with a simple mission:

Build high-quality pickups at reasonable prices.
Offer proven, tested products, not gimmicks.
Provide great tone without industry hype or inflated prices.

With over 25 years of guitar-playing experience and a deep passion for tone, I got tired of overpriced, underwhelming gear. That’s why every Green Pickup is designed, tested, and built with precision so you get tone you can trust, without breaking the bank.

Before you buy your next pickup, remember to ask these four questions.

And if you want pickups built with precision and backed by science, you know where to find me.

All pickups and looms are made to order. Waiting time is usually 4 weeks.

Please see the returns page at the bottom for all information

Having played guitar for over 25 years I’m able to provide comprehensive pre and post purchase advice and support. I’ll do my best to ensure all your pickup related questions are answered as comprehensively as I can. Please get in touch via the CONTACT page or Instagram.

Shipping for all UK based customers is free.

EU and ROW prices are shown on the SHIPPING page at the bottom.

My answer is…potentially!

There’s lots of debate on this topic and there’s certainly a case to be made with Formvar coated wire. With Formvar (F), the insulation coating is thicker compared to Plain Enamel (PE) and Polyurethane (P). This can affect the distance between wire placement and therefore the capacitance. Studies have shown that coils made with F and PE using the same number of turns, generated coils of different dimensions. The F coil resulted in less capacitance but a larger coil diameter, increasing inductance and impedance. As a consequence, this produced a cut in high frequencies but added bass. The PE coil had greater capacitance but reduced its inductance and its impedance, making the middle and treble frequencies greater. Poly coated wire is virtually identical in thickness when compared to plain enamel. However, their individual permittivity is slightly different (almost negligible!) leading to many players stating they can hear a difference.

Dylan Talks Tone has a great video on this here

I can only speak from my experience as both a pickup builder and electrical engineer. When it comes to electrical systems, the chemical composition of the sheath is the last thing anyone worries about and so it should be with pickups. As long as the cable is of a good grade and the sheathing is of a good quality then it is fit for purpose.

From the research and tests I’ve carried out, I’ve found that the main factors that can affect the tone of a pickup are:

Coil size, magnet type, cable size, cable tension, number of winds and gauss. These things are measurable and consistent, everything else is subjective.

My understanding of why the insulation coating on the wires were changed over the years is really just down to availability, consistency and cost. Polyurethane for example has a much more uniform coating than Formvar and PE. This means it causes less issues when winding coils. It also doesn’t need the coil ends to be sanded before soldering, speeding up production. This is also my go to cable, simply because it was the first cable I worked with. I find it easy off the roll and nice to wind!

Another thing to note is that Formvar and certain types of PE can be almost four times more expensive for builders to buy than poly. This means they produce more expensive “boutique” models. This doesn’t mean however that it will produce a great sounding pickup!

FAQ’s