The Creamery

Classic Handwound Alnico 5 Humbuckers - Handcrafted for Tone

[caption id=”attachment_559” align=”aligncenter” width=”600” caption=”Custom Pickups - Scatterwound Alnico 5 Humbuckers, handwound by The Creamery”][/caption]

My humbuckers are scatterwound on a handmade machine. Each pickup is wound at slow speed with 42 AWG (46 SWG) plain enamel or vintage formvar copper wire before being wax-potted in a combination of beeswax and paraffin (though you can order them unpotted). The potting procedure vacuum seals the coils to avoid microphonic feedback at high gain. The Paraffin / beeswax custom ratio is created to seal the coils whilst making the wax flexible. The beeswax also adds a subtle sweetness to the tone.

At The Creamery I wind all humbuckers with a small coil offset of a few hundred turns just to open up more frequencies. A humbucker by nature cancels some of the buzz you get with 60 cycle hum but in doing so a whole lot of other frequencies are shut out too which can lead to a somewhat sterile sound. We try to claw some of these frequencies back by stepping the coils a little.

[caption id=”attachment_561” align=”aligncenter” width=”600” caption=”Custom zebra bobbin Alnico 5 Humbucker, scatterwound by The Creamery”][/caption]

The Creamery Classic Alnico 5 Humbucker has balanced mids, snappy lows and a top-end with room to breath. The Alnico 5 magnet is brighter sounding than the Alnico 3 or 4, giving this humbucker pickup more of a snappier tone with more bite when the gain is dialled in.

Specs

Magnet: Alnico 5

Coil Wire: 42AWG Plain Enamel or Vintage Formvar

Lead Wire: Vintage Braided Pushback or 4way

Approx. Winds: Bridge - Pole 4900 / Screw 5300 - Neck - Pole 4250 / Screw 4650

Bridge Humbucker Output: 8.2k

Neck Humbucker Output: 7.3k

—

Quick Sound Files

Humbucker Pickups - Bridge Creamery Handwound Alnico 5 Humbucker Pickups - Bridge Clean 1

Creamery Handwound Alnico 5 Humbucker Pickups - Bridge Clean 2

Humbucker Pickups - Middle (Bridge & Neck)