Tuesday, June 11, 2013

What would happen if you wired a guitar pickup with gold or silver instead of copper?

guitar pickups
 on We can overwind or underwind our guitar pickups 5%.
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Steadiman


Electric guitar pickups have many winds of thin copper wire to form an magnetic field in which the strings vibrate and produce electricity and eventually...sound. What would happen if you wound the pickups with silver or gold which, I think, have better conductivity than copper? Would it change the signal and/or tone? It would change the price of course to something prohibitively high and thus totally impractical. This is a "proof of concept" sort of theoretical question. You electrical engineers out there, what do you think?


Answer
resistivity Ag 15.9 (nΩ-m)
resistivity Cu 17.2 (nΩ-m)
resistivity Au 22.14 (nΩ-m)

gold has a poorer conductivity than copper. silver is the only metal better than copper. And that is only 7% better.

No, you would hear no difference. 7% change in resistance is a small amount. In terms of signal level, it is only 0.6 dB, and you can get that by adjusting the gain a small amount.

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