FAQ’s

I started Green Pickups with the aim to build high quality pickups to sell at a reasonable price. I believe that good tone shouldn’t cost the earth. Having played guitar for over 25 years, I understand the frustration at the guitar consumer industry and its pricing - often it is inflated and the product is underwhelming.

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!