Schatten Pickup Winder

i bought one of these used on ebay for half the money that stewmac sells these, and I gotta say, i still feel like I paid too much. i love my pickup winder, but honestly the price range should have been closer to the 75 dollar range. word of advice to those aspiring pickup makers. if you do it enough you really don't need a counter. just check the k ohms with a meter. what you might want to look for is an electric sewing machine, you can probably find them dirt cheap at a garage sale or flea market, and it'll do just as good of a job.

I know of at least three pro pickup makers that use sewing machines so trust me it can be done. However I do like having a counter, the read out on it isn't the greatest, but it's not as bad to me as other reviews have made it out to be.

I had several hours of piece work applied to getting this for my shop, It has gone through 3 motors, is poorly designed, and now sits idle with another burned out motor. I have seen similar complaints from other pup winding guitar techs and luthiers. It is cheaply made, and I finally made a winder from a $15 sewing machine motor, some 1" thick plexiglass, sealed bearings, a magnetic impulse counter, and some other hardware. All told it cost $100 and maybe $200 in labor but is much better.
I am looking at a real winder now that was used by PPI in winding heavy voice coils to small tweeter voice coils in speakers. It counts and runs both ways, and my bobbin jigs can be chucked into the VC chuck easily. The Schatten is the worst item Stewmac has ever sold. I usually am quite pleased with all Stewart Mc Donald's stuff. Schatten has claimed they are trying to find a better motor. As simple as this is build your own. You will have to make so many modifications to this it seems like you built one by the time you finally make it work right. Then when all seems well, the motor conks out. I get the feeling Schatten is indeed disappointed to, and maybe some changes will be made.

Its an OK machine, but way overpriced for how its built. You can feel the motor struggling to stay alive as the little rubber band spins. The display is poor and hard to see. The chipboard base isn't deep enough for my taste. The crossbar holder is wobbly. Definitely not for production.

I bought one of these about 4 years ago. The first thing I had to do was re-drill the hole for the bracket that holds the wire guide, because it was not square. The machine worked well for a while, although the motor is weak, and you can stop the rotation by squeezing the wire hard.

Eventually it started running very slow. I contacted Schatten realizing that the machine was probably over its warranty, if it even had one. Les was very helpful and sent me a new motor. That seemed to fix the problem for a few days, and then it started running slow again. I tried the motor out with the AC adapter, and it ran nice and fast, so the issue is the motor speed control.

At that point I had no time to tinker with it any longer so I chucked my vari-speed drill to the left axle and have been using it that way ever since. The switch on the speed knob also broke, so I replaced the pot and also wired up a toggle switch for power.

It's a nice winder to get you started, but the motor is under powered and too slow, and it needs a better speed control. It's kind of pricey, but it's obviously hand made. Could be cheaper too.

I've had the winder for about a year and I've wound 50 pickups on it. It is still running fine but I've had to make a few modifications. I moved the front guide bar back to about 1.5 inches in front of black box. It helped with stability. Keeping the guide bar polished with SS wool really helps. I taped some wooden blocks to the metal bobbin holder so that I could put a screw threw the bobbins to hold them securely. Double sided tape produces a lot of buildup and is not sufficient to hold the bobbin at full speed and they will fly off. Having an easy way to set the guides would be helpful. It's more of trial and error.

Overall, I would say that it is extremely over-priced but there aren't many options so I guess the company has no motivation to improve their product which is a shame. With a little engineering it could be made great which would in turn increase positive reviews and sell more units.

Hopefully reducing the price to increase the quantity sold. The ROI for this is pretty high, though. I would just take more pride in what I build, especially to sell to luthier's who have a great sense of pride and attention to detail.

This item is definitely overpriced. I'm on my second one now and its broken down and wont turn anymore. This happened to both after about 6 months. Sorry, this one is just not up to the job.

We bought one and the unit broke within 6 months and made less than 6 sets total on the machine.
It is made with poor sub-quality parts.
We recommend building your own for less money and higher quality.
We called the company and they have offered little help.
This is a poor product.

My Shatten has made a quite a number of good pickups. I can't complain! It's not Fancy or Mondo Industrial Strength, but more than adequate for making one of a kind, one at a time!

This little machine is so easy to use and can help you wind your own pickups in no time flat

I can't describe the disappointment. Its Cheap (about 60.00 in parts), the counter is hard to read, the guide arm is wobbly, cheap case, cheap base, etc ... certainly not worth almost 400.00! Don't waste your Money.