The design and construction of a high‐performance differentiating pick‐up coil for a 500‐kA/ 4‐&mgr;s pulsed current is described. Based on the Rogowski principle, the coil was made by using the printed‐circuit technique. The coil is 1 mm thick; inclusive of electrostatic shielding and can be reproduced from one master print at nearly any size. Measurements up to 5 MHz showed no significant change of self‐inductance. We believe that the coil is a versatile tool to measure and monitor current pulsed in the megampere/megahertz range.