Blueblender
Quarternote
Posts: 4
Formerly Known As: Blueblender
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Post by Blueblender on Dec 7, 2020 13:10:18 GMT -5
Hello All!
Maybe a silly thought and questions, but curiosity is getting the best of me, so here goes...
I found myself with some extra time during a 14-day quarantine, so I’ve been having some fun with my Strat and LP (without spending any money) experimenting with tones and tinkering around with wiring schemes, pole piece stagger/pickup heights, amp settings, etc.
Have any of you ever swapped the magnets in a new pickup with magnets from an older one?
I have an Alnico V pickup from a 1988 AmStd Strat that no longer works. I was thinking about trying those magnets in one of my Fender Tex-Mex pickups to see if they would affect the overall character. Since the bobbin is plastic and the slugs are each in their own little “sleeve”, I figured this might be do-able. I know there’s always the chance of ruining the pickup, so I thought I’d ask the most knowledgeable people I could think of before I dive in any further.
How much would the difference in strength (if any?) between the two sets of magnets play a part in the overall character of the pickup? Is it even worth the time?
Thanks!
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Post by Peegoo 🏁 on Dec 7, 2020 17:59:56 GMT -5
It does make a difference, from two aspects.
Alloy: Alnico 2 sounds different from alnico 3, which sounds different from alnico 5, etc. Go online to sites like Duncan and Dimarzio and read up on the sonic differences between magnet alloys.
Gauss: How strong the magnet is. Gauss is measured with a meter, which is an expensive piece of gear outside the realm of most home gamers. Stronger mags produce more power than weaker mags, everything else being equal. But "moar powr" (as Scotty says on the original Star Trek TV series) does not mean better tone, because stronger magnets introduce unwanted effects such as string capture, where the magnetic field exerts force on the string and inhibits its movement. There's a gauss level that is ideal for the specific coil (wire gauge, coil size, number of turns, etc.) and anything below or above that 'ideal' gauss achieves diminishing returns.
You cannot just throw pickups together and expect them to sound even remotely usable; it takes weeks/months/years of experimentation. I know; I've tried.
One thing you can do as a beginner, however, is follow a cookbook recipe: get a pickup kit and make it according to the instructions, and these reliably make good pickups because the recipe (components and build method) are tried and true.
If you have pickups and the time to mess with 'em, it's not wasted time to experiment because you can hear for yourself how seemingly small changes to a pickup can dramatically change the tone.
If you have the capability, make recordings of your experiments to serve as direct comparisons. This is important because there's a problem widely known in the recording industry called ear fatigue. It's what happens when a person critically listens to something for extended periods. You lose sensitivity to certain frequency bands. Generally, 30-45 minutes is the limit for most people, and taking a 10 minute break helps restore full range hearing again.
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DrKev
Wholenote
It's just a guitar, it's not rocket science.
Posts: 405
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Post by DrKev on Dec 8, 2020 4:14:29 GMT -5
If you have the capability, make recordings of your experiments to serve as direct comparisons. This is important because there's a problem widely known in the recording industry called ear fatigue. It's what happens when a person critically listens to something for extended periods. You lose sensitivity to certain frequency bands. Generally, 30-45 minutes is the limit for most people, and taking a 10 minute break helps restore full range hearing again. Yes, though there is a "BUT" here too... A lot of the differences between pickups are something we feel, it's a playing experience. You can record the differences but the playbacks could be disappointingly similar. 50% to 90% of the difference you remember while playing can seem to vanish. I learned this years ago comparing the DiMarzio Area 58, 61, and 67 pickups. Obviously different playing experience with each pickup, but not at all captured in the recordings, which made them all sound like minor variations of the same thing. I would recommend recording super linear, totally dry, clean tones, or even better, DI too, in addition to anything else you want. Record the same piece or phrases and then use an LUFS metering to allow accurate levelling of the perceived volumes (to with 0.5dB LUFS or better). THEN compare the tones. (Why? Because small differences in volume between two otherwise identical recordings are be perceived as having tonal differences, even when those differences don't actually exist. Also, pickup output will change amp/pedal distortion and compression which we will also perceive as a tonal difference even though it really isn't). And of course you MUST use the exact same cable, pots, guitar, strings, setup and pickup distance from strings for each and every comparison.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on Dec 8, 2020 8:20:15 GMT -5
If I were to do such an experiment I think I'd use my old version of Sound Forge to record before and after samples, then compare the spectrum analysis. Of course you'd have to have the exact setup, string height, strings and pick attack. At least the graph could imply what frequencies show the most variation.
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Blueblender
Quarternote
Posts: 4
Formerly Known As: Blueblender
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Post by Blueblender on Dec 8, 2020 9:22:23 GMT -5
Excellent thoughts and suggestions, fellas. I think I’ll give this a shot. Comparing older A5 to newer A5 may not yield as much difference as comparing, say, A2 or A3 to A5, but I’m interested enough to try. Whatever the result, I might also try a conversion from ceramic bar to alnico slugs on a spare Squier pickup using whichever A5 set ends up as the extra. Fun with spare parts!
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on Dec 8, 2020 9:58:16 GMT -5
A lot of the differences between pickups are something we feel, it's a playing experience. You can record the differences but the playbacks could be disappointingly similar. 50% to 90% of the difference you remember while playing can seem to vanish. I learned this years ago comparing the DiMarzio Area 58, 61, and 67 pickups. Obviously different playing experience with each pickup, but not at all captured in the recordings, which made them all sound like minor variations of the same thing. Oh man, print that and frame it! A while ago I spent a couple years trying to learn pickup making and honing my own design and I'd hang out on a pickup makers forum pretty frequently. Those guys were obsessed with empirical data and wouldn't trust sense experience at all, and surprise surprise, I don't think any of them ever made anything good. They'd plug in straight digital to a recording setup, run it through some lame software, and that was it. At the time they were obsessing over using a lathe bed as a testing platform for pickups. They made fun of anyone trying to listen to the product as a "golden ears" person. Jason Lollar would pop by and say "I dunno, I just plug into one of my tube amps, and it works fine". IMO, after the hard work and rudiments of making pickups, what separates the mediocre from the great is their ears and ability to fine tune a design. So many people are trying to make the exact same thing, and the ones who can really play them and listen critically are the ones who get the best results. I remember one guy argued strongly that magnet gauss didn't affect output at all, and uploaded audio clips to prove it. Someone else quickly pointed out that they were all the same volume because each sample was clipping! This isn't to dismiss recordings though, especially since a prior version might be 6 months old and since salvaged for parts, it is good to have some record of it. I wish I had better documentation of all that I did as I've forgotten a lot of it. I have some notes somewhere, packed up three moves ago.
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on Dec 8, 2020 10:05:47 GMT -5
Excellent thoughts and suggestions, fellas. I think I’ll give this a shot. Comparing older A5 to newer A5 may not yield as much difference as comparing, say, A2 or A3 to A5, but I’m interested enough to try. Whatever the result, I might also try a conversion from ceramic bar to alnico slugs on a spare Squier pickup using whichever A5 set ends up as the extra. Fun with spare parts! Actually, scientifically speaking, that's a darn good comparison because you're controlling the elements. If you had to wind pickups from scratch with two different magnets, you'd have the entirety of the coil that won't be identical to contend with.
You'll be getting a winder and a bunch of parts in no time. I'm calling it now.
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Blueblender
Quarternote
Posts: 4
Formerly Known As: Blueblender
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Post by Blueblender on Dec 8, 2020 19:44:06 GMT -5
Ha! I don’t know about that. I really should be playing the guitars more than playing around with them...
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