Alnico 8?

[Spence]

I find A3 in the absence of AlNi is great for very early Fender tones. A3 makes a nice neck bucker and tele neck pickup. Also it's the ideal P90 magnet.
It does have a tendency to be overpowered by pickups with other grades of alnico so be careful what you match it with. tonally it's very similar to A5.

[Zhangliqun]

To me, A3 is like A2 with more sparkle (clean) and sizzle (overdriven) and a touch less low mids. A3 rod mags do make for wonderful vintage-flavored Tele and Strat pu's.

I have heard that A3 doesn't hold a charge as well as the others but I don't know if that's true.

[soundmasterg]

Well, with the Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates bridge pickup which has A2 in it stock, the pickup was aggressive and sparkly, with lots of harmonics, but was too bright and kind of thin. Putting the A3 in it definitly brought the power output down to where I had to back the neck pickup (SD Alnico 2 Pro)down a bit to balance the volume. It also changed the tonal spectrum a bit and made the whole thing more aggressive, with the highs still there but not so present. The lows are tight, the mids are rich....its very balanced now and sounds to my ears a lot like Dave's Broadcaster pickup in overall character. Listen to the sound samples on his site for that one. I'm hoping to get some sound samples of the PG with the A3 but haven't had a chance yet. To me its the perfect magnet for a vintage style PAF in the bridge position as long as the neck pickup isn't too powerful.

[Guitarist]

Reading this makes me realize I have to get some A2 and A8 magnets someplace soon! Definitely a missing piece to a certain tone frustration I'm getting comparing guitars/tones here.

[Possum]

I haven an A8 magnet I never used, fully charged its up over 1000 gauss, where most A5 maxs out at 700 or so. C8 holds about the same charge. The best way to degauss alnico is use a ceramic bar mag and oppose the poles on the alnico til you get it down to where you want, it'll take several tries. You also have to take the ceramic and put it attracting the alnico poles after you oppose because alnico will bounce back after you oppose it, this insures you have a stable charge. You can use a jeweler's demagnetizing table on a variac too, but its just easier to do it with a ceramic bar, so I don't have to run down to the shop over and over.