Stacking Mags

[kevinT]

I haven't tried it yet, but I was thinking... has anyone ever tried to stack 2 humbucker magnets together one on top of the other? If so, what was the outcome? Did you glue them together?

I want to try this with A2 mags next time I get a minute.

[Mark Hammer]

If memory serves, didn't Alembic briefly market a Strat "enhancement" kit that involved extra bar magnets to stick to the bottom of the pickups?

[David Schwab]

The Gibson Iommi pickup has two magnets stacked on the bottom and even another magnet on top of the coils.

On the bottom are two magnets, a shorter ceramic on top of a longer alnico II. Then on top was a short alnico II.

Real interesting design... the Patent number is 5792973.

No reason you couldn't try something similar.

Alembic did indeed sell a ceramic magnet made to stick under Strat pickups. I thought that was cool, so I used that same idea when I stuck a ceramic magnet under a P bass pickup.

DiMarzio sell Jazz bass pickups that use alnico poles charged with a ceramic magnet.

[David King]

I just did a J pickup with A5s and two ceramic bars across the bottom. It stunk!

[David Schwab]

I just did a J pickup with A5s and two ceramic bars across the bottom. It stunk!

Probably sounded like an Ultrajazz! Actually I have no idea what they sound like.

They have 4 coils though, so they probably need the extra magnet power.

[Mark Hammer]

I just did a J pickup with A5s and two ceramic bars across the bottom. It stunk!

Gotta remember that Alembic did that in the early-to-mid 70's....back when the acid was just finally wearing off and everybody thought that DiMarzio Super Distortion Strat replacements sounded really good. I didn't say it was a great idea. I merely said they did it.

[Mike Sulzer]

The alnico magnets of a strat pickup cause string pull if the pickup is too close to the strings. So why would you want to add another magnet? To try to make the field even stronger? I hope everyone realizes that if you make the magnetic field stronger at the strings with a more powerful magnet, but then lower the pickup to get the field at the strings back to an acceptable level, you will get less output from the pickup, not more.

Another possible effect of placing a really string magnet on the back of the pickup would be to saturate the alnico, lowering its permeability, causing a loss of output and increasing resonant frequency of the pickup by lowering the inductance. Probably not what you want to do.

On the other hand, if you believe that the field strength is important at places other than the strings, maybe you think that a magnet behind the coil has some special effect.

[bill raymond]

Alembic ceramics

Alembic had a humbucker hotrodding kit, too. It was a couple of ceramic magnets to replace the AlNiCos. The ceramics were thicker than the AlNiCos, so they included a couple wood shims. I used them years ago to make a filtertron-style pickup--1000 turns of #38 or #39 ( I can't remember which) on each bobbin, 12 #6-32 screws for polepieces. It worked very well.

[Possum]

....

Yeah, I see this alot and I remember those hot rod kits back then. I just restored an early TTop I got for cheap on Ebay, had a thick ceramic magnet and thick wood spacer. The downside is the slugs sunk way below the bobbin top and look really stupid :-) Alot of those old buckers have hot rod magnets in them...

[David King]

Hmmm,
this is all very interesting.

[Peter Naglitsch]

Back to the original question from Kevin:
What was the reason for you to try that? I ask because I have been tinkering with a FilterTron "sound-alike". In the patent and in other documentations I have seen that they used a much thicker A5 magnet (I see 1/4" mentioned at one place). So to get a more accurate Gretsch sound I have been looking for thicker magnets but without any luck (I don't want to order specially made magnets for this...) And as one of my magnet suppliers swears that if you can stick two magnets together side by side they will form a single homogeneous magnetic field, I have started to contemplate to just do that. So I have the same question as Kevin: Anyone tried it? What is the best way of dong this? Superglue?

[Dave Kerr]

Sounds like it might be an opportunity to be creative, I could seen an enterprising sort mixing up a slurry of epoxy or ployester adhesive with a bit of ferrous material to produce a proprietary sandwich mix. Maybe the Aussies can call it Magemite.

[David Schwab]

I'd use super glue or epoxy. Superglue should work. I use super glue in many aspects of building pickups (and lutherie in general). I'd be lost without the stuff.

[Zhangliqun]

Magnetic Hold will make 1/4" thick mags for you. I've got a bunch in the ol' magnet chest o' drawers...

[David King]

I'd stick the magnets together with the same stuff you used to stick them to the base plate. Hot wax or hot glue works just fine. CA is perfectly acceptable as David Schwabe has suggested but it makes it a bit tougher to pop them apart later if you ever needed to do that.

With ceramic C8 bars costing about .10 ea from China, I'd go that route in a hurry if I thought I was going to stick with a thick magnet design.