Noiseless bass

[Achiles]

It happened again,it´s the second pickup i find (fender bass noiseless ceramic on botton) that comes with a dead slug,
no magnetic field,i took it away from pickup and it looks like aluminiun or brass,there is no magnetic attraction.

[Lovelock]

Have often seen sloppy & very loose windings on fender "vintage noiseless" pickups. Never had a similar problem with the slugs though..

[David King]

Achiles,
Isn't there a plastic bobbin that you can just press the slug out of and replace it with a steel one?

[David Schwab]

Why would Fender have aluminum or (plated) brass slugs laying around anyway? Also, it it were aluminum it wouldn't be nickel plated. It's hard to plate aluminum, you can't just throw it in with the steel slugs.

If it's on the pickup they must have wanted it there.

[Achiles]

Visualy the slugs are identical.
David,i took it off and i think it´s
possible to damage the winding once i can see
the cooper wire in inner "hole".
Bobbins are plastic but assembled like . forbon

[David Schwab]

Was it the same slug on the last one you had? maybe they are trying to control the volume on one of the strings.

[Achiles]

volum drops by 50%.
polepiece is the same.

[David Schwab]

polepiece is the same.

Then if they are doing it on the same string as the last one, it was intentional.

[Achiles]

David there is a big diference in volum,
i don't think it's intentional.
Probably not magnetizable slug
used to make dummy coil

[David Schwab]

David there is a big diference in volume, i don't think it's intentional. Probably not magnetizable slug used to make dummy coil

It's just one pole? How does that make a dummy coil?

Those are stacked pickups. The hum canceling coil is the one on the bottom. Some stacked pickups do use steel slugs in the bottom coil, like the DiMarzio Virtual Vintage pickups, but they wouldn't use aluminum. On those pickups the top coil has the magnets.

I've not examined any of the Fender noiseless pickups. They were designed by one of the guys from EMG.

If they stuck one non magnetic slug in with the magnets, on two different pickups, and in the same location, it's intentional and probably made to tame the output of one string.

I have not heard of them doing this anywhere else though. I'll have to ask around to see if I know anyone with those pickups.

[David King]

Definitely a mistake. All the noiseless pickups I've measured had similar gauss all the way across.

[David Schwab]

Definitely a mistake. All the noiseless pickups I've measured had similar gauss all the way across.

Weird. Why would they have non magnetic, and presumably plated slugs around, and how would they end up in two pickups in the same location?

[Achiles]

It's not in the same location.iI think it's a mistake to.
Yamaha has a soapbar model ,a dual jb but just one is magnetic.
Probably some lost non magnetizable slug in the batch(fron a china company who sells diferent slug material to
others pickup makers.Yamaha?)