Ideal Thin Axially Charged Pickup Magnet

[big_teee]

Single coils.

[Rick Turner]

Be careful with Alnico. Various grades have different sensitivity to aspect ratio. If you get it wrong, they'll self-demagnetize too easily. Just get custom cut ceramics.

[peskywinnets]

I'm after some, but for my needs those dimensions are too great....be interested to hear who is making 'em for you though!

[peskywinnets]

wait for it .....56mm x 3.5mm x 1.6mm (sorry about using base 10)

[Rick Turner]

An alternative...

When I first started to make the first generation of Alembic pickups...after going through all my Radio Shack magnet experiments...I got a diamond saw, bought unmagnetized raw ceramic magnet blocks, and cut my own magnets and then charged them. Frankly, it wasn't that big of a deal, and it gave me incredible flexibility over magnet shape and dimensions.

Now I get my ceramic magnets custom made by Bunting. I order 100 at a time. It's a few hundred bucks.

[Rick Turner]

Well, now, that's the crux of the matter, isn't it?

Are you a pickup maker or a pickup winder?

If you're a maker, issues like custom cut magnets, custom bobbins, etc., etc., are what you love about this craft...it's a whole experience thing; you live to solve problems, to figure out how to do what you want on a budget. You suck it up and buy minimum quantities of stuff...even if that means you just committed to making 100 pickups of a certain design. For prototyping, you get creative. Sometimes you take the leap of faith and go for that 100 pickups worth of magnets or whatever. Of course it helps to have enough pickup making under your belt to be able to be reasonably accurate about predicting results.

But I hadn't made but about two dozen (or less) pickups before I just bit the bullet and got the diamond saw. Of course, I was also slabbing out abalone shell on it to make inlays, so it was a dual purpose tool. But that diamond saw, with it's power feeder, helped make magnets for at least forty Alembic basses and guitars before we just standardized and had them cut for us.

Winding is just one small part of pickup making. To me, only winding would be like only doing fret mills in a guitar factory...not for me.

[jonson]

Iv'e been making De armond clones for a few years now T and have A5/4, ceramic and rubber mags for them made in China. PM me.

[Rick Turner]

I'm just being honest, and frankly, if my suggestion of cutting your own magnets is offensive to you, then good luck. The saw was NOT a huge investment, and I bought it before we even started Alembic as an official business. I HAD to have control over my magnets because of the design direction I was headed, and my commitment to my craft was deep enough to go to that solution.

Let's see...might you have a community college nearby with a lapidary course? Go see if you can sign up and use the diamond saw. No big deal. At two times in my career I signed up for adult ed classes...once a wood shop course where I went in, talked to the instructor, and basically just got access to a full wood shop when I didn't have one. Cost me twenty bucks a month. Another time I took two semesters of a machine shop course so I could have access to a Bridgeport to make parts for Alembic bridges and tailpieces. There are ways to get access to tools, to supplies, to expertise if you just stretch your mind a little bit.

I do not see why those here who consider themselves only to be winders have such a hard time with the concept that if you want custom parts, you're going to have to get lucky, make them yourselves, or suck it up and buy minimum quantities. You guys have so much more access to parts than we did 40 years ago it's pitiful, and what we see and get here is a lot of grief. You never had it so good. Man up and make the parts you can't find.

Hell, there's a "makers' club" in Palo Alto where you can join up and even have access to a CNC laser cutter. You can get bobbins laser cut by Michael Gurian, or any of dozens of places around the world. 3D printing of plastic parts has become common, and you can send files via email and get parts cheaply. The knowledge of how to make silicon rubber molds and direct cast pickups is all over this site and all over the web. You can do a lot of this stuff by hand and get good results. I made all my early Alembic pickup masters out of Plexiglas by hand, and buffed them on a drill press with a buffing wheel. Results good enough to sell. You don't have to invent these technologies, they're in your face.

Making a lot of the parts you need to make pickups is just not that big a deal if you open your mind to creative solutions.

You want to just wind, then buy your pickup kits and wind. You want to go beyond that, then figure it out or ask, and don't complain if you don't like the answers that guys like Jason and I are likely to give you. The answers may mean you have to learn new skills, and that you spend less time being lulled into hypnosis by the whirring of the bobbins and more time...uggh, oh, horror of horrors...making pickup parts.

But if you learn these skills, you won't be stuck making minor variations on a theme being played by everyone else. You'll be able to be original...for what it's worth.

[WolfeMacleod]

Terry
Rick has some very valuable input here and, IMO, should be paid attention to. He's very helpful if you know what he's saying and, to me, it look like he's attempting to guide without holding hands and wiping people's butts for them. A Point in the right direction, without just giving away the hard earned knowledge. The best kind of teacher teaches you how to LEARN - which it appears to me he's trying to teach. Unfortunately, people don't seem to be paying attention or take it an being an insult, self-righteous, egotistical, etc.

Wax on, wax off, if you know what I mean.

[Rick Turner]

No, Terry, you don't get it.

You want custom sized magnets? Make them if you don't want to buy 100 of them.

MAKE THEM. You can be the source.

Get an unmagnetized block of Ceramic V or VIII, find yourself a diamond saw, and cut the damned things yourself. Then zap them. It's just not that big a deal. Tellling you that that is a solution to your problem was not a thread hijack; it was and is a very real solution to your dilemma, a solution which you choose to ignore and/or reject because all you seem to want to do is wind pickups, not, horror of horrors, make pickup parts.

I assume you've done all the usual web searches for what you're looking for and could not find exactly the right size. Then you asked here. Someone may have them. Someone may be willing to go in with you on a buy of custom made magnets. But I don't see a line at the door, so to speak, of suppliers vying for your business.

So make the things yourself. If I could do it in 1969 at the tender age of 26 in the dark ages of independent pickup making, then anybody here should be able to do it with all the access to tools, parts, and supplies that you have available to you now.

If you're going to actually design pickups and not clone existing ones with off the shelf parts, you're going to have to get a lot more familiar with how to make stuff...all kinds of stuff. You're going to have to learn about metal fabrication, plastics, perhaps how to cut very hard materials successfully (ever try to machine Alnico? There's some fun...). You may have to invest in some weird gear...a magnet charger? OK, you can do a lot with neo, but not everything. There is a basic "buy in" if you take on making original designs of pickups, and maybe it's just not the thing for the casual hobbyist.

Hey, when I was a kid, I knew a retired machinist who built steam engines from scratch in his basement. He didn't get stymied because he couldn't buy the boiler the right size, he made them. That's dedication to a hobby and a craft.

Sometimes I just cannot believe what I read here...

[Rick Turner]

Wolfe, thanks.

I'm not one to deny that I've been there and done that with a lot of this stuff. You want to know how to do it, I'll tell you. You don't like the answer, go find another one. What I'm saying is stuff that worked for me, and it's real. If my solutions are too much of a pain in the ass, find a better solution and let us know. I'd be glad to learn more.

[Mike Sulzer]

Neos come in a huge variety of sizes and shapes; They are low permeability and so are not affected by other magnetic materials nearby. They are inexpensive.

Remember, a magnet does not have a "sound"; it has properties. A pickup has a "sound", and it comes from a combination of things. Neos can help you simplify the interactions.

[Rick Turner]

Terry, I just laid out to you all the options I know of for getting exactly the magnets you seem to want. How is that keeping you out of my market? You are not competition for me in any way whatsoever. And if you were, I'd share any and all relevant information with you, just like I have with several pro pickup makers (yeah, they wind 'em, too) who post here.

Read what I wrote without your own "I only want to wind" prejudices. You hide behind this "I'm just a poor amateur" persona, and what I see is someone who just doesn't want to do the work to get the parts he thinks he needs for a particular project. I know plenty of retired hobbiest amateur stuff makers who will go the final mile to achieve what they want to do. You won't even think about getting off your butt to do this. You want what you want delivered in the mail, ordered from the comfort of your easy chair. Sometimes you've got to get up and away from the computer monitor to get what you want. Sometimes you've got to get creative and figure out how to make things you can't buy at Ace Hardware.

If you want custom sized ceramic magnets, then you can cut them yourself or suck it up and buy a few hundred bucks worth from companies like Bunting.

If you want really thin Alnico magnets, then you may be in danger of not understanding the aspect ratio for long term stability.

If you want to design a magnetic circuit that may involve some polepiece material, then neo-dim magnets may work...and you may have to learn how to cut, mill, drill steel.

How is any of this information keeping you as the competition away from doing this? Unless you think I'm deliberately lying to you...

To me this is like when the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans published a sketchbook by Barry Price on all the steps of building one of my Model 1 guitars. It was a beautiful book that went out to all the members. A person asked me this: "Rick, you're giving all your secrets away. Aren't you afraid people will be able to figure out how to make your guitars themselves?" To which I answered, "The thing they'll figure out is how hard it is."

So David(s) or Mike or Joe or Jason or I or anybody here can tell you how to do something. Don't think that the truth is an attempt to keep you from doing it. There is a massive amount of information available here from people who are willing to share. If you choose not to take advantage of that, it's on you.

[Ronsonic]

Aren't you afraid people will be able to figure out how to make your guitars themselves?" To which I answered, "The thing they'll figure out is how hard it is."

Ayup.

This thread is weird. I'm only seeing Rick's replies to invisible arguments. Did someone delete the other party (Terry)?

Anyway, good advice Rick. This stuff can all be made, it is basic, problematic* engineering and fabrication. There is the beaten path and parts abound - oh joy, someone has yet another take on the late 50's Strat. For anything off that path there's normal design and sourcing solutions.

* I use that word the way engineers do, it just means a thing is a problem to be solved, not voodoo or new science or anything but a regular, normal sort of a problem to be worked out through research and testing.

[hariossa]

Oh, c'mon big_tee! this was a useful thread no matter what... why thrash it by deleting the first message and your replies?