strat pickups

[MrCandy]

For a pickup as bare bones as a Strat pickup the biggest variable tonally beyond getting the tension wire and winding pattern correct is the magnet. At the very least you have to send the magnet you are copying to a magnetics place and have them run a BH curve. Ideally you want to have an xray spectrograph made but that will trash the magnet. Right now I'm working on cloning a machine wound 64' Strat pickup. I got magnet samples from the 3 remaining USA magnet makers and they all sound radically different even though they are all A5.

I agree that magnets influence tone, but not so radically like pattern does.
Magnets of the same type but from different manufacturers practically do not change AFC
they only can give different responsiveness on same frequency by means of various BH.
Here is spectrograms of pickups from sound samples we have posted earlier.
Using same magnets from different manufacturers you can not ever get such a difference if AFC and in sound also.

Strat 57-62



Our pickup

[JGundry]

I respectfully suggest you try a larger variety of magnets. It is very expensive to do but I believe you will startled by the tonal differences even within a given Alnico grade. A given grade of Alnico can have radically different BH curves and still fall within the same Alnico grade.

[MrCandy]

I respectfully suggest you try a larger variety of magnets. It is very expensive to do but I believe you will startled by the tonal differences even within a given Alnico grade. A given grade of Alnico can have radically different BH curves and still fall within the same Alnico grade.

We conducted this kind of tests and we can say that in our opinion PICKUP TONE is pickup AFC and attack characteristics(specifically reaction time at certain frequencies).
When we use the same coil with different magnets(same grade) from variety of manufacturers then AFC stays the same and you will hear practically no dif in sustain,
however there will be minor difference in attack chars at different frequencies. There can not be any discussion about fantastic radical difference.
We showed you radical influence of AFC on sustain tone above.

Here is 2 pickups wounded the same but magnets are from different manufacturers(A5)
also this magnets have different diameters and this is made for you to understand
that even in this case you will not hear sustain difference as we showed above.

1) magnet D- 0.187


2) magnet D- 0.195



Now here is sound samples for you to compare:
1) magnet D- 0.187
Single blues II test A5 0.187.mp3
2) magnet D- 0.195
Single blues II test A5 0.195.mp3

I want to say for the umpteenth time that if you that If we are talking about pickups clone making,
then you must take original pickup AFC and make your clone AFC look practically identical(materials you use must be identical of course 2 anyway).