Liquid Pickups

[Mike Sulzer]

One way to tell is to cut radial slits in the steel baseplate to interrupt any eddy currents therein. Ideally, the slits will be parallel to the magnetic flux and perpendicular to the eddy currents, so flux is unchanged while eddy currents are largely disrupted.

That is a good idea. Below the pole pieces, the field points through the plate, but as you go out it bends over and you pickup a component in the plane of the plate. Cutting the slots as you suggest maximally interrupts the eddy current which wants to circulate around the plate.

So if you do this to the plate and the resulting pickup no longer sounds like a tele, then you know that the tele sound is due in part, but significantly so, to eddy currents in the base plate.