Is it broken beyond repair?

[Steve Conner]

Shunning terminology is fine if you only ever want to work on things by yourself.

Since there are no magnetic monopoles, every line of force that goes into a magnet must come out of it somewhere else. However, you could still get different gauss readings on the two ends, because some of the flux could escape through the sides of the magnet.

This probably isn't so good for a pickup application. If nothing else, it means the magnet isn't "charged" as strongly as it could be.

The Ebay magnetizer looks nowhere near as strong as the Master Magnetics one. I would ask the seller for an amp-turns rating and if they can't provide one, don't buy it.

[nicholaspaul]

Interesting rig, Jim. Thanks for that. Is the pickup mounted on the two protruding rods in the desktop? What do the two V-shaped things do? Do you have to repeatedly push the two magnets in and out? What does the taller rod do? That's it for questions...!

[nicholaspaul]

Use two neos, one on each side. That's what I do. They charge nice and even.

Simple enough. Just what I need!

Hi Nick

I don't use any timing, just pull them through a couple of times slowly. I do'nt think you will do any harm if you do it more times. I read somewhere that if you open the jaws of the vice with the neos while the pup or magnet is between them, fully, you get a more even charge on both ends of the magnet. seems logical. You would have to knock up a jig to hold the pup or magnet, but that might save some finger bashing. Any thing on the faces of the neos will help to save your fingers. Maybe some hard rubber or Moos Gummi (thats what they call it here in Austria, not sure what it is in English) would do the trick.
Cheers
Andrew

Good to know.. thanks Andrew! I'm not sure we have Moos Gummi in the UK but I'm sure I can find something on eBay.

[Possum]

Not shunning terminology, just not entranced by it thinking its very important. I got into all the techno stuff, LCR meters, frequency analyzers, resonant peak measurements etc. and I do think its very important for a novice to also learn those things because it does give you a look into how coils, alnico, and steel interact with eachother, while doing experiments and prototyping pickups that aren't the same old stuff, but unique ideas as well as the vintage stuff. But once you know those things you really don't need the meters and graphs and charts, and those results can also lead you astray, after all you making pickups to please your LCR meter or making them to please musicians ;-) The only tech piece of gear I use daily is the gaussmeter and multimeter. Terminology and technical instruments can't tell you what kind of winding patter is going to sound really "good" vs one that doesn't, the meters can't give you a winding formula, they just spit out numbers. Nor do inductance readings, AC resistance, Q, or any of that stuff tell you why a vintage pickup sounds amazing, you can have another pickup that has the same readings and not sound anywhere near as good. What does it matter if I talk about domains not lining up, and how do you really know they all DO just because you slapped a magnet on a piece of steel ;-) Maybe they don't, and maybe thats partly why a new piece of steel in a pickup dulls the tone for about a day. Fretting over terminology or theories of why this happens is pointless, the only thing that counts is one sees this happen every time, and you are prepared for it so you don't make mistakes in thinking that after you changed one thing in your prototype that it sucked right off the bat, you have to play it a couple days until it settles and then make a judgement....

Lines of force return to the opposite pole, well except they don't move or flow, until you pluck a string and shake the lines with steel string vibrations. No one really understands what is actually happening in magnets except we know those lines exist, and that there is a "dead zone" in the magnet itself where there is no gauss readings, you can plainly see that area with magnetic viewing paper. If we really knew what magnetism actually is we'd have anti-gravitic cars, but we don't. I read an interesting experiment from the 1800's. They had "sensitives," people who can see energy fields that most of us can't, they put them in a completely light proof room, no visible light of any kind, like a cave underground scenario. They kept them there for about an hour for their eyes to stabilize. Then they brought various substances and materials in and asked them if they could "see" anything and didn't tell them anything about what they brought it, and also said they had something when there was nothing brought in. There were 2 things that stood out, one was quartz crystals which they could see as dim lights, but then they brought in some powerful magnets and they all could see those as almost fountain like lights. So now we stepped into the Twighlight Zone of quantum physics, where everything is light, or vibration ;-) scares some people. With pickups you only progress by dreaming up crazy experiments to see what works and what doesn't, you can learn some amazing things you won't find being discussed anywhere if you get out of the box and don't trust anything you read somewhere unless you prove it for yourself. Terminologies really can't describe alot of things about pickups, so why bother.....

[Steve Conner]

Moos Gummi means "Foam rubber" in German.

Scientists understand just fine how magnets work, they just don't necessarily understand how it all translates into subjective sound terms.

[kayakerca]

Interesting rig, Jim. Thanks for that. Is the pickup mounted on the two protruding rods in the desktop? What do the two V-shaped things do? Do you have to repeatedly push the two magnets in and out? What does the taller rod do? That's it for questions...!

The V-shaped things are no V-shaped. they are my wooden spacers. They are only in the V position so they will stand on edge to make it easier to see them in the photo. I basically only have to put the neo's in and out once tying to maintain the force on each end to be as equal in pull as possible during the in and out motion. The tall brass rod doesn't need to be tall at all, I just found it easier to take in and out which more space to grip. I use the plywood work station for other stuff as well. I use a series of stacked smaller neo's (see below) to charge up the shorter rod magnets to the level of the taller ones on staggered height sets then balance the direction of the field orientation with the larger magnets again, but not putting them as close as for the initial charge. I always test the gauss level with a meter to ensure they are where I want them to be.

The charging gig actually works great for straight sets of rod magnets as you don't have to adjust the individual pieces as they are all the same height. I guess the thing I like about this gig is that the charging process is always 100% perpendicular to the rod magnet ends. Straight in, straight out. Whether that matters is beyond my physics knowledge, but at worst, it can't hurt. ;-)

Is the pickup mounted on the two protruding rods in the desktop?

It setups up like this and the neo's go straight in and straight back out.



Again, I'm just a newbie hobbyist trying to figure out things (mostly from listening to others) that might work to produce pickups players like.

[Mike Sulzer]

No one really understands what is actually happening in magnets except we know those lines exist, and that there is a "dead zone" in the magnet itself where there is no gauss readings, you can plainly see that area with magnetic viewing paper.

Terminology is not particularly important except as it contributes to understanding. You see, you have it backwards. Magnets are understood, and those lines of force do not actually exist. They are just a tool for visualization. And as for moving steel causing those lines of force to wave about, that is nice for visualization, but that does not lead to a useful understanding. It is far better to understand that the permanent field magnetizes the string and that the vibrating string causes a fluctuating field through the coil, therefore inducing a voltage: You can ignore the permanent field except for its function in magnetizing the string. It is so much simpler just to consider the changing field from the string.

Sure, you do not need all those fancy pieces of equipment. In fact, they will do you no good and might even confuse you if you do not understand what is happening and what they tell you.

By the way, there is no "dead zone" in the magnet. The field is weak outside the magnet along the sides away from the poles, and you can visualize why this is so by thinking of concentrated field lines emerging from one pole and returning to the other. They spread out as they loop around, and the concentration of lines is very small along the sides of the magnet.

It is how a pickup sounds that counts, but there is more than one way to approach the goal, making a good sounding pickup.

[Lyrebird Steve]

The only way to know which is which is not lose the label for the magnets when you buy them that tells what alnico you bought.

I have coloured "Sharpie" pens in my workshop. My first order of business when receiving my mags are to mark one edge with a colour to indicate Mag type. Black for A5, Red A2, Green A3 & Blue for A8

If the Mags are precharged I will tend to mark the North side on Bar mags, and the non-Beveled ends of Rod mags.

... Just be aware that if you are dipping your Strat/Tele fiber bobbins in Laquer, the permenant markers become somewhat less permanant

[Possum]

Yes there is a dead zone, it shows on magnet viewing paper and it also reads zero gauss. No, magnets, well we understand what they do, we don't know what magnetism really IS. Earth is a giant magnet, yet no one has invented anything to counter gravity. We don't understand what electricity is either, we just know how to use magnetism and electricity for practical purposes. I do think novices should buy an LCR meter, a gaussmeter, try out frequency analysis methods, get an analyzer that can read peak resonant frequencies and learn to use it and do every crazy experiment possible, record the data, make recordings of test prototypes, otherwise you're kind of shooting in the dark and just guessing what to do to change the sound of pickup; something like a humbucker is an extremely complex interaction of different alloys and magnetic effects, wire gauges and zillions of magnet choices. If you started out with simple single coils and the tech gear you would have tools to begin to understand more complex pickups like buckers. Making good sounding pickups is where it becomes "art," but to do a good painting you have to know materials and what they are made of and how they interact etc etc.

Getting back to magnetism there was work done in the 70's by Rawls and Davis that were mind blowing on the subject of biomagnetism. They did things like raise chickens from birth in a North seeking field and a South seeking field. The S chickens were aggressive, violent, they even killed a cat, they were large and strong, N chickens were small and passive, quiet, peaceful; their results were repeated all over the world by hundreds of others, they devised a way to look into a cross section of the magnetic field and the visuals of that are remarkable. Mainstream science of course refused to even look at their work. They had Japanese visitors who lapped up all the information and went back to Japan and got it all wrong. Thats why you read the poles in Japanese headphones and they are the wrong pole to use facing your head ;-)
I saw this on Youtube, I wonder if it could be real:
Powerfull Alnico Magnets - YouTube

[Joe Gwinn]

All the charge? It does not. The first thing to change is using the word "charge" for magnetization. It implies all the wrong things. The understanding of scientific and technical things must proceed from the basics, not backwards from confused terminology.

It may be confusing, but the standard terminology is that you charge a magnet, as in forcing energy into it. I'll grant that the parallel with charging a capacitor is only approximate, but it's too late to change the language.

[Mike Sulzer]

Is it ever too late too change language? Languages evolve continuously. Even the Redskins football team might have a new name some day. But here is why "forcing energy into it" is not a completely adequate description. It does take energy to align the domains in the same direction, but what keeps them there? Only the fact that as they line up, they drop into a lower energy state; that is, some of that energy must come back out. (OK, the quantum mechanical description is a bit more complicated than that.) Also, you must apply energy in order to destroy the alignment to demagnetize the magnet, but do it in such a way that the domains are allowed to be randomly oriented again. So changing the state of a magnet either way requires energy but results in a lower energy state than than the application of the field initially produced.

It may be confusing, but the standard terminology is that you charge a magnet, as in forcing energy into it. I'll grant that the parallel with charging a capacitor is only approximate, but it's too late to change the language.

[Joe Gwinn]

Is it ever too late too change language? Languages evolve continuously. Even the Redskins football team might have a new name some day. But here is why "forcing energy into it" is not a completely adequate description. It does take energy to align the domains in the same direction, but what keeps them there? Only the fact that as they line up, they drop into a lower energy state; that is, some of that energy must come back out. (OK, the quantum mechanical description is a bit more complicated than that.) Also, you must apply energy in order to destroy the alignment to demagnetize the magnet, but do it in such a way that the domains are allowed to be randomly oriented again. So changing the state of a magnet either way requires energy but results in a lower energy state than than the application of the field initially produced.

Way too pedantic. Will never fly, at least not in our lifetimes. Give it up, Mike.

[Steve Conner]

You must really hate "electret" microphones.

I don't think "charging" is such a bad description for the magnetising process. The magnetic field of a permanent magnet contains stored energy, and if the laws of thermodynamics are any good then that energy had to come from the device that was used to magnetise it.

In the case of magnetising a pickup magnet by waving a large neo magnet near it, the energy comes from the mechanical work done in pulling the neo magnet away.

[Mike Sulzer]

To pedantic? Then try an analogy. The world is full of little mechanical things that can stay in two or more states, requiring work to move them from one state to another. Such as a toggle switch, or a rotary switch.

[eschertron]

I'll throw a log on the fire here: "charging" is a *first* law of thermodynamics word, implying energy in a measurable way went into or out of a system. I pay the electric company when I charge the 9v batteries from my wireless rig.
What word do we want to use for this *second* law operation, where we are describing the entropy that changes in a system? Yeah, maybe "charging", but I agree with Mike that it's an imperfect word at best, and in a physical sense, not applicable at all. Are you "charging" up a barn when you line up all the boards from a pile into the structure we recognize as a barn? Is it "discharging" when it rots and collapses, sending all the component boards into disarray? Substitute *iron* and *magnet* for boards and barn. Does it still make sense?
... after all this rant, I don't have a good word to suggest as a replacement, sorry.