Blade Style Pickup - Ceramic Magnet Orientation

[Mike Sulzer]

Still, it’s what we know — that ain’t so — that gets us into trouble

It seems that most of the debate is with guys that do very little or no winding!
The PV book was just trying to get some elementary points across.
No harm, no foul!
T

[Freekmagnet]

Ha-ha

I had no idea that an inquiry about ceramic magnet orientation would inspire so much controversy!

Anyway, I hit a little speed bump today; I had this complete POS P-Bass I was going to swimming pool route and use it as a mule. I gave it to some kid to use indefinitely until he could get his own bass. He got a new bass and then gave the POS to his friend. I wasn't bummed only 'cuz I said he could have it and at the time, I wasn't expecting to need it for anything or even see it again.

I was just beginning to get excited about the idea of winding these bobbins! On the mule hunt.

[rjb]

The beauty of the endeavor of making pickups is that it lies at the intersection of art and science.
It can be as simple as wrapping some wire around a magnet, or as complex as designing the next Alumitone.

Maybe the guys with big physics chops don't need to wind a lot- because they get it right the first time.
Or, at least they avoid wasted effort winding down blind alleys.
[Some punny reference to the "Long and Winding Road" should go here, buy it's not coming to me.]
I would count "Dr. Scott Hexcoil" among MEF members who both know and wind a lot.

Regarding the mule search, check out Rondo Music.

If you are considering going for the "full T-40 experience", this may be of interest:
(To really get the full experience, fortify the body with lead fishing weights.)

I never considered the patented tone circuit very useful in my T-60- perhaps because the pickups were so muddy in humbucking mode (they were later redesigned with taller, thinner blades and smaller coil area).

[Freekmagnet]

The beauty of the endeavor of pickup making is that it lies at the intersection of art and science.
It can be as simple as wrapping some wire around a magnet, or as complex as designing the next Alumitone.

Maybe the guys with big physics chops don't need to wind a lot- because they get it right the first time.
Or, at least they avoid wasted effort winding down blind alleys.
[Some punny reference to the "Long and Winding Road" should go here, buy it's not coming to me.]
I would count "Dr. Scott Hexcoil" among MEF members who both know and wind a lot.

Regarding the mule search, check out Rondo Music.

If you are considering going for the "full T-40 experience", this may be of interest:
(To really get the full experience, fortify the body with lead fishing weights.)

I never considered the patented tone circuit very useful on my T-60- perhaps because the pickups were so muddy in humbucking mode (they were later redesigned with taller, thinner blades and smaller coil area).

Oh yeah, Rondo - I've heard that their basses are pretty good for $119. Thanks for reminding me about that. I'm going to ask around and give a couple of quick cruises though CL and see I turn anything up.

That "Secret Sounds" video is actually pretty cool. I've watched it a few times before. I've played a few T40's in local shops and always surprised by how I like them in a weird way. The T40 was like a chock full of interesting ideas that never really took off. They play pretty well but yeah, they are as heavy as a bass can be. I can't imagine ever owning one.

There's another video out there of guy demoing a T45 - the single pickup model - that's pretty cool as well. I've never actually seen a T45 in person. The guy in the video demos the various mid cuts and "boosts" with the single tone knob. I imagine it's one of those circuits with a transformer on the tone knob. I love instruments that strive to get as much as they can out of one pickup. The funny part is, I never use the passive tone control on my bass. It seems like if you're going to make adjustments to a room when you're playing live, it's really the midrange you'll want to attenuate. It may or may not work in practice, but it will be a fun thing to experiment with.

I'm trying to build a pickup for this one-pickup bass I'm building. I think that these T40 coils will fit into a MM cover no prob, so I ordered one to see how that works. That's your standard route right there. I can cut a little faux toaster plate out of nickel silver to glue onto the face of it to give the pickup that '74 Olds Cutlass Supreme vibe that I really love about it. I'll mess around with this pickup design for a bit and maybe try another out as well. I'll seee which one I like best for this bass.

[rjb]

They play pretty well but yeah, they are as heavy as a bass can be.

Did you know PV did that because conventional wisdom was you needed a heavy instrument for good sustain?
They thought they were "giving the customer what he wants"!
T-60 designer Chip Todd knew it was hooey, and demonstrated by doing this to his own guitar:

[SpareRibs]

It seems that most of the debate is with guys that do very little or no winding!
The PV book was just trying to get some elementary points across.
No harm, no foul!
T

Hello,
I got into the conversation because rjb and myself were involved in research into the T60 Peavey pickups some time ago. I have successfully built a winder and have wound more than a few pickups. I came to the conclusion that winding the T60 pickups as replacement's for the current guitars may violate trademark laws. As far as selling them on the open market, as you well know how much of a struggle that can be.
When I commented on the same thing you referred to, as far as the Peavey publication, you see what happened. The publication tells you bare bones what you need to know without delving into a great deal of detail.
You do not need to have a PHD to make modifications to either a guitar or an amplifier. You do not have to understand the physics of why things work, just be confident that they do and are common practice. The degree that some people put into analyzing everything to death down to the last minute detail just grates my nerves sometime.

[Mike Sulzer]

The degree that some people put into analyzing everything to death down to the last minute detail just grates my nerves sometime.

Then why do you like Peavy? He is the one who writes "technical" things for the purpose of selling his products based on his good ideas that he cannot explain completely to his customers because they do not know what he does. By your own admission you do not understand these technical things. If you recommend what he writes as good technical explanations that just go deep enough, then you should not object when someone who does understand points out that his explanations are wrong and gives an example. You have taken the design route where you reject learning what has been discovered about electricity and magnetism since the 1800s. That is fine from my point of view, but you have to accept the limitations that imposes on you when it comes to discussing writings that claim to use that knowledge.

[rjb]

You do not need to have a PHD to make modifications to either a guitar or an amplifier. You do not have to understand the physics of why things work, just be confident that they do and are common practice.

No, you don't need to understand physics to build a pickup, but understanding the physics does help if you want to do something new or different that is not common practice.

EDIT:
I like that MEFers who understand the physics share their knowledge.
For instance, if I wound and tested a couple thousand pickups, I might notice that metal covers can dull the sound. I may even figure out that different metals have more effect than others. But there is no way I would "discover" eddy currents and link them to metal resistivity. And there is no way I would come up with the trick of slotting a pickup ring or cover to block circulating currents.

As for common practice, sometimes it is nothing more than that. Take the old belief that guitars needed to be heavy for good sustain. In the building trades, recent research has shown that just about everything everyone "knew" about insulation, ventilation, and vapor barriers in regard to condensation was wrong. It wasn't until physicists starting getting involved (when housing units built for efficiency in the '70s were falling apart within a few years) that "common knowledge" held since the '20s began being questioned.

Now, back to building those blade bass pickups....

[John Kolbeck]

For example, you can use soft magnetic ferrite cores with essentially no conductivity (and no permanent magnetism), but low or high permeability, and induce the magnetism in them with any magnet you like, and get very high Q over a range of resonant frequencies. Just not one of the two main things that caught on.

Do you happen to know of a readily available material that could be used as a pole piece that would be low on conductivity, high on permeability, to get a more AlNiCo-like performance with an under mounted magnet (aside from just using AlNiCo)?

[David King]

I think it's the relative coercivity of alnico magnets that give them their characteristic sound. The string moving above the alnico pole partially demagnetizes and re-magnetizes the tip of the alnico as it vibrates. Ceramic and rare earth magnets are much "stiffer".

[John Kolbeck]

I think it's the relative coercivity of alnico magnets that give them their characteristic sound. The string moving above the alnico pole partially demagnetizes and re-magnetizes the tip of the alnico as it vibrates. Ceramic and rare earth magnets are much "stiffer".

Coercivity is just the magnet's ability to retain a magnetic charge. The permeability or a material is the ability to support the formation of a magetnic field, so that would have more to do with how much the magnetic field strength changes, or becomes more or less concentrated, as the string moves towards and away from the magnet, and it appears that the permeability of steel is higher than AlNiCo, so it would exhibit more of that forming/deforming activity than AlNiCo.

It looks like the conductivity of steel is already pretty low compared to nickel Conductive Materials or Metal Conductivity - TIBTECH innovations -, so it doesn't seem that it would be responsible for causing much eddy current, either. IMO, the sound people associate with AlNiCo comes from the fact that it magnetizes the string much more strongly than do pole pieces, which is why "Stratitus" is a thing. Ceramic might be stronger than AlNiCo by itself, but not when it's used in an under-mount/pole piece context.

[SpareRibs]

Then why do you like Peavy? He is the one who writes "technical" things for the purpose of selling his products based on his good ideas that he cannot explain completely to his customers because they do not know what he does. By your own admission you do not understand these technical things. If you recommend what he writes as good technical explanations that just go deep enough, then you should not object when someone who does understand points out that his explanations are wrong and gives an example. You have taken the design route where you reject learning what has been discovered about electricity and magnetism since the 1800s. That is fine from my point of view, but you have to accept the limitations that imposes on you when it comes to discussing writings that claim to use that knowledge.

Hello,
OK, if I am so blind maybe you can bring me up to what has happened since the 1800's. I am however waiting for you to explain magnetism and its effect on creating inductance. I know Peavey tried and failed miserably. Hopefully you can pull me out of that fog.

[John Kolbeck]

Hello,
OK, if I am so blind maybe you can bring me up to what has happened since the 1800's. I am however waiting for you to explain magnetism and its effect on creating inductance. I know Peavey tried and failed miserably. Hopefully you can pull me out of that fog.

This looks pretty good http://web.mit.edu/viz/EM/visualizat...es/guide10.pdf Just skip past the equations and refer to the plain-english text and diagrams.

[SpareRibs]

This looks pretty good http://web.mit.edu/viz/EM/visualizat...es/guide10.pdf Just skip past the equations and refer to the plain-english text and diagrams.

Hello,
I would prefer to wait for Mike to explain it, I would hate to look at something that didn't meet his standards.

[Freekmagnet]

Throughout this debate, I've refrained from pointing out a huge irony to me personally in the interest of keeping the peace on this thread; I'm really here to look for advice and share the documentation of this build. But, I'll tell you all this irony because it is interesting nonetheless.

As my day job, I work in marketing and advertising. I've art directed printed media pieces for a number of high end audio and consumer electronics companies. In fact, my creative director has done some work for Peavey in decades past, and for all I know, he may have written the copy for this piece posted here earlier.

What this represents to me is the ongoing battle between engineering and marketing. It's up there with Pepsi vs. Coke. Engineers are tasked with coming up with an elegant and innovative way to solve technical problems in creating a product that will eventually make the everyday person's life easier. That doesn't necessarily mean that engineers are particularly good at selling these inventions to the average consumer. In fact, most of the time, if you ask an engineer, "What makes your fabulous invention (product) better than brand X, Y or Z?" Most of the time you'll get either a blank stare or a litany of features. This doesn't just apply to engineers - in fact, it often goes all the way up the chain all the way up to the brand's CEO. What most people tasked with selling a brand don't understand is that the average consumer really doesn't care what the features or benefits of a particular product are. In fact, the consumer could care less how a product actually does what it does. What consumers want and what they are buying is the experience of using that product.

You'd be surprised by how many people don't understand this. I don't even know if Hartley Peavey understands this. I've written elsewhere as to why I believe that Peavey never has been and never will be considered a particularly prestigious brand regardless of the quality of their product, but I'll refrain from boring you with my opinions regarding this matter for now.

The point as to weather or not Hartley Peavey's statements in the brochure are technically factual or correct is completely moot. The brochure is a marketing piece, and yes, its intent is to sell Peavey's product. The consumer reading it doesn't really care if it's completely correct; the consumer just wants to know if there's a good reason to buy into the Peavey experience.

Was the wrong to point out that Hartley Peavey's statements were incorrect? Of course not. This is a forum about the technical aspects of pickup design and construction; this is the perfect place to point these errors out. Is it wrong to debate the virtues of inductance and magnetism on this forum? Of course not. I'm just pointing out the bitter irony that no matter where I go in my life, even when I ask a fairly pedestrian question on a forum about ceramic magnet orientation, it all boils down to marketing.