416 stainless steel pole pieces and slugs

[bajaman]

Oh - please excuse my comment, I am so sorry to read that Pepe - that must have been terrible for you, but you still have your memory of them i guess. I miss my parents very much - lots of happy memories of when I was a younger man :-)
Take care my friend - thanks for all your help on this fine forum.
kindest regards
Steve

[David Schwab]

I've used 430 grade for pickup blades. You have to watch your design, as the highs can get harsh sounding.

[tedmich]

I can get 5000 of each from a manufacturer in China (15 cents each) but that is a lot more pieces than i need.
Cheers
Steve

As an aside I have encountered MANY Chinese suppliers who will quote anything your desire but ship you something entirely different... While your supplier may be wholly trustworthy, caveat emptor.

[NateRS]

lol - ok, the thread has gone well and truly off the rails now - no problem though. I will eventually locate a source of 416, 420, or 430 pole screws and slugs to experiment with but not prepared to outlay several hundred dollars at this point in time. I will say that i have tried exactly the same thing as Pepe with replacement screws, keeper bar and slugs in some Chinese humbuckers I purchased from Donlis Musical Instruments on AliExpress - US$25.00 for a pair of alnico II bridge and neck pickups. And yes, I got very close to the response of the SDAH pickups using the existing magnet (gauss adjusted to match the SD) some 1215 unplated slugs that I hand cut with a hacksaw and 1018 unplated screw poles from Dennis at Addiction FX. The magic did not appear though until I replaced the shielded 4 core cable with the vintage braided push back wire, and then - there it was! the Donlis pickups are reasonably well made and excellent value for the low price but, the wiring is incorrect - they come with the black wire connected to ground instead of the green wire. The correct wiring is: Black, signal output; Green, ground; and red and white connected together - hope that makes sense! It does indeed appear to be the case that, the lower the carbon content the better the tone and output level. 1215 has only half the carbon content of 1018 steel (0.09% vs 0.18% ). I am waiting the arrival of some 1010 unplated slugs and 1010 nickel plated pole screws from Dennis at Addiction FX - the 1010 slugs will be very similar to the 1215 perhaps ? I am picking the 1010 pole screws will make a bigger difference though - we shall see. Dennis has told me he did the metallurgy test on a vintage PAF pickup, and the screws were made of 1010 alloy More when they arrive ;-)
cheers
Steve

Steve,

It looks like you could just take the poles and slugs out of a Gibson humbucker if you want to try out 416 stainless steel. According to Gibson's website, Burstbuckers, CustomBuckers, the 490 series and 57 classics all use that alloy for both the slugs and poles on their humbuckers. If you don't like the sound just put it back in the original humbucker and sell it off.

I was surprised that Gibson released this much info on their website, they even list the number of turns used on the humbucker coils. You just have to scroll down to the Electronics section for each guitar description:

Ace Frehley 1959 Les Paul Standard

[Joe Gwinn]

Type 416 (et al) is available from McMaster-Carr in the US. Don't know if they ship to Oz, but here is a start.

https://www.mcmaster.com/#standard-s...heets/=15y904r

Look for: Easy-to-Machine Wear-Resistant 416 Stainless Steel Sheets and Bars

[David Schwab]

I was surprised that Gibson released this much info on their website, they even list the number of turns used on the humbucker coils. You just have to scroll down to the Electronics section for each guitar description:

I would take some of this with a grain of salt.

Look how someone was just plugging in text in the wrong fields!

And do they really use stainless steel poles on all these pickups?

[fieldwrangler]

I would take some of this with a grain of salt.

Look how someone was just plugging in text in the wrong fields!

And do they really use stainless steel poles on all these pickups?

That's really pretty amusing!