Re: Pickup parts
Yeah I said way back when we first talked about this pickup, that I'm sure John Riboloff just tried some stuff out to imitate the original pickup. John Diggins didn't remember how it was made except it used multiple magnets.
That's full of hyperboles, such as "smooth power" and "with a hint of phase cancellation." There is no phase cancelation going on. All the magnets are "in phase" and the coils are wired as expected.
Eddy currents are produced on conductive surfaces in the presence of a magnetic field. There wont be "oddly positioned" eddy currents, and they will only be on the conductive surfaces of things like the blades and alnico magnets. Eddy currents tend to kill the high frequencies.
Soft magnetic materials, such as the strings, becomes magnetized in the presence of a magnet.
Eddy currents don't cause phase cancelation. You are hearing something else going on. You notice the pickup doesn't have a metal baseplate? I'm sure that's to reduce eddy currents.
It does matter if both coils are sensing the same strings. To cancel hum the coils must be out-of-phase. Right? So what stops the strings from sounding out-of-phase? The reverse polarity magnets.
Sure, remove the magnet and put a fresh set of strings on the guitar. Do you hear anything? Flipping the magnet over doesn't matter because each coil on the pickup is still opposite magnetically. If they were not you would hear that thin out-of-phase tone.
You didn't?
You did
No you can't. Not without the two coils sounding out-of-phase. Just get a humbucker and try it out.
Originally posted by Sweetfinger
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This meant that J.T. would have to examine the pick-up at his lab in Nashville. To send the guitar or the pick-up over to the US unaccompanied was far too risky an option, so I was lucky enough to be flown, courtesy of Gibson Strings and Accessories, over to Nashville for a few days in June 1996 with the Jay Dee SG. What followed was the most determined electrical detective work I have ever seen! J.T. just lives guitars. With his encyclopaedic knowledge up pick-ups, he started taking measurements, listened and quickly worked out that there were very unusual goings-on within the Jay Dee that gave it the smooth power with a hint of phase cancellation. I have just enough electrical knowledge to understand what J.T. talks about (e.g. “well Mike, the inductance is the motor of the pick-up, and the resistance is its brake”), so to watch and listen to him at work was a great pleasure. Once he had worked out the way to go, which is a radical break from traditional pick-up design, it was a question of experimenting. He worked constantly, pausing only for the occasional cigarette break, to eat or to take me back to the hotel.
He set up the coil winding machines to wind different numbers of turns of different gauges of wire, tried different magnets, milled the pole pieces to different sizes. Coil winders are not like computers, doubling their speed every 3 months, so all this took a lot of time! At the end of the week we had about a half dozen pick-ups to take back to the UK for Tony to try out.
He set up the coil winding machines to wind different numbers of turns of different gauges of wire, tried different magnets, milled the pole pieces to different sizes. Coil winders are not like computers, doubling their speed every 3 months, so all this took a lot of time! At the end of the week we had about a half dozen pick-ups to take back to the UK for Tony to try out.
Eddy currents are produced on conductive surfaces in the presence of a magnetic field. There wont be "oddly positioned" eddy currents, and they will only be on the conductive surfaces of things like the blades and alnico magnets. Eddy currents tend to kill the high frequencies.
I was under the impression that the strings don't need to be magnetized per se. ...That the string is disturbing the magnetic field and those disturbances are what induces the signal in the coil windings. They also induce eddy currents, which can be looked at as though they are magnetic phase cancellation. Call it what you want. The effect is real and you can hear it.
Eddy currents don't cause phase cancelation. You are hearing something else going on. You notice the pickup doesn't have a metal baseplate? I'm sure that's to reduce eddy currents.
Magnetic polarity has NOTHING to do with the humbucking effect. Pull the magnets out, or shove 'em back in however you like. Doesn't affect the humbucking quality in the slightest.
Sure, remove the magnet and put a fresh set of strings on the guitar. Do you hear anything? Flipping the magnet over doesn't matter because each coil on the pickup is still opposite magnetically. If they were not you would hear that thin out-of-phase tone.
A humbucking pickup (last time I checked) looks suspiciously like "two single coils next to each other". OF COURSE a humbucker with both coils having the same magnetic polarity will sound thin- I never said it wouldn't- but it IS a humbucker.
Originally posted by Sweetfinger
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Originally posted by Sweetfinger
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