Charging Magnets

[cwood3]

I'm going to wind a couple of bridge (lead) pickups for my Esquire build project. I've wound Strat single coils, humbuckers, and a few bass pickups with no probs. When I bought magnets a while back (Alnico V's), they were charged already. Now, I looked on the Stewmac site when I was looking at flatwork and the copper-plated baseplate and saw that the magnets that they offered required charging with two of the 1" dia. magnets they also sell. Since I'm only building 2 pickups (requiring longer magnets than my Strat stock), I was considering going that route. Has anybody ever used the Stewmac magnets and charged their own? Likes, dislikes ? General comments ??

Thanks,

curtis

[SkinnyWire]

I'm going to wind a couple of bridge (lead) pickups for my Esquire build project. I've wound Strat single coils, humbuckers, and a few bass pickups with no probs. When I bought magnets a while back (Alnico V's), they were charged already. Now, I looked on the Stewmac site when I was looking at flatwork and the copper-plated baseplate and saw that the magnets that they offered required charging with two of the 1" dia. magnets they also sell. Since I'm only building 2 pickups (requiring longer magnets than my Strat stock), I was considering going that route. Has anybody ever used the Stewmac magnets and charged their own? Likes, dislikes ? General comments ??

Thanks,

curtis

I've used NdFeB magnets to charge AlNiCo before. It works. Personally, I don't care for the tone imparted by most fully charged magnets. I used to think it had something to do with the NdFeB's, but it's the same with my charger. Nonetheless, it should work for you and you can experiment from there.

[Possum]

.....

I got some of those magnets for another purpose and tried their method and their magnets, yes it works but they are too weak to fully charge the magnets but for your purposes and for saving money I'd say go for it....

[Zhangliqun]

I use them and they seem to work pretty well. Charged any higher and suspect they would sound brittle and harsh.

[kevinT]

I have some. they're fairly strong. you have to use a lot of effort to pry them apart from each other.

I have a charger so I don't use them for charging, but i use them to degauss.

[SteikBacon]

When you degauss the mags with these.... how much control do you have?
Do you use both with bigger distance between or just one?

IŽd like to experiment with that and would like to know a method that works. DonŽt think IŽm going to buy a charger yet. Seems that I always liked weaker mags is pickups.

[Possum]

charge levels...

this stuff about brittle and harsh because of charge levels isn't always true. In humbuckers its real hard to get one to sound brittle and harsh no matter what you do with all that metal in there. I have some heavy formvar strat pickups and supposedly dropping the guass down mellows 'em out right? Nope, I have the bridge down to about 400 gauss, just barely hanging on and they still sound real bright. I think gauss levels have more to do with picking dynamics than tonal range. In a bucker when I've "aged" them (gimme a break...) they lose their snap and sound dull to me, in single coils you just lose some output, the only real value is cutting down on stratitis. I've had a couple sets of '63, '64 strat pickups come through here and they all still have almost a full charge, up in the 1000 gauss range, so much for the "aging" magnet theory, guass has little to do with why some of those pickups sound a bit more mellow than new ones. to me it has more to do with aged copper wire and magnet composition.....

[SteikBacon]

Well, IŽve experienced with tests that the freq-balance changes with different magnets. This were done with one humbucker (singlecoil and hum-mode) and just changing bar. Tested on clean and crunch from Suhr badger, and highgain from 5150.

Seems that with weaker mags we loose volume, but this appear to affect bass more than treble. With strong mag we got more volume, and better balance with bass. Liked A5 and A3 less than A2, A8 and A6.

[Zhangliqun]

In humbuckers its real hard to get one to sound brittle and harsh no matter what you do with all that metal in there.

That's definitely not been my experience.

[Possum]

.....

Steik-Bacon, thats very interesting and seems to confirm what my ears hear, the treble doesn't change when you drop the gauss, but the bass gets flabby, yep. Picking dynamics get too soft with buckers when dropped too much.

My longtime goals that I"ve had alot of success with lately has been getting my buckers to have articulation without being shrill. Getting articulation using just the stock junk that the four suppliers sell has never worked for me, I've gotten real close to what I wanted by using low winds, like 6.8K which can sound real nice, pretty articulate and mellow. The research I've done on PAFs has gotten me real close to what I've wanted for a long time, I now have a neck pickup thats 8.2K and isn't muddy, its borderline on the bass notes but I could never get that close with offshore parts. My videos are still there on youtube of these two sets :
http://www.youtube.com/sdpickups
the only difference between the two sets is the magnet wire, pole screws, keepers and slugs are all mine.

Zhang, well I do remember when I was using mostly Guitar Jones stuff that the buckers did have a weird resonant peak in the treble range that just drove me crazy. Part of it I discovered is the bobbins because they are not solid in the middle, the other part is their pole screws sound awful to me. Once I got away from those parts things changed for the better.

[SteikBacon]

I just bought some stuff from GJ and now you say its crap... AAAAARGH!

No, wait, just the bobbin and screws...?? Looks like IŽll learn my lession too

[SkinnyWire]

Picking dynamics get too soft with buckers when dropped too much.

This is not my experience at all. I agree there's a softening effect, but losing dynamics? No. Not as a rule. And the bass is not always "flabby" as a result.

I've also found that with all else held equal buckers can be harsh - and as with the above, IMO - with magnets fresh off the charger.

YMMV.

[kevinT]

This is not my experience at all. I agree there's a softening effect, but losing dynamics? No. Not as a rule. And the bass is not always "flabby" as a result.

+1
working on a proto.... 8.8k Ohm, dropped the gauss a bit, attained a mellow high end (without losing dynamics), killer mids, and a nice tight bottom end.

[Possum]

.....

There's such a fine line between "harsh" and articulate treble. What kind of magnet wire you're using and how its wound can have an effect here, the kind of steel alloys that are used have a big effect there, in screw poles, keeper and slugs. The reason I studied PAFs so hard is they seldom border into harsh treble territory, and the reason is the steel. I use the softer sounding alnicos in the bridge also, so its been a long time since I had problems with screechy buckers, and those were mostly GJ parts as well.

A real good example of a pickup maker who's work stays just under the harsh tones yet keeps wonderful treble is Tom Holmes' work. I was lucky to get an old NOS set of his and its a benchmark for me. His work is heavily based in PAF technology but his work isn't accurate copies either.

Personally I fully charge all my bucker mags, everytime I've tried degaussing them it always felt like the sizzle left the steak. but I almost never use alnico 5 either and I stay away from harsh sounding metals or cheap lightweight bobbins. If you're having problems with harshness you might try using GuitarParts USA brass bucker covers, they are thin enough to not kill alot of high end, but just take it off nicely for problem pickups.

[David King]

A quick head's up with the Stewmac charging magnets. You need to put them in a heavy steel "charging circuit" that joins the outside poles to achieve full charge on your alnicos. The easiest way to do this is to stick them to the insides of a bench vise's jaws. You can set that gap that way.
Otherwise you would need to fabricate a heavy U shaped chunk of steel with the right gap built in.