Will This Magnet Be Suitable For Pickup Polepieces.

[The_Crimson_Ghost]

Hi,

I wondered if these neodynium magnets would be suitable to make polepieces.

It's for making a pickup to go on my 8 string project.

Ebay Link

Photo of the sketch for the guitar

Bye

[sb guitars]

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_p...ckup_Parts.html

the polepieces are just a form of metal-nonmagnetized..check out the other parts too.

[black_labb]

i would imagine neodynum being too strong, and effecting the sustain and tone of the guitar. are you familiar with "wolf tones" which are when the neck pup on a strat or similar puped guitar are adjusted too close to the neck, it starts to effect the strings vibration. id imagine neodynum magnets of that size would be too strong and create much more prominent wolf tones and loss of sustain. they might be somewhat usable for a bridge pup in a bass, but even then, it might be too strong. for magnets used in the pickup themselves you would want alnice (alnico 5 is pretty standard, but others have been used as well to get different sounds)

you can also use ceramic magnets and have magnetised polepieces like sb mentioned.

try stewmac or allparts for alnico rod magnets, or maybe a magnet shop of somesort could get what you need. im in australia and have found a pretty good place, but i dont think that would help you too much.

on a different note, i was surprised when i saw that you come from sherbrooke, i used to live in hatley/ north hatley until i moved to australia 8 years ago, i am going back for christmas to see family. just funny to see people who lived near you on the other side of the world

[Mattia]

OTOH, I've seen plenty of bass pickup builders who absolutely swear by Neo magnets as polepieces, and won't even consider using AlNiCo. 1/4" might be a bit on the large side, though.

I say give it a try.

(oh, and humbucker slugs are just slugs, but strat pickups have actual magnets as polepieces.)

[Mike Sulzer]

OTOH, I've seen plenty of bass pickup builders who absolutely swear by Neo magnets as polepieces, and won't even consider using AlNiCo. 1/4" might be a bit on the large side, though.

I say give it a try.

(oh, and humbucker slugs are just slugs, but strat pickups have actual magnets as polepieces.)

Bass strings are difficult to pull on, and so the obvious problems of using neo that b_l referred to do not apply so much as with a guitar. Those magnets are too big and too strong for guitar; I have never tried with a bass.

There is another issue that is rarely mentioned. The pole pieces magnetize the string, but also they serve to amplify the the fluctuating field from the vibrating string. Neo has a relative permeability of 1.04, which means it does very little amplification. Alnico or steel have higher permeability, and so even though the field is weaker, you still get good signal. I do not see any benefit to using neo as the pole pieces rather than neo on the bottom (or even very small neo on the top) of a pole piece with higher permeability.