Making a 15 dollar pickup sound like a high end pickup Follow me on Instagram ronald_jr Find me on Facebook / guitarbuzztalkshow #Guitarbuzztalkshow #RonaldJr
I've done this so many times on customer guitars that don't want to spend extra on upgrading pickups. I charge £15 each pickup to add alnico slugs ( I buy them 100 at a time for around £17 from China) and they definitely make a huge difference. Super easy to do also
For those of you watching this video in the southern US, you need to know he's using a "clothes ARN" to heat up the pickup to remove the magnet. Some people just don't understand correct pronunciation.
I have some cheap single coil pickups and I've been thinking about doing the same thing. Maybe experimenting with different types of magnets...alnico 2's and 5's. I wondered about neodymium magnets too. I made a few 3 pole cigar box guitar pickups and used neodymium magnets on those and they sound pretty good! Thanks for the video, Ron!👍😎🎸🎶
Not sure anyone will see this but here I go. If you are considering doing this, please make sure that the flatwork (top and bottom of the pickup) are joined together with some kind of structure. If not, your pickup will fall apart. Not all slugs are held in place within tubes.
thanks! gonna try this on a pawn guitar i got yesterday. got it for practicing mods. this is a cool one to try and i don't want to throw money at this thing, just not mess up my other guitars lol. (tho i ended up liking it. usually not a fan of Squiers but this one is diff and i got a GOOD deal. talked em down. but it's a welcome addition to the fam, just an unexpected one. my dude blends right in. diggin the blackout and the metal faceplate. dunno if it's a mod or a special edition. nicer neck than ones i've tried also. maybe a 2001 thing?)
If you buy pre-magnetized slugs you have to put them in the right way around. If you buy them unmagnetized you have to magnetize them. This is easy with a couple of NDfeB magnets in the jaws of a vice.
Heres a tip: You can easily get the bottom magnet off by simply holding it next to a hot clothing iron. The iron in just seconds will melt the glue and the magnet will pull right off.
This is a great idea, I just have one request- can you add in a "before & after" or A/B test two identical cheap pickups (one modded one not) on camera so we can hear the results? Thanks for sharing this cool trick!
Great job sir. One suggestion if I may ... Understandably you have a foot feed variable speed controller correct?. If so use it and... you may want to test & include a variac to further slow your winder down. In other words, plug your device into a variac starting with '0' volts and the foot feed FULL ON. Next bring the variac up full slowly and down slowly. If your motor runs without complaining, start around 85 Vac and adjust accordingly; then use your foot feed for finer control if you like. Just saying....
I found the ceramic bar magnet too harsh, which is why I did this replacement job a few years ago, with alnico 3 at the neck for a gentler, more acoustic sound.
This is a great video, good way to experiment with the mag pole differences in tone... but I'm not sure about prompting folks to run the risk of messing with lead wires for the sole cosmetic-only purpose of push-back wiring. I say leave well enough alone. Maybe I missed something. Well done video.
@@ralphclark To add to this, I repaired a very expensive Fralin Strat pickup like this once. A lead wire got snipped too short because I thought I was working with a bridge pup (closer to the pots so the wires can be shorter) but it was actually the neck pup. So I added a length of wire to it, tinned each end, hooked the ends around each other, soldered, finished with heat shrink. Sound-wise you can't tell any difference. Sounded amazing before, sounds amazing now, and honestly it doesn't even look bad. While I wasn't thrilled that I snipped the wire on my pricey pickup, I'd say this is fairly low risk for a cheapo DIY project like this.
Boy, that delivery scene was action packed! I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Fricken slob! I’d chew his ass out if he threw my package like that! Back to the show!
Urban recycling. Many people don't realize how well pickups are actually wound compared to the famed hit or miss pickups of the 50's and 60's. The magnets are the weak link. Dont sleep on alnico 2!
Yes, he should have mentioned that important fact. Furthermore, when replacing the middle pickup magnet with slugs, they should be the other way round, while those for the neck pickup are the same orientation as the bridge pickup.
@@sciexp It's the usual practice on a Stratocaster to have the north at the top on both the bridge and neck pickups, while the middle pickup magnets are the other way around.
@@CrankCase08 that is not true on every strat. I have already installed on my strat the "CBS 69" pickups, and they have the middle pickup with exactly the same polarity as the other two. In many cases, the middle pickup is made with reverse polarity for making some of "poor man's humbucker" when, for example, using it in parallel with the bridge or neck pup. With the CBS 69's, that is not the case.
Great info, - nice accent, as well. Recently discovered that I prefer the Alnico 5 and 3 to the " vintage " 2. Suprising difference, with the 2 really lacking that high end sparkle usually equated with Fender single coils.I have heard certain ceramics that were still harmonically complex, but your example was generally an accurate comparison. Thanks, - more people ought to learn the how and why in addition to the what.
You need magnetized pole pieces right??? Or a bar magnet on the bottom. I noticed that your pole pieces were not stuck together, so were you just using them as an example? Good idea to help fix sound issue without having to rewind with better wire. Thanks!
guys it worked no humming anymore... I dummy coiled my Fishman Neo-D SingleCoil. Only a really really insignificant clean and really low db noise left on 32khz, easily cut it off through eq.
Hei guys i have a question. I always really hate that black tapd around the winding. Can I actually just tear it off? The windings are out at the solder holes
.. the part where u peel off the outer shield then u cut the two wires at almost the same place/length, only to solder them to another pair of wires .. so what's the cut for? Also the way that u did it would only cause the two wires to touch each other .. short circuited!? Why ?
Cut would be that a short piece of heatshrink covers from the cut/join, to the edge of the pickup, just a cosmetic thing compared to having exposed wire either side of the heatshrink.
i was pretty lucky the mim pickups i have, have 2 bar magnets on the bottom of the bobbin. and usually they are glued to the steel blanks-pole peaces..mine wer not, meaning i could drop the pole peaces from a legit 1955 strat pickup that i have that has a dead coil, without having to remove the old bar magnets!. and wouldn't you know it brought the pickup to life! it now matches the volume of the bridge pickup witch is a semour Duncan sh6 distortion witch is wound to 16-17 k..so that's a big boost in volume! its amazing how good the tone is! wen its clean it has a chubby round tone! it was exactly what my rig was missing! and it cost me nothing!
That cheap pickup you had in your hand at the beginning of the video looks like an older Fender Mexican pickup which MANY people including me thinks they sound great.
Hi Ronald, the lead pic on your video does not match the content: do you have a vid showing the shielding with a copper tape directly on the single coil pickup, just like the photo shows...? Greets
That copper earthed screen/shorting ring is why I clicked on the vid as I have witnessed first hand the massive efficiency improvements on 4x 12" dual cone guitar speakers. I'm also seeing them around mains transformers in hifi amps
It's all subjective I took a super cheap strat copy bridge pickup With a bar magnet on the bottom Put a tele baseplate on bottom And a metal pickup ring on top And it sounds better than anything else I have
Definitely agreed, but this video focuses more on cheap pickups and how to modify them. You know, for people who otherwise can't afford high end pickups...
what if I turn a humbucker pick up to a dummy coil? I can't find a single coil magnet and also I am afraid to split them because I have break one humbucker already. Sorry rural area guy here.
How did you break one humbucker? Usually the only -difficult- thing to fix about pickups is when you cut the thin, wound, copper wire, but other issues can be fixed via TH-cam
Interesting. With P90s the slugs are not magnetised. It's the magnet itself. Also you can add a steel base plate to the underside of single coils to increase output (inductance measured in Henries). The p90 proves that magnetic slugs are not necessary but magnet quality is in that case. It's just a bar magnet. Beware of polarity, if you want RWRP in 2 pickup guitar forsilent middle position. It's easy to change the polarity anyway on a P90. Look up on TH-cam. On a Fender single coil polarity change is a pain.
The thing people have to remember is comparison between magnet pole pieces and bar magnets is apples and oranges. The weakest Alnico pole slug will slaughter a ceramic bar in single coil pickups. Much easier to upgrade to 500k or even 750k pots and leave the ceramic bars alone. That’s the thing, everyone hates anything higher than 250k pots with Alnico pole pieces. So you have a lot of wiggle room with just changing out your volume pots.
Why is it that I prefer the sound of my ceramic pickups to anything I've ever tried alnico? (I'm a "clean" neck pickup on vintage strat sound kinda guy- Ceramic pickups achieve that brilliant stratty chime much easier for me than all the alnicos i've tried- - I like the alnicos with distortion on the bridge but thats about it)
@@motiv311 you like what you like! I actually think ceramic single coils can sound much warmer than Alnico magnets which is supported by simulations posted online. But often these ceramic pickups are under wound and they install higher output potentiometers to get the signal level back up and more of the chime back. Alnico single coils have much more output, so manufacturers stick in 250k pots. If it was me, I would experiment with higher value pots, maybe even sink the pickups down into the body to reduce overall levels. Thing you have to understand, guys back in the 60s were using heavier gauge strings with more output. So their formula worked for them. We don’t have to be so observant, we can make changes.
@@voxpathfinder15r I do enjoy the alnico V's on my strat clone as long as i keep them low in the body as you suggested and roll back the volume and tone a touch
After 7:07 what you usually do, is effing your shielded wire. Any idea why those single coils are great at humming? Lack of shielding. So you'd better forget your bad habbit. When you use lots of coppertape for every cavity in your guitar, you might get away with cutting perfect wiring. But smart? Dude, you replace a shielded wire by a worse one! Why?!
I don't quite get the deal with changing the ceramic magnets to alnico. as the power output of a pickup is a factor of the number of "turns" of coil wire; the strength of the magnet(s); the distance from the strings; & the shape of the coil (flat/short & wide puts the whole "kebob" closer to the strings...as with a Jazzmaster pickup, increasing output). The point is that, all else being equal, alnico magnets are weaker (lower gauss) than ceramic by a factor close to 10. Hence, if you were to simply swap out the flat bottom magnets from ceramic to alnico, you'd get LESS output. Replacing non-mag pole pieces with magnets puts those magnets closer to the strings, but raising up a ceramic mag pickup should accomplish much the same thing. In fact, swapping the ceramic magnet for alnico (but 2-3 times thicker), and raising the pickup will accomplish most of what you accomplish in this video. In addition, sticking a steel or nickel plate under the bottom magnet also helps. And, few people mention this, but neodymium magnets are much stronger event than ceramic, so you could try swapping out one of them for the ceramic. The ceramic pickups do have a higher resonant peak than alnico, but that can be lowered by increasing the value of the tone capacitor to 47nF or even 63nF and putting a resistor in parallel with the capacitor (say, 100kOhm), which makes the capacitor driven low end cutoff more gradual. This is part of a "grease bucket" circuit, which also adds a resistor in the pickup's "hot wire". I'd try all of these things...all dirt cheap...before going to the trouble of swapping out the pole pieces.
I was wondering the same thing - the polarity will effect the humbucking between it and the pup it's next to on the guitar I would think? Get it wrong and there is no humbucking. Also wondering if you flip the poles N S N S N S would that essentially make it a noiseless pup?
Polarity on a pickup wouldn't matter as a whole if it didn't match the polarity of the other pickups, you'd simply have to change the hot and cold wires around.
DO NOT alternate the polarity of the pole pieces. Mark one end of a pole as reference and make sure the attracting or repelling end of the poles are all up (or down). And to the other comment.... simply switching the leads will not change the polarity of the pickup. That's a magnet direction function. That's why you have to flip the magnet in a humbucker to change phase relationships.
Keep the magnet and it will boost output as it is in addition to new magnetised slugs. This is inductance. It may be too much, or poor quality bar magnet But you CAN get strat or tele shaped plates to add. Alnico also. It is surprising the output increase, sometimes 50% more. This is what people forget. The DC resistance is only part of the story. Low inductance will produce low output
Swapping magnets may move “q” around, or RF, it will not make a cheep pickup into a Ron Ellis, or Virgil arlo……not by a long shot. I have messed with this stuff for 40 years. If you want great pickups, you get hope a top winder will wind for you, pay the money and wait in line for them, they are expensive, and have long wait times, the impatient need not apply, if you want to change the tone of current pickups, just buy a longer guitar cable, it will do the same exact thing, move resonate frequently around. And no soldering is required.
Yep, I think that's the point here. The originals weren't wound all that carefully - probably on an automatic coil winding machine to a set number of turns each time, with minimal scatter. As long as the coils in the cheap pickup were wound about the same way, with a similar number of turns, then getting rid of the steel slugs and big bar magnet should lower the inductance, and raise the resonant peak to somewhere close to the original pickup, and bring back the missing sparkle and treble....which should be an improvement.
You just showed and explained how to create a short in your wires. No mention was made for insulating the signal and groud wire from each other , you just pinched them together in the vid and never mentioned it.
@@RonaldLeggettJr it's just that in my mind I was thinking so much work and effort for so little gain when you could buy that pick-up ot better, for about $30 brand new the way you modified it.
!!!!! H E L P !!!! HELP ME PLEASE !! I ran a magnet over the pickups to clean them of splinters and ferrous dust accumulated over time (done on other guitars without problems) and today the pickups no longer play! They have no magnetic attraction and the volume has dropped by 70/80%!! It is a "Gilmour" setup with reversed-phase (RW) single coil pickups and 7-combination selector switch. Help!!! What happen!? Is it reversible? 12 hours have passed and nothing has changed! Only the magnets involved in contact with the magnet have "turned off", the central ones... the lateral ones work perfectly (low E and high E)...!! What happened? Can I save them? Can magnetic charge be recovered? Do I need to replace the magnetic cylinders? Is copper safe? Please 🙏 help, in my region there is no one to turn to..! Lucius
There’s several TH-cam videos about how to remagnetize pickups. Lindy Fralin has one where he uses small neodymium rod magnets. He just held the pickup in place and with the correct polarity (either N or S up, look this up) he just tapped both attractive ends of those magnets to the pole pieces and that’s all. Best way is to pay a pro to do it of course, but This is very do-able
@@CaptainWrinkleBrainThank you for your attention. But this neodymium.. It is. Present in varying degrees? Soft, medium or hard magnetism?, do they have different levels of charge?, that is, to charge an Alnico5 pickup, is it true that you would need a neodymium 5.?.. Will I change the characteristics of my Pickup if I remagnetize it with a magnet that is not properly charged?... That is a strong doubt..
@@key_session look up that video I mentioned and follow it. Ceramic or neodymium bar magnets from any general hardware store work. Don’t worry about specifics. As long as they are stronger than alnico, they will work and they both are.
@@key_session These changes aren’t permanent and you can re-try it multiple times or with different magnets without harm. But once you get them properly magnetized and correct polarity, don’t get them near magnets again bud lol
Turning the pickup over and over in his hand is NOT an interesting video. It is annoying.... just show what is to be done and stop fondling the pickup.
Guess polarity doesn’t matter ? 😂 and attaching cloth wire to the cheesy pickup wire does nothing to better tone, output signal is only as good as the flimsy stock wire you left on ??
man i don't get people who have to smear the wonderful people who take their time and post the video to help you with your problems so you don't have to look any further and not just politely correct them instead if they think that it's not right make your own video of man and get off my boys Channel
@@danno615 I don't get them either. Why do they even bother to watch? I guess they just have to be critical of others who actually 'do' things to help others. Glass half empty type folks...lol
I've done this so many times on customer guitars that don't want to spend extra on upgrading pickups. I charge £15 each pickup to add alnico slugs ( I buy them 100 at a time for around £17 from China) and they definitely make a huge difference. Super easy to do also
The best thing about this video is the delivery guy edit! hahahaa
I legit lol'd on that. Such good editing.
It's true! Lol
Thanks I’m gonna try this I appreciate you taking the time
For those of you watching this video in the southern US, you need to know he's using a "clothes ARN" to heat up the pickup to remove the magnet. Some people just don't understand correct pronunciation.
Great video, the delivery guy chucking the package just casually edited in there is hilarious!
I have some cheap single coil pickups and I've been thinking about doing the same thing. Maybe experimenting with different types of magnets...alnico 2's and 5's. I wondered about neodymium magnets too. I made a few 3 pole cigar box guitar pickups and used neodymium magnets on those and they sound pretty good! Thanks for the video, Ron!👍😎🎸🎶
I think you forgot to make sure that all pole pieces are oriented in the same magnetic orientation .....
No. The pole pieces are passive magnets that take on the magnetism of the main magnet
Only if you use common ceramic magnets and not Alnico pole pieces carrying their own magnetism.@@Daverotherham
Great video but did you check the polarity of magnets when installing new magnets, its important too.
Thankd for posting material cost at the beginning, I didnt notice the first watch through
Thanks Ronald great video
Nice Ron!
On a serious note thank you for this
Not sure anyone will see this but here I go. If you are considering doing this, please make sure that the flatwork (top and bottom of the pickup) are joined together with some kind of structure. If not, your pickup will fall apart. Not all slugs are held in place within tubes.
I like how the Fed Ex guy just throws your packag carelessly on you concrete porch. Thank for showing how to improve these pick ups.
thanks! gonna try this on a pawn guitar i got yesterday. got it for practicing mods. this is a cool one to try and i don't want to throw money at this thing, just not mess up my other guitars lol. (tho i ended up liking it. usually not a fan of Squiers but this one is diff and i got a GOOD deal. talked em down. but it's a welcome addition to the fam, just an unexpected one. my dude blends right in. diggin the blackout and the metal faceplate. dunno if it's a mod or a special edition. nicer neck than ones i've tried also. maybe a 2001 thing?)
I've seen this done with neodymium slugs as well. Anything buy scratchy ceramics, unless you have a really nice noise gate.
Great little video, Just to make it easier on others pull or pole pieces, are actually called Guitar Pickup Magnet Slug.
Even easier would just be to swap out the ceramic magnets to ceramic 8. Sounds great! And it's easy to install.
10:38
Sounds great for what? You ought to add some context.. What kind of genre music do you play? What does Ceramic 8 do for tone and drive etc..
yeah, I wanna know too. pleeeeez give us some more deets as it relates to tone and feel etc.
If you buy pre-magnetized slugs you have to put them in the right way around. If you buy them unmagnetized you have to magnetize them. This is easy with a couple of NDfeB magnets in the jaws of a vice.
How about the magnet orientation Noth/South before you push the slugs in...?
Heres a tip: You can easily get the bottom magnet off by simply holding it next to a hot clothing iron.
The iron in just seconds will melt the glue and the magnet will pull right off.
??? he points that out specifically (1:33). a soldering iron often works as well
@@ccook31 yeah
awesome ..
How to get better single coil: burn it on a hot iron, hit it with a hammer, rip it apart with needle nose pliers
The end ^^
This is a great idea, I just have one request- can you add in a "before & after" or A/B test two identical cheap pickups (one modded one not) on camera so we can hear the results? Thanks for sharing this cool trick!
I have a Peavey Predator USA I'm might overhaul with new pole pieces. The guitar was made in Meridian MS but I suspect the pickups were not.
Great job sir. One suggestion if I may ... Understandably you have a foot feed variable speed controller correct?. If so use it and... you may want to test & include a variac to further slow your winder down. In other words, plug your device into a variac starting with '0' volts and the foot feed FULL ON. Next bring the variac up full slowly and down slowly. If your motor runs without complaining, start around 85 Vac and adjust accordingly; then use your foot feed for finer control if you like. Just saying....
i waited till the end then i liked the ceramic sound more :)
I did too. Really like the wamer tone in ceramic, but can't say i don't like the chime in alnico. Different animals for diferent things IMHO.
I've been saying that all along. The have a rasp that higher quality pick ups dont. I guess it comes down to personal preference.
I found the ceramic bar magnet too harsh, which is why I did this replacement job a few years ago, with alnico 3 at the neck for a gentler, more acoustic sound.
All of you must be tone deaf. Those cheap ceramics never let you hear the b and high e string. The alnico V let them ring out more.
This is a great video, good way to experiment with the mag pole differences in tone... but I'm not sure about prompting folks to run the risk of messing with lead wires for the sole cosmetic-only purpose of push-back wiring. I say leave well enough alone. Maybe I missed something. Well done video.
That is the only issue I have with this video.
by rejoint the cut off wire, and join with the anothe with, cn be great sound?
@@positiveguitarworks3433 if you intertwine the copper thoroughly, clean with flux and infuse with hot solder there’s no reason why not.
@@ralphclark To add to this, I repaired a very expensive Fralin Strat pickup like this once. A lead wire got snipped too short because I thought I was working with a bridge pup (closer to the pots so the wires can be shorter) but it was actually the neck pup. So I added a length of wire to it, tinned each end, hooked the ends around each other, soldered, finished with heat shrink.
Sound-wise you can't tell any difference. Sounded amazing before, sounds amazing now, and honestly it doesn't even look bad. While I wasn't thrilled that I snipped the wire on my pricey pickup, I'd say this is fairly low risk for a cheapo DIY project like this.
do you pay attention to the polarity when installing new magnets?
Boy, that delivery scene was action packed! I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Fricken slob! I’d chew his ass out if he threw my package like that! Back to the show!
Urban recycling. Many people don't realize how well pickups are actually wound compared to the famed hit or miss pickups of the 50's and 60's. The magnets are the weak link. Dont sleep on alnico 2!
But why don't they just use better magnets if they are so cheap? And what makes a magnet "better"?
@@CrowClouds Some magnets have values and an education. They are clearly superior.
@@socialdef3 Lmao
That was easy n kicked ass i hope i can seem to remember the idea bc my wifi is hacked by mr glass n the G.L.O.W. Entourage smh (FML)
Proper FED X style
How would you get an out of phase position between two pickups like that if its only the poll pieces that are magnetic?
How are you going to know which way up the pole pieces go? North at the top or south at the top?
Are the Firefly tele's pickups upgradable?
upon changing pole pisces can I make it staggered pole? like different height? or do I need to cut the pole to different height?
The magnetized pole pieces should placed adjacently north - south.
You can check which ends attract or repell.
Hope I am correct!
Yes, he should have mentioned that important fact. Furthermore, when replacing the middle pickup magnet with slugs, they should be the other way round, while those for the neck pickup are the same orientation as the bridge pickup.
@@CrankCase08 should all the pole pieces have the north above?
@@sciexp It's the usual practice on a Stratocaster to have the north at the top on both the bridge and neck pickups, while the middle pickup magnets are the other way around.
@@CrankCase08 that is not true on every strat. I have already installed on my strat the "CBS 69" pickups, and they have the middle pickup with exactly the same polarity as the other two. In many cases, the middle pickup is made with reverse polarity for making some of "poor man's humbucker" when, for example, using it in parallel with the bridge or neck pup. With the CBS 69's, that is not the case.
@@emerson1978365 I did state, "It's the usual practice..." with regard to pole orientation. No doubt, there would be some that would buck the rule
Great info, - nice accent, as well.
Recently discovered that I prefer the Alnico 5 and 3 to the " vintage " 2. Suprising difference, with the 2 really lacking that high end sparkle usually equated with Fender single coils.I have heard certain ceramics that were still harmonically complex, but your example was generally an accurate comparison. Thanks, - more people ought to learn the how and why in addition to the what.
Have you used the alnico 3 with the neck position only, or also at the bridge? I was wondering what a 3 at the bridge would sound like.
That fedex guy though 😂
You need magnetized pole pieces right??? Or a bar magnet on the bottom.
I noticed that your pole pieces were not stuck together, so were you just using them as an example?
Good idea to help fix sound issue without having to rewind with better wire.
Thanks!
guys it worked no humming anymore... I dummy coiled my Fishman Neo-D SingleCoil. Only a really really insignificant clean and really low db noise left on 32khz, easily cut it off through eq.
You can buy a set of alnico 5 single coils from China for like $20-30.
The effort alone is worth that.
Wilkinson alnico 5's are fantastic and pretty cheap. I think I paid around $40 for a tele set.
Hei guys i have a question. I always really hate that black tapd around the winding. Can I actually just tear it off? The windings are out at the solder holes
If we do this we have no reason to buy new guitars! I will not stand for it!!!
Well not everyone's a millionaire and can buy a new guitars every day
This is for the guys who can only afford "cheap copies"
You dont put the magnet down anymore?
I just order a preloaded pickguard with Alnico V pickups for about $30.
How about the resistance? Any change??
The image i see before clicking on the video is pickups being shielded with copper tape. Where is the video where you do that ?
.. the part where u peel off the outer shield then u cut the two wires at almost the same place/length, only to solder them to another pair of wires .. so what's the cut for?
Also the way that u did it would only cause the two wires to touch each other .. short circuited!? Why ?
Cut would be that a short piece of heatshrink covers from the cut/join, to the edge of the pickup, just a cosmetic thing compared to having exposed wire either side of the heatshrink.
i was pretty lucky the mim pickups i have, have 2 bar magnets on the bottom of the bobbin. and usually they are glued to the steel blanks-pole peaces..mine wer not, meaning i could drop the pole peaces from a legit 1955 strat pickup that i have that has a dead coil, without having to remove the old bar magnets!. and wouldn't you know it brought the pickup to life! it now matches the volume of the bridge pickup witch is a semour Duncan sh6 distortion witch is wound to 16-17 k..so that's a big boost in volume! its amazing how good the tone is! wen its clean it has a chubby round tone! it was exactly what my rig was missing! and it cost me nothing!
I wonder if leaving the ceramic bar magnets changes the tone enough to notice. I have an MiM that I’m considering doing this with
That cheap pickup you had in your hand at the beginning of the video looks like an older Fender Mexican pickup which MANY people including me thinks they sound great.
Where can I get this alnico ?
maybe this is stupid but i am wondering if the magnet can be put back after completing this? will it effect the sound at all?
Same
I wonder what a second bar magnet added to the pickup would do?🤔
It would strengthen the magnetism.
Hi Ronald, the lead pic on your video does not match the content: do you have a vid showing the shielding with a copper tape directly on the single coil pickup, just like the photo shows...? Greets
That copper earthed screen/shorting ring is why I clicked on the vid as I have witnessed first hand the massive efficiency improvements on 4x 12" dual cone guitar speakers. I'm also seeing them around mains transformers in hifi amps
im hear same sound...😂🤣🥴😂👍👍👍
It's all subjective
I took a super cheap strat copy bridge pickup
With a bar magnet on the bottom
Put a tele baseplate on bottom
And a metal pickup ring on top
And it sounds better than anything else I have
interesting./..
There's a lot more to a high end pickup than than alnico magnets...
No one's denying that Dave, but some of us are working to a tight budget and can't afford to be snobs
Definitely agreed, but this video focuses more on cheap pickups and how to modify them. You know, for people who otherwise can't afford high end pickups...
@@socialdef3 i agree, but he definitely did some things wrong. Like cutting the sheilded wire
what if I turn a humbucker pick up to a dummy coil? I can't find a single coil magnet and also I am afraid to split them because I have break one humbucker already. Sorry rural area guy here.
How did you break one humbucker? Usually the only -difficult- thing to fix about pickups is when you cut the thin, wound, copper wire, but other issues can be fixed via TH-cam
Interesting.
With P90s the slugs are not magnetised. It's the magnet itself.
Also you can add a steel base plate to the underside of single coils to increase output (inductance measured in Henries).
The p90 proves that magnetic slugs are not necessary but magnet quality is in that case. It's just a bar magnet. Beware of polarity, if you want RWRP in 2 pickup guitar forsilent middle position.
It's easy to change the polarity anyway on a P90. Look up on TH-cam.
On a Fender single coil polarity change is a pain.
The thing people have to remember is comparison between magnet pole pieces and bar magnets is apples and oranges. The weakest Alnico pole slug will slaughter a ceramic bar in single coil pickups. Much easier to upgrade to 500k or even 750k pots and leave the ceramic bars alone. That’s the thing, everyone hates anything higher than 250k pots with Alnico pole pieces. So you have a lot of wiggle room with just changing out your volume pots.
Why is it that I prefer the sound of my ceramic pickups to anything I've ever tried alnico? (I'm a "clean" neck pickup on vintage strat sound kinda guy- Ceramic pickups achieve that brilliant stratty chime much easier for me than all the alnicos i've tried- - I like the alnicos with distortion on the bridge but thats about it)
@@motiv311 you like what you like! I actually think ceramic single coils can sound much warmer than Alnico magnets which is supported by simulations posted online. But often these ceramic pickups are under wound and they install higher output potentiometers to get the signal level back up and more of the chime back. Alnico single coils have much more output, so manufacturers stick in 250k pots. If it was me, I would experiment with higher value pots, maybe even sink the pickups down into the body to reduce overall levels. Thing you have to understand, guys back in the 60s were using heavier gauge strings with more output. So their formula worked for them. We don’t have to be so observant, we can make changes.
@@voxpathfinder15r I do enjoy the alnico V's on my strat clone as long as i keep them low in the body as you suggested and roll back the volume and tone a touch
@@motiv311 worlds of tone open up once you abandon everything on 10 philosophy on your guitar
@@voxpathfinder15r i just do whatever sounds good
After 7:07 what you usually do, is effing your shielded wire. Any idea why those single coils are great at humming? Lack of shielding. So you'd better forget your bad habbit. When you use lots of coppertape for every cavity in your guitar, you might get away with cutting perfect wiring. But smart? Dude, you replace a shielded wire by a worse one! Why?!
Thanks!
I don't quite get the deal with changing the ceramic magnets to alnico. as the power output of a pickup is a factor of the number of "turns" of coil wire; the strength of the magnet(s); the distance from the strings; & the shape of the coil (flat/short & wide puts the whole "kebob" closer to the strings...as with a Jazzmaster pickup, increasing output).
The point is that, all else being equal, alnico magnets are weaker (lower gauss) than ceramic by a factor close to 10. Hence, if you were to simply swap out the flat bottom magnets from ceramic to alnico, you'd get LESS output. Replacing non-mag pole pieces with magnets puts those magnets closer to the strings, but raising up a ceramic mag pickup should accomplish much the same thing. In fact, swapping the ceramic magnet for alnico (but 2-3 times thicker), and raising the pickup will accomplish most of what you accomplish in this video. In addition, sticking a steel or nickel plate under the bottom magnet also helps.
And, few people mention this, but neodymium magnets are much stronger event than ceramic, so you could try swapping out one of them for the ceramic.
The ceramic pickups do have a higher resonant peak than alnico, but that can be lowered by increasing the value of the tone capacitor to 47nF or even 63nF and putting a resistor in parallel with the capacitor (say, 100kOhm), which makes the capacitor driven low end cutoff more gradual. This is part of a "grease bucket" circuit, which also adds a resistor in the pickup's "hot wire".
I'd try all of these things...all dirt cheap...before going to the trouble of swapping out the pole pieces.
Nice, however you DIDN'T address the orientation of each magnet slug & how they all have to be around the SAME way!
I tried this with neodymium slugs and found they are a little to powerful as the will suck the sustain out of your strings.
Good video, but I think I will just buy new pick-ups.
See meant or C ment?
That is the question.
What about the bottom magnet? Or the polarities of the pole pieces?
I was wondering the same thing - the polarity will effect the humbucking between it and the pup it's next to on the guitar I would think? Get it wrong and there is no humbucking. Also wondering if you flip the poles N S N S N S would that essentially make it a noiseless pup?
Polarity on a pickup wouldn't matter as a whole if it didn't match the polarity of the other pickups, you'd simply have to change the hot and cold wires around.
DO NOT alternate the polarity of the pole pieces. Mark one end of a pole as reference and make sure the attracting or repelling end of the poles are all up (or down). And to the other comment.... simply switching the leads will not change the polarity of the pickup. That's a magnet direction function. That's why you have to flip the magnet in a humbucker to change phase relationships.
Keep the magnet and it will boost output as it is in addition to new magnetised slugs. This is inductance. It may be too much, or poor quality bar magnet
But you CAN get strat or tele shaped plates to add. Alnico also. It is surprising the output increase, sometimes 50% more.
This is what people forget. The DC resistance is only part of the story. Low inductance will produce low output
Swapping magnets may move “q” around, or RF, it will not make a cheep pickup into a Ron Ellis, or Virgil arlo……not by a long shot. I have messed with this stuff for 40 years. If you want great pickups, you get hope a top winder will wind for you, pay the money and wait in line for them, they are expensive, and have long wait times, the impatient need not apply, if you want to change the tone of current pickups, just buy a longer guitar cable, it will do the same exact thing, move resonate frequently around. And no soldering is required.
Yep, I think that's the point here.
The originals weren't wound all that carefully - probably on an automatic coil winding machine to a set number of turns each time, with minimal scatter.
As long as the coils in the cheap pickup were wound about the same way, with a similar number of turns, then getting rid of the steel slugs and big bar magnet should lower the inductance, and raise the resonant peak to somewhere close to the original pickup, and bring back the missing sparkle and treble....which should be an improvement.
Good job not checking the polarity of the magnet you just dumped.
maybe he checked it off-camera
You just showed and explained how to create a short in your wires. No mention was made for insulating the signal and groud wire from each other , you just pinched them together in the vid and never mentioned it.
Oh Ron.
2bikemike 🤷🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️
@@RonaldLeggettJr
it's just that in my mind I was thinking so much work and effort for so little gain when you could buy that pick-up ot better, for about $30 brand new the way you modified it.
Go FedEx 😂
And he never even lost his stride!
My FedEx guy rolled my guitar box out of delivery van
Where can I buy the magnet and what size
China dhgate aliexpress amazon probably too
Boycott Amazon! They're evil!
A5 sounded much clearer.
lol
Dont move the pick ups around when holding them> It looks like dont us to see them.
Can't hear you.
!!!!! H E L P !!!! HELP ME PLEASE !!
I ran a magnet over the pickups to clean them of splinters and ferrous dust accumulated over time (done on other guitars without problems) and today the pickups no longer play! They have no magnetic attraction and the volume has dropped by 70/80%!! It is a "Gilmour" setup with reversed-phase (RW) single coil pickups and 7-combination selector switch. Help!!! What happen!? Is it reversible? 12 hours have passed and nothing has changed! Only the magnets involved in contact with the magnet have "turned off", the central ones... the lateral ones work perfectly (low E and high E)...!! What happened? Can I save them? Can magnetic charge be recovered? Do I need to replace the magnetic cylinders? Is copper safe?
Please 🙏 help, in my region there is no one to turn to..!
Lucius
There’s several TH-cam videos about how to remagnetize pickups. Lindy Fralin has one where he uses small neodymium rod magnets. He just held the pickup in place and with the correct polarity (either N or S up, look this up) he just tapped both attractive ends of those magnets to the pole pieces and that’s all. Best way is to pay a pro to do it of course, but This is very do-able
@@CaptainWrinkleBrainThank you for your attention. But this neodymium.. It is. Present in varying degrees? Soft, medium or hard magnetism?,
do they have different levels of charge?, that is, to charge an Alnico5 pickup, is it true that you would need a neodymium 5.?.. Will I change the characteristics of my Pickup if I remagnetize it with a magnet that is not properly charged?... That is a strong doubt..
@@key_session look up that video I mentioned and follow it. Ceramic or neodymium bar magnets from any general hardware store work. Don’t worry about specifics. As long as they are stronger than alnico, they will work and they both are.
@@key_session These changes aren’t permanent and you can re-try it multiple times or with different magnets without harm. But once you get them properly magnetized and correct polarity, don’t get them near magnets again bud lol
thats a lot of stuff. i think i would just buy some new pickups
Turning the pickup over and over in his hand is NOT an interesting video. It is annoying.... just show what is to be done and stop fondling the pickup.
Neodymium is good but sound detail will loses,
That wire should not break that easily, the pickup is defective;used.
I think the ceramic sounds way better than alnico. They are warmer, more rounder.
He removed and back thats all😕😅
He replaced the cheap ceramic bar magnet and unmagnetised pole pieces with Alnico 5 magnetised pole pieces.
The picture was what i came here for. Its clickbait, i dont see him touching any colper tape or the black tape.... M
.......!!! dude...whath a fuck ay just..see...!?!
There's no point in adding push back wire. It has absolutely no tonal quality.
Guess polarity doesn’t matter ? 😂 and attaching cloth wire to the cheesy pickup wire does nothing to better tone, output signal is only as good as the flimsy stock wire you left on ??
man i don't get people who have to smear the wonderful people who take their time and post the video to help you with your problems so you don't have to look any further and not just politely correct them instead if they think that it's not right make your own video of man and get off my boys Channel
@@danno615 I don't get them either. Why do they even bother to watch? I guess they just have to be critical of others who actually 'do' things to help others. Glass half empty type folks...lol
He's just a tool, mr 173guitarman
Sonic I 5 pole pieces.... On a ceramic magnet. Why waist your time
Just buy new better pickups # that’s not worth. It