@@theolderbrother Yes, that would also be interesting too... Though the hi-gains seem more like Jazzmater pickups to me, and the Toasters have a distincive sound. Then we also need to be looking at the DeArmond 2000s, which I think might have a similar characteristics...
@@theolderbrother I replaced the neck high gain with a toaster pickup just recently actually and it’s a huge improvement (at least for me personally). But I suppose it depends on your end goal in terms of tone
Technically, the magnet doesn't have to be anywhere near the coil of an inductive guitar pickup. According to an interview of Seth Lover by Seymour Duncan, and verified to me personally by Lindy Fralin, Jeff Lace, Larry Fishman, and every electrical engineer that I've asked, most descriptions of how inductive pickups work are wrong. The typical description says that the magnet creates a flux field around the coil that is disturbed by the vibrating string, inducing a current in the coil. What is actually happening is that the pickup's magnet is magnetizing the string, the string thus becomes a magnet moving near a coil, inducing a current in the coil. You could remove the magnet(s) from a conventional pickup and it would still work as long as you had magnets somewhere in proximity to the strings. Also, if you wanted to make a horseshoe pickup, if you had the correct dies (which you might be able to make fairly simply out of some round and square steel stock), you could use a simple arbor press to shape 3/16" steel into U shapes., or even use a simple sheet metal brake if you're willing to accept 90 deg bends instead of a smooth curve.
Interesting. So, if e.g. your bridge/string saddles or tuning keys were magnetic, you wouldn't need a magnet in the pickup? I will do some experiments, wind a pickup and put rare earth magnets on the bridge of a Strat. Will be fun to see how it works :-)
A magnet will produce lines of uthat "flow" from one pole to the other. A coil will produce a current when it moves relative to lines of flux (or the lines of flux move relative to it). Fir a vibrating string to produce a current, it must cause lines of flux to move across pickup windings. That wouldn't necessarily require a magnet within the pickup, but one can't just have magnets "somewhere in proximity to the strings". The magnet needs to create field lines in the vicinity of the coil for the pickup to work. Incidentally, if one wants to "mute" a humbucker so it only picks up selected strings, that can easily be accomplished by placing a soft steel bar connecting the pole pieces associated with the strings to be muted. The metal bar will provide a continuous path for the lines of force to flow which won't be affected by the vibrating string, and will shunt most of the lines of force well enough to largely eliminate outside noise as a consideration.
@@flatfingertuning727 You are right that you can't get away with a magnet somewhere near the strings. The strength of magnetic fields drops off very sharply with increasing distance from the source magnet. It just makes sense to have the energising magnet very near to the pickup coil so that the strength of magnetised length of string is at its strongest just above the coil. I feel I must say though that magnetic lines of flux or force do not exist. The concept of 'lines of flux' is just a convenient way to represent the changes in density of a magnetic field in 2D on paper, or to simplify calculations. It is like using contour lines on a map to represent height. If you perform the old experiment of placing a magnet under a piece of paper with iron filings on top you will see the illusion of 'lines of force'. This is an artefact of the particle behaviour of the filings becoming magnets themselves. Note that if you do a similar experiment with ferrofluid you see a very different behaviour, again due to the physics of the fluid.
This is correct! (per my memory of E&M from my BSEE '87) ... in fact, Zexcoil pickups / Dr Lawing has some fascinating and convincing demonstrations of exactly this ... I can't remember if I saw them on YT or their website ... he separated the magnet from the coil and placed the magnet above the strings (nowhere near the coil) and the pickup still worked
@@VacantCityDrifters I wonder what kinds of sound one would get if one had a pair of pickups mounted above and below the strings, using various combinations of in-phase and out-of-phase magnetics and wiring. I would think with the right phasing one could arrange things so all odd harmonics would effectively cancel, yielding an "octave" tone without need for a pedal, at the expense of being unable to play in the immediate vicinity of the pickups.
All i can say is, today in (2022) i received a lap steel guitar from (1948) a rickenbacher NS and she sounds wonderful. I cannot agree with you on the part where you say the magnets decay over time. I checked the horseshoe magnets they are week but produce a very nice sound especially the thick sound on the higher strings. I make pickups for a few years but cannot wrap my mind about this guitar.
Hi Dylan! Could you please talk about the rio grande humbucker pickups, specially the muy grande, which is a different humbucker with two real single coils. Thanks!
Interesting engineering. What I DON'T get, is why Ric still DO that single in the bridge and hum bucker in the neck! Wouldn't it make MORE sense soundwise, to put the humbucker in the bridge with fatten up the sound, and the single toward the neck to thin it out a bit?
The Rickenbacker pickup has a unique tone...I guess that’s a nice way of putting it. I’ve never cared for the tone. I owned an older 360 for a short time and sold it. I believe the bridge pickup was of the horseshoe design as I had to feed the strings through a “tunnel” in order to restring the guitar. At least you confirmed my understanding of how the pickup works. As to the tone, to each their own. To the folks complaining about your sponsoring plugs, whether your for own business or for a third party paying you, there is no free lunch. That BLT, chips and Pepsi may be gratis to the one dining on that for lunch, but make no mistake that someone, somewhere had to engage in doing work to earn the money that paid for the lunch that the one is enjoying. Be grateful that it’s free. Enjoy the meal. Ruffles preferred over the Fritos on the plate? Keep the whining to oneself and just say thank you. Be grateful that the meal cost nothing. As to You Tube adding more commercials? Dylan has no control over that. Sniveling to him about it accomplishes nothing. If one is willing to pay a $12.99 monthly premium to You Tube, one of the benefits is that the You Tube commercials go away. There’s other bennies, but I’ll let the interested prospect research the matter on their own time. Lastly Dylan, I know where your at as I used to camp, hike, fish & hunt (deer & boar) in that area quite a lot as a younger man. You’re in some beautiful country. McArthur-Burney Falls Park is one of my favorite state parks and Lake Britton is one of my favorite places to fish. Highway 97 northbound out of Weed is my preferred route into Oregon. Imoho, it’s a prettier drive than I-5.
This vid made me look further into pickup design. Although you didn’t go specifically into it, it explains why some pickups sound better on lower wattage amps. Something made for a stage stack, like George Lynch’s, won’t sound right on a 15 watt house amp.
Where can I find specs for 76 model Gibson Les Pauls? Thinking about building one in a deep dark blue infused with metal dust to make it glow in a spot light but seem almost black in low light since I can't seem to find the real thing in that color. I saw one around 79 or 80 think it was a 76 model but not sure no bindings on the body carved top. Think it was a studio.
Dylan. Would you do a video on the neck pickup of the Rickenbacker bass, the early "toaster" pickup? I like it for that Paul McCartney tone like on "Rain".
08/11/2020: Nice review of your travels. It would have been cool, if you gave today's demo sitting with that lake or Falls behind you. Speaking of cool, you look like you are in a mild climate. It is 105 degree heat index here in Florida. Well, Florida does have its 4-seasons too: Warm, Hot, and Well done ... Have a great day!
The Central Valley is a half mile from the surface of the sun. Once he drops down out of the mountains it’s like being in an oven. (But it’s a dry heat.)
I know this is off topic of this video and that you have looked at a MFD pickup before but I think it would be cool if you would compare construction of a fender pickup and a the MFD pickup in the Comanche. Dig the vids.
Rickenbacker now uses plastic "horseshoe" covers - for example the 4001 bass. People claim it cuts down on hum of the pickup and serves a purpose. Dylan, can you confirm or deny that the current pickup cover is actually serving a function tonally?
the magnetic horseshoe sounds great, I have both, magnetic (old style) and reissue, the magnetic one sounds more.."beast" than the reissue..has some natural distortion...very "squire".. :-)
Why is it that guitarists who are mostly all obsessed about tone, never really talk about Gauss in pickups and how that affects tone. I had a vintage pickup that was demagnetised when I bought this guitar and I ended up charging it again because it sounded very weak and thin.. What was great with this example was finding that both the neck and bridge pickup was the same maxon model pickup. So it got me thinking why they sound so different from each other?? (bridge being the one that was demagnetised). After recharging it they became very similar again and was a huge improvement, Im just wondering how many guitarists think about gauss in their magnets in their pickups in general. Especially vintage pickups and how they change over the years.
I have a solid body heavy wood body the size of a palour 1930s era it has copper fretts 18 of them ,an a single volume dial antique in appearance, that's attached to a copper wire rickenbacker horseshoe pickup ,now I've researched the frying pan was made they say a lapsteel also was made ,but no where can I other than it being said various videos no where is it said that a 6 string rickenbacker copper wire horseshoe pickup wooden dobro in vintage cream binding palour size and shape is there 1. Can someone please tell me what I have.if there is a record of this anywhere .
Stop it, he hits enough of the "Bro" cliches as it is. He's the offroad, MX, sunglasses, cool coffee cup TH-cam scripted giggle of social media. I'm not sure where he fits in and no it's not everywhere. I'm not sure he's to confident in his identity. Sometimes kids have trouble finding themselves when they have no restrictions on what they have at their disposal so nothing ever has to be picked. I guess since he's all over the place, why stop now. He should grow a beard since everyone else is. You have to consider his wife may not let him and she might be their source of income or at least the solid base. He's obviously had access to the internet for some time, he knows as much as the old timers it took decades to compile the information we're all googling these days. It's good content he's sharing from them though. He looked it up so we don't have to. 👍
Maybe since you make pickups you can find a way of repairing the horseshoes on that pickup or even replacing them with alnico infused horseshoes. Hell build your own. If you're successful I want a set. Maybe you could cast a horseshoe magnet rather than bending metal. Nice jeep.
You've got to make money so if they dont care why dont they leave. Only thing is I'm sick of the worx commercials. Great products but man they could change the commercials here and there. I've bought an electric screwdriver which is awsome and has several bits that you never have to worry about losing. An Zip Snip that'll cut everything from paper to carpet. A bladerunner( stationary jig saw on a able with guides). Hydro shot , and a hand truck that is multi use. All started from buying the blower.weeder combo. All works fantastically. I'd actually like to see products you are pushing since I know you won't push a product you dont believe in.
Man I thought this was a video about how the horseshoe magnet works on Rickenbacker basses... Not about where this dude went and what he's doing, who the heck is this guy anyway. Well it might have an answer to the question that's labeled in the title of the video but I ain't going to listen to this to talk and watch and drink beer to finally get around to a quick explanation and not 18 minutes long. If you would get to the point of the question that the video is titled he would probably get a lot more likes but I ain't going to sit and watch it from the find me talk about the Horseshoe pick up magnet. See ya
Dylan, are you planning to look at Rickenbacker Toaster pick-ups too?
I’ve asked the same! A comparison between a toaster and a hi-gain too would be cool!
@@theolderbrother Yes, that would also be interesting too... Though the hi-gains seem more like Jazzmater pickups to me, and the Toasters have a distincive sound. Then we also need to be looking at the DeArmond 2000s, which I think might have a similar characteristics...
Yes please
@@theolderbrother I replaced the neck high gain with a toaster pickup just recently actually and it’s a huge improvement (at least for me personally). But I suppose it depends on your end goal in terms of tone
Technically, the magnet doesn't have to be anywhere near the coil of an inductive guitar pickup. According to an interview of Seth Lover by Seymour Duncan, and verified to me personally by Lindy Fralin, Jeff Lace, Larry Fishman, and every electrical engineer that I've asked, most descriptions of how inductive pickups work are wrong. The typical description says that the magnet creates a flux field around the coil that is disturbed by the vibrating string, inducing a current in the coil. What is actually happening is that the pickup's magnet is magnetizing the string, the string thus becomes a magnet moving near a coil, inducing a current in the coil. You could remove the magnet(s) from a conventional pickup and it would still work as long as you had magnets somewhere in proximity to the strings.
Also, if you wanted to make a horseshoe pickup, if you had the correct dies (which you might be able to make fairly simply out of some round and square steel stock), you could use a simple arbor press to shape 3/16" steel into U shapes., or even use a simple sheet metal brake if you're willing to accept 90 deg bends instead of a smooth curve.
Interesting. So, if e.g. your bridge/string saddles or tuning keys were magnetic, you wouldn't need a magnet in the pickup?
I will do some experiments, wind a pickup and put rare earth magnets on the bridge of a Strat. Will be fun to see how it works :-)
A magnet will produce lines of uthat "flow" from one pole to the other. A coil will produce a current when it moves relative to lines of flux (or the lines of flux move relative to it). Fir a vibrating string to produce a current, it must cause lines of flux to move across pickup windings. That wouldn't necessarily require a magnet within the pickup, but one can't just have magnets "somewhere in proximity to the strings". The magnet needs to create field lines in the vicinity of the coil for the pickup to work.
Incidentally, if one wants to "mute" a humbucker so it only picks up selected strings, that can easily be accomplished by placing a soft steel bar connecting the pole pieces associated with the strings to be muted. The metal bar will provide a continuous path for the lines of force to flow which won't be affected by the vibrating string, and will shunt most of the lines of force well enough to largely eliminate outside noise as a consideration.
@@flatfingertuning727 You are right that you can't get away with a magnet somewhere near the strings. The strength of magnetic fields drops off very sharply with increasing distance from the source magnet. It just makes sense to have the energising magnet very near to the pickup coil so that the strength of magnetised length of string is at its strongest just above the coil.
I feel I must say though that magnetic lines of flux or force do not exist. The concept of 'lines of flux' is just a convenient way to represent the changes in density of a magnetic field in 2D on paper, or to simplify calculations. It is like using contour lines on a map to represent height. If you perform the old experiment of placing a magnet under a piece of paper with iron filings on top you will see the illusion of 'lines of force'. This is an artefact of the particle behaviour of the filings becoming magnets themselves. Note that if you do a similar experiment with ferrofluid you see a very different behaviour, again due to the physics of the fluid.
This is correct! (per my memory of E&M from my BSEE '87) ... in fact, Zexcoil pickups / Dr Lawing has some fascinating and convincing demonstrations of exactly this ... I can't remember if I saw them on YT or their website ... he separated the magnet from the coil and placed the magnet above the strings (nowhere near the coil) and the pickup still worked
@@VacantCityDrifters I wonder what kinds of sound one would get if one had a pair of pickups mounted above and below the strings, using various combinations of in-phase and out-of-phase magnetics and wiring. I would think with the right phasing one could arrange things so all odd harmonics would effectively cancel, yielding an "octave" tone without need for a pedal, at the expense of being unable to play in the immediate vicinity of the pickups.
Thank you for covering this. Every time I'd hear "horse-shoe pickup" what I imagined was not even close to reality.
Cheers dude, I'm no pickup expert but your content keeps me coming back.
Of course you're no pickup expert, Dylan is here to teach us.
My favorite place to be is up there. Soak it up!
All i can say is, today in (2022) i received a lap steel guitar from (1948) a rickenbacher NS and she sounds wonderful. I cannot agree with you on the part where you say the magnets decay over time. I checked the horseshoe magnets they are week but produce a very nice sound especially the thick sound on the higher strings. I make pickups for a few years but cannot wrap my mind about this guitar.
Hi Dylan! Could you please talk about the rio grande humbucker pickups, specially the muy grande, which is a different humbucker with two real single coils. Thanks!
Interesting engineering. What I DON'T get, is why Ric still DO that single in the bridge and hum bucker in the neck! Wouldn't it make MORE sense soundwise, to put the humbucker in the bridge with fatten up the sound, and the single toward the neck to thin it out a bit?
Never heard of horse shoe pickups till today. Thank you!
is it possible that the 50's Fender pickups have cobalt/steel magnet rods rather than Alnico ?
People just try to complain or they can’t have something informative to add to help. We love to learn so keep up the great job!
Thanks!
Nice weather out there!
The bonus class should be about whatever people ask the most questions about during the first class.
Honestly I've got no idea how this pickup looks until I saw this video. Thank you!
FINALLY talking about Rickenbacker.
The Rickenbacker pickup has a unique tone...I guess that’s a nice way of putting it. I’ve never cared for the tone. I owned an older 360 for a short time and sold it. I believe the bridge pickup was of the horseshoe design as I had to feed the strings through a “tunnel” in order to restring the guitar. At least you confirmed my understanding of how the pickup works. As to the tone, to each their own.
To the folks complaining about your sponsoring plugs, whether your for own business or for a third party paying you, there is no free lunch. That BLT, chips and Pepsi may be gratis to the one dining on that for lunch, but make no mistake that someone, somewhere had to engage in doing work to earn the money that paid for the lunch that the one is enjoying.
Be grateful that it’s free. Enjoy the meal. Ruffles preferred over the Fritos on the plate? Keep the whining to oneself and just say thank you. Be grateful that the meal cost nothing.
As to You Tube adding more commercials? Dylan has no control over that. Sniveling to him about it accomplishes nothing. If one is willing to pay a $12.99 monthly premium to You Tube, one of the benefits is that the You Tube commercials go away. There’s other bennies, but I’ll let the interested prospect research the matter on their own time.
Lastly Dylan, I know where your at as I used to camp, hike, fish & hunt (deer & boar) in that area quite a lot as a younger man. You’re in some beautiful country. McArthur-Burney Falls Park is one of my favorite state parks and Lake Britton is one of my favorite places to fish. Highway 97 northbound out of Weed is my preferred route into Oregon. Imoho, it’s a prettier drive than I-5.
Dylan, just wondering, would titanium be a suitable replacement for aluminum in an alnico magnet and would that change the way the pickup sounds
+big b
We already have excellent ceramic, samarium and neodymium magnets. I’m sure the developers have tested and titanium - probably no effect. )))
I have an old epiphone tenor that needs one of this style. See them on lap steels from the 30s, but would love to build my own.
May I ask where you got your T-shirt?
This vid made me look further into pickup design. Although you didn’t go specifically into it, it explains why some pickups sound better on lower wattage amps. Something made for a stage stack, like George Lynch’s, won’t sound right on a 15 watt house amp.
Where can I find specs for 76 model Gibson Les Pauls? Thinking about building one in a deep dark blue infused with metal dust to make it glow in a spot light but seem almost black in low light since I can't seem to find the real thing in that color. I saw one around 79 or 80 think it was a 76 model but not sure no bindings on the body carved top. Think it was a studio.
Dylan. Would you do a video on the neck pickup of the Rickenbacker bass, the early "toaster" pickup? I like it for that Paul McCartney tone like on "Rain".
08/11/2020: Nice review of your travels. It would have been cool, if you gave today's demo sitting with that lake or Falls behind you. Speaking of cool, you look like you are in a mild climate. It is 105 degree heat index here in Florida. Well, Florida does have its 4-seasons too: Warm, Hot, and Well done ... Have a great day!
The Central Valley is a half mile from the surface of the sun. Once he drops down out of the mountains it’s like being in an oven. (But it’s a dry heat.)
I know this is off topic of this video and that you have looked at a MFD pickup before but I think it would be cool if you would compare construction of a fender pickup and a the MFD pickup in the Comanche. Dig the vids.
You mean a lot to us!!!
Rickenbacker now uses plastic "horseshoe" covers - for example the 4001 bass. People claim it cuts down on hum of the pickup and serves a purpose. Dylan, can you confirm or deny that the current pickup cover is actually serving a function tonally?
Sorry for being that guy but is there a source that confirms that the modern horseshoes are just plastic covers?
Good info, Dylan, thanks much!! I share your vids across FB, Twitter & Parler when I can bud!! I hope to see ya hit 100K subs!!
Fender is selling Cunife wide range humbuckers now. 😎
Might have to buy em and take the magnets out to make something good 🤷♂️
Check out the Trinity Alps while you’re in NoCal. I wish I knew you were in the PNW, I would have treated you to some awesome beer.
Nice vid! If you are going to do the toaster pick-ups, how about including a bit about Rikenbaker's blend control?
Chill, folks. He has to make a living.
Cool info!
It's a hard life, but somebody's got to do it...
Well said, you don’t have to make these videos
Literally the greatest pickup ever made. While not made to sound the best on its own, but perfectly made to compliment the neck toaster.
the magnetic horseshoe sounds great, I have both, magnetic (old style) and reissue, the magnetic one sounds more.."beast" than the reissue..has some natural distortion...very "squire".. :-)
@@tatalitoliterally exactly why i’m incredibly fixated on getting a real magnetic horseshoe
Why is it that guitarists who are mostly all obsessed about tone, never really talk about Gauss in pickups and how that affects tone.
I had a vintage pickup that was demagnetised when I bought this guitar and I ended up charging it again because it sounded very weak and thin.. What was great with this example was finding that both the neck and bridge pickup was the same maxon model pickup. So it got me thinking why they sound so different from each other?? (bridge being the one that was demagnetised). After recharging it they became very similar again and was a huge improvement, Im just wondering how many guitarists think about gauss in their magnets in their pickups in general. Especially vintage pickups and how they change over the years.
Alnico pickups was just a name to me, it isn't now, thanks for the knowledge.
JP, MA!
Please enplane how a Magnitone/Dickerson lap steel pickup works with no bobbin, no former...just a coil of wire around a half of a round magnet
I have a solid body heavy wood body the size of a palour 1930s era it has copper fretts 18 of them ,an a single volume dial antique in appearance, that's attached to a copper wire rickenbacker horseshoe pickup ,now I've researched the frying pan was made they say a lapsteel also was made ,but no where can I other than it being said various videos no where is it said that a 6 string rickenbacker copper wire horseshoe pickup wooden dobro in vintage cream binding palour size and shape is there 1. Can someone please tell me what I have.if there is a record of this anywhere .
hey dylan, you should grow a beard to mark your 45k subscribers milestone😁
Stop it, he hits enough of the "Bro" cliches as it is. He's the offroad, MX, sunglasses, cool coffee cup TH-cam scripted giggle of social media. I'm not sure where he fits in and no it's not everywhere. I'm not sure he's to confident in his identity.
Sometimes kids have trouble finding themselves when they have no restrictions on what they have at their disposal so nothing ever has to be picked. I guess since he's all over the place, why stop now. He should grow a beard since everyone else is.
You have to consider his wife may not let him and she might be their source of income or at least the solid base.
He's obviously had access to the internet for some time, he knows as much as the old timers it took decades to compile the information we're all googling these days. It's good content he's sharing from them though. He looked it up so we don't have to. 👍
Uncle Eric's Guitar Modding Adventures sorry to break it to ya but i can’t read🤷🏿♂️
Do ceramic magnets last longer than AlNiCo? Should I sell my AlNiCo guitars first?
Maybe since you make pickups you can find a way of repairing the horseshoes on that pickup or even replacing them with alnico infused horseshoes. Hell build your own. If you're successful I want a set. Maybe you could cast a horseshoe magnet rather than bending metal. Nice jeep.
What sunglasses is that? Kingseven?
shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1363650&u=2942296&m=88992&urllink=&afftrack=
love the glasses Dylan!
Charlie Christians sound fantastic tho!
So he saw some great places before they burned.
Maybe
just get ad blocker
You've got to make money so if they dont care why dont they leave. Only thing is I'm sick of the worx commercials. Great products but man they could change the commercials here and there. I've bought an electric screwdriver which is awsome and has several bits that you never have to worry about losing. An Zip Snip that'll cut everything from paper to carpet. A bladerunner( stationary jig saw on a able with guides). Hydro shot , and a hand truck that is multi use. All started from buying the blower.weeder combo. All works fantastically. I'd actually like to see products you are pushing since I know you won't push a product you dont believe in.
First Ducati I ever saw was in that stupid movie 'Fled' 🤣
Man I thought this was a video about how the horseshoe magnet works on Rickenbacker basses... Not about where this dude went and what he's doing, who the heck is this guy anyway. Well it might have an answer to the question that's labeled in the title of the video but I ain't going to listen to this to talk and watch and drink beer to finally get around to a quick explanation and not 18 minutes long. If you would get to the point of the question that the video is titled he would probably get a lot more likes but I ain't going to sit and watch it from the find me talk about the Horseshoe pick up magnet. See ya
👋
would love to test a horsehow pu myself , great video, beautiful american landscape be careful, you are it riot territory, stay away from the cities,
I thought for a moment I was going to see an Elizabeth warren commercial.
What a waste of my time!!
Glad we could help… you seem lovely.