Dude. Usually, your experiments are the crazy thoughts that go through my head, but I'm too lazy to actually do. This time, the idea is something that fluttered through my head, but hadn't even formulated into an idea. I just assumed there would be crazy hum. Anyways, props man. Well done.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to write a kind comment SMarkelet. Yes, this is an idea I had a long time ago but was too lazy to try myself but when Erick asked about it I knew it was time to give it a go. I was surprised the hum wasnt worse than it was. I think if I would have plugged it into one of the cheaper amps I have... it would've sounded like a wasp.
Thank you for watching Baron. Great comment. Yes I will keep chopping and drilling and beating on it until it denigrates then Ill build a new body for the parts and continue.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Michael. I'm so glad you enjoy my unorthodox style and strange antidotes. Its hard to explain what you are thinking especially if you are a visual learner so I just use crude pictures it matches my crude thinking process.
Also, just a normal "Erick." Dad always said Mom mis-spelled it because she was on painkillers after I was born. But I've met a few others with both the "c" and the "k." I used to tell people to pronounce the "ck" sound at the end extra hard. But often they couldn't tell I was joking, so I stopped.
Thank you for the suggestion Erick this was a cool experiment. Hahaha your mom was on them meds. I saw that K and though maybe it was Nordic in origin. You may have gotten me with that one as well Id think ok the ck must make the hard Germanic Kh! sound with some spit on it.
Muchas gracias por vernos y tomarte el tiempo de escribir un comentario tan amable fernando. Me alegro de que la información te haya parecido interesante.
Been wondering about this for the past week and just hours before I found this video, I did me a little experiment with a couple of fridge magnets and just stuck them on the side of the pickup, results: more bass, more volume, cant say it sounds better though. Great video, couldn't have done it better myself
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment SP&C. I am so glad you found this to be of use. Yes its all a balance you can make good ceramic and even Neodymium pickups if you design around the magnet. Kudos to you for doing an experiment. You just did one better than 90% of the "guitar dudes" in forums that repeat misinformation like parrots.
@@heavymetalATCI've got an idea I've been dreading trying to create, if you want to put the effort required into it, that's a big if but I've already subscribed so I'll see if you take up the challenge. It will be a pain in the ass, BTW, there is also a question I haven't answered via experiment yet that will affect one aspect of the design and if ineffective only makes it that much more of a pain in the ass to build. The question to be answered is what the result would be if the coil was oriented from right to left as opposed to vertical. Obviously a coil running the full length of the string spread oriented in this way would very much suck if it worked for any strings other than top and bottom E strings. Rather than a continuous coil, it would be many tiny coils with gaps between one another, basically like flat coils where the wire wraps around itself to form a one wire diameter length coil, or, as another way of describing the same thing, the Hypnosis cartoon graphic, a flat swirled coil. The purpose of the design was to see if a pickup can be design to pickup the back & forth motion of the string strong, as opposed to a normal pickup where the back and forth motion of the string adds very little amplitude, most of the amplitude comes from the up and down motion of the string as it vibrates towards and away from the coil. So, into the pickup design. First of all, the intention is to have individual "pickups"(single pole pickup) per each string. So only one pole has to be built to test the idea. This pole though, will be the pain in the ass, regardless of coil orientation but if the side to side motion of the string can't be picked up it'll just be that much worse. If the coils can be oriented left to right: Using the i's of a right sized transformer(or making the right size), to construct around a one inch length poll square/rectangle pole by stacking the silicone steel i's together BUT between each two i's is a flat swirled around coil, ideally only one wire diameter in length, as described above, covering as much of the steel sheet as possible with as tight of a "swirl wrap" as possible. The end goal working out to having square ends. Winding up with a single pole piece that is layered with a swirled coil between each slice of silicone steel. And if this weren't a high enough inductance, or just for extra amplitude, then wrapping a coil around that pole the normal way but, of course, the coil only going around that one pole. If that coil orientation doesn't work, or work good enough to be worthy of using, then the same idea only the slices of silicone steel are little squares and the pickup pole built up vertically with the same technique. - all the seperate swil coils would be wired in series, and if additional coil needed around the pole, once again in series. The point of the design being to have individual pole piece pickups with high enough inductance to be able to fit them side by side in one pickup slot(not having to have them staggered). All the single pole pickups also wired in series to create one pickup that fits in a typical strat single coil pickup slot. And the point of this design would be, for starters just to see how it would sound, but more importantly to have EQ adjustments on the individual poles, thus the ability to EQ each string separately(which would be a pickup with a shitload of wires because there would have to be output and input wires for each pole, to run through the EQ circuit after each pickup but still connecting all of the poles in series. Wire comes out from SPP(single pole pickup), goes thru EQ circuit, goes back to SPP, wires series to next SPP. The ridiculous amount of controls were going to be made to fit if it would work good enough to be worth doing. While in the original idea all 6 poles would need to be built to link in series with enough inductance, to pick up enough signal, from watching your U shaped flat copper coil pickup with a transformer used to adjust the impedance would work to be able to test a one-pole version. Being it would be such a pain in the ass, the biggest reason for why I haven't tried it yet, I can deDefinitely understand if you pass this one up 😢 😂 Oh yeah, and a tiny strong magnet on the bottom of each pole.
My understanding is that the difference in tone between various types of pickup magnets has to do with the inductance rather than the magnet strength. Magnet strength seems effect sustain more to my ears (assuming pickup height remains the same).
Here are some things to study; Magnetic circuits (you have one through your electromagnet, but not the pickup). Ferrous metals (by the looks, your baseplate is aluminium, which will not do the task you're after) Flux vectors (magnetism travels from N to S without exception) Phase, polarity.
Thank you for watching drum crazy as well as for this great information. Yes I don't know much at all about magnetic circuits or flux vectors. Ill definitely look into that. I do however know about metals. I actually went to school for that, I worked as a metal worker, welder, and machine engineer/fabricator for many years. I can assure you that the metal plate was ferrous it appears to be some type of coated mild steel. you can pick it up with a magnet. I have also learned quite a bit about guitar pickups over the last few years through all the builds and experiments on this channel as well. I have actually used non-ferrous back plates such as copper in the past for desired effects. It seems the introduction of a non-ferrous metal such as copper or aluminum into that magnetic flux slows the eddy currents and reduces the resonant peak of induction in the pickup. Basically if you want a fatter bassier pickup: slap a thick copper plate on the back. I can say I was well pleased with this experiment though, it worked great. The results I got in this video were perfectly in line with my previous observations. It seems that though the general consensus in the guitar community is that more magnet equals a brighter sound I have found the opposite to be the case and have built some very good pickups around this idea using neodymium magnets non-ferrous back plates and lower than average wind counts.
B and H both in magnetism matter. Most of those baseplates are copper plated steel. They work as concentrators for flux density (H) and alter coercivity of the magnetic assembly (permanent magnets and ferrous metals combined) so you'll generally see higher inductance and greater resistance to change in gauss levels in the magnets with other ferrous metals attached. Increase in flux density generally increases power (dyne/Weber) that drives the output higher and the resonant peak with it.
Thank you so much General. I cant take credit for this one as it was Erick's suggestion but I am well pleased at the results. Stronger magnets are brighter huh? Well, once again the experiment doesn't show this result at all? In fact its the opposite... again. Hahahaha
@@heavymetalATC Yeah, and the funny thing is at 24v it became distorted. The best way to tell is while the note was ringing out and you changed the voltage. Sure, it got louder to the point of 24v being distorted but brighter? My ass.
Way cool dude! I didn't know there was much debate on this issue, but it is a great experiment and learning tool. With G&L's Mfd's and the extra magnets that some Gretch pickups use, I would think the subject of increased magnetic fields and their affects on tone would be fairly clear. There is a balance of sorts in play though. I don't think overmagnatizing an overwound pup would be as desirable, unless wild distortion is the goal. Kudos to the both of you for the thoughts and efforts to make this possible.
Thank you so much for watching Troy. Yes the general guitar community doesn't have much of a debate on the subject however all the experiments I have done on this channel have proven to be the exact opposite of the basically accepted and understood consensus. I dont know why this is? However if you google it or ask in a guitar forum or read on a pickup website: What effect does a stronger magnet have on a guitar pickup? The answer will be "brighter and harsher" I haven't found this to be the case at all. Neodymium magnets are super boomy and bassy not pure treble or ice-pick highs. The balance you mentioned is the key! The info I have gained from personal experiments has brought me to that exact conclusion. Higher wind counts with a weaker Alnico magnet will give you that vintage chuggy bell sparkle and Lower wind counts with a strong Neodymium magnet will result in a super honest and revealing full range high fidelity sound. Swap those specs and you will get a harsh twinkly ice pick or a compressed muddy dull thing. I just wonder why all the info and the answer you get if you ask the general "guitar dude" is backwards? Thanks again for the kind comment Troy I am so glad you enjoyed the video.
@@heavymetalATC yeah, I definitely see what you're saying. I tend to do my own research and form my own conclusions too. The Gretch Super single coil design is what got me thinking down different roads than the stereotypical ceramic vs alnico debate.
I've been trying to figure this out for some time now and came to conclusion that it is not only a combination of pickup coil resistance and magnet strength, but also a pickup construction. I had a cheap invader style neck humbucker of very muddy sound, took out ceramic magnet and replaced pole pieces with alnico 5 rods. Result: Nice, soft, bright humbucker, also with pleasant single coil split. The more resistance on pickup coil, the more mids. Experiment with a single coil pickup by attaching much stronger ceramic magnet made it sound almost full as humbucker with more highs. So, looking for your own sound might not look as simple as just changing magnet strength. It will be a balance between coil, magnet and overall pickup construction. Thanks for the video.
OH yeah, a magnet change can do a ton of difference in tone... if you combine that with say higher value pots a different tone cap and raise or lower the pickups... sound like a totally different guitar its all just working and talking together everything changed, changes everything.
@@heavymetalATC Treating my dogs lymphoma day 90, now every five minutes of what to do next as he keeps fighting it off. I mounted a pick up above the strings as well recently. Then I made a cello type bridge and passed it through a hole where bottom pickup used to be, onto a 4 inch rigid speaker. As you well know a cello bridge was designed in the 17th century, way before Chuck Berry. I want a resonant cello sound to my bass. My eclipse experiment ready to try, using aluminum pie plate to make disc and matching hole. Do I have to explain the rest, how the string pierces the disc that has the hole behind it, back lit with a ring of tiny LEDs and picked up by a ring of 12 tiny photo transistors. You all start out with a vibrating string that vibrates in a circle till you all butcher its sound and add artifacts. When did guitars lose their bridges as if I want to know?
I did the same with a Duncan Detonator neck pickup, it's great with alnico 5 rods. Bright, clean, quacky, but also very full and with plenty of output. Didn't try the split, i wired it as a series/parallel with a push pull pot and also in parallel it got a decent sound, much thinner and quieter, but still very clear and quacky. Great mod to do on invader style pickups. Saved me a lot of money for a new pickup, recycled my old strat unused magnets, and got exactly what i was looking for, exceeding even my best espectations.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Andrew. Yes If you did a similar setup with maybe 18650 rechargeable batteries to get rid of the noise caused by mains power it could be made into a valuable recording tool.
Thank you for watching Joe, I gotta give Erick credit for this one. I have thought about it before but I would have never tried it if he hadn't made the suggestion.
Cool experiment! I kinda like that extra breakup on the upper voltage values. It's crunch-a-licious! I wonder if this could somehow be combined with the Copper-Tone idea?
Thank you for watching Rob. I do kinda wonder if that breakup is the reason all the info you find on pickup magnets says more magnet power = brighter because my own findings are the exact opposite? If you had an amp with a bright breakup I guess that could be a decent take away but Its all that extra bass and output that causes the amp to fuzz up... Yeah this could be used with the copper-tone but with a transformer and all that wiring pluss all this wiring and mains on the guitar I bet it would be hum city. I am thinking.. and yeah i know thinking is not always in line with results of experiments but I do think that the results would be very similar. More power would give more bass and more overall volume.
@@heavymetalATC I honestly thought you would say that it would start a fire, but I don't know much--LOL! I think this boosted magnet tone is a good basis for a rhythm guitar tone for stoner rock or shoegaze, a la True Widow or early Stereolab. I like weird stuff, though, so don't mind me. 🤪
That is a good idea and a cool project! One thing (not a negative) is the decrease in sustain as the magnet power increased?!?! Did you notice any?? I recently subscibed to your channel! Your videos are awesome!
Thank you for watching Brian. That is a good point I really should have done a sustain test. I can tell you though that from my experiments in the past an even stronger magnet than this like N94 Neodymium behind the pickup doesn't really kill the sustain... Its just too far away to really pull on the strings. Magnets seem to lose power over distance very quickly its exponential. Though I can say from personal experience if you get Alnico slugs too close to the strings, this happened to me on a strat, you'll get a warble/wobble unpleasant chorus sound and the sustain will be diminished somewhat. This is what has kept me from building any Neodymium pole pickups. They would pull the strings way too much maybe to the point of sticking but a bar or even 2 bars and 8 buttons behind the pickup doesn't seem to kill sustain at all. Thanks again for the interest in the channel as well as taking the time to write such a thoughtful and kind comment.
Hey man, just wanted to comment - been watching a bunch of your videos at work and love your approach to this stuff. My day job's a test engineer, and this is exactly the kind of "well heck, how how could we figure this out?" stuff I do and live for.
Thank you for watching Jay. Thats funny AF. You know... it really wouldn't surprise me though. It seems like these companies and the bigger youtube channels are constantly combing through all the odd little music channels like this one for ideas. He who patents it first owns it and he who puts it in front of the most eyes will get the $. Funny thing is this idea was patented back in the 30s LOL.
Holy shit that was funny as shit LMFAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I happen to stumble across this in my own research of magnetism because I was going to make a magnet mesuring device like a guass meter with Arduino, but im going with an ESP32 instead cause it has a hall sensor built in already. I googled every piece of electronic part i could find in my house that resembled the shapes made by the different form factors a Hall Sensor comes in and Ive been hording parts of pcb boards and random broken stuff since the chip shortages and I work on Computers as a Career and have had them since a kid when I learned the command line in 1977 "Atari Basic" so I got stuff when it comes to electronics. Took over 4 days of looking up everything just to find out ESP32's have them on board already and there only 6$ from Amazon but I refused to be defeated and buy one I new Id figure it out and You remind me of my own Silly Stouborness is why I rambaled all this out. Anyways that was awesome and very entertaining and funny I think because you wernt trying to be; like a comedy to me isnt funny because they are trying to be funny. You wernt so it was hiliraous or you wer being funny about how it wasnt funny and I couldnt stop laughing the whole video just about except for the playing at the end.. sorry for all the errors to busy right now to care LOL Peace!!!!!!
Very surprising! It is hard to judge though, as we did not get any magnetic field strength reading to put this in relation to the usuals magnets being used. I was however expecting a stronger effect on the actual sound (spectrum) of the pickup - not mainly a volume change. There was a slightly stronger low end at higher magnet strength, but it was way less pronounced than expected ...
Love this experiment! Since you've actually used neos in your own experiments, would you advice against putting small pills close to the strings towards the top end of the coils? I am toying with that idea. I think your copper alummatone had a neo bar underneth and that wasn't far away, right?
tried that myself on two basses I have. replacing the ceramic bar with small neos on top and underneath for each pole pieces. I can say its much better than any bar magnet and even better than alnicos. better low end response and mor focused low-mids. highs tend to stay the same so it seems weaker. brings the instrument more forward on the mix since it improved the articulation. best hack you can do to a cheap ceramic pick ups. I think alnicos will now be replaced. thats why big companies are now making neo pick ups.
@@dionaldtubang2894 interesting, thanks for sharing. I am gonna get a cheap ass guitar soon just to test this for myself. Squire affinity or Harley Benton start copy. Had planned that for a while but life got in the way 😂
I've bought 100 little disk magnets for about US$10 and I like the sound. One thing I've noticed is that if they're close to the string they can introduce a detuning effect which can range from pleasant to severely horrible. I mostly play around the fifth fret, and so have my pickup heights adjusted so the magnets sound good there, and they're not too bad at the 12th fret, but going beyond that the detuning becomes really bad, to the point that the horizontal and vertical vibration modes of the strings produce pitches that are almost a semitone apart.
All these tests are really interesting, i'm going to fix up a trash guitar just to gut it out and expirement as well. Somehow these videos are really inspiring to just fuck around and find out. For example i'd love to know what a pickup sounds up if it is parallel to the string, might be fucking awful but could also be a weird blend of neck and bridge tones. My intuition says it will be higher output, so i'm starting to dream up some pretty dubious pickup designs.
I hope you have been tearing stuff apart and cobbling it back together, If not its never too late to start. Im feeling ready to get back to jamming random junk together for the reason of what if. :)
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment yes, I know what you are talking about, I didnt even think about that. It might have some good answers in its design on how to do this better?
I think I'm starting to understand. Magnet strength affects inductance, which is one part of output. It also seems to add bass and mids a touch more than it adds volume to highs. The DC resistance is a part of the output equation but also affects how much the pickup will naturally drive the amp. This is why higher ohm pickups are darker and grittier. So... Technically speaking, the best thing to do is use the strongest magnets, and the least amount of the thickest wire you can get away with for your desired resistance, that way you get all the highs, all the lows, decent output, and you dial in your drive/grit via the resistance/turns.
You got it down like down-down, great accurate thinking. More turns does also act as a physical capacitor to darken the sound it gets "sticky" to the electrons with all that wire bunched up where they can interact. when you say "technically speaking" you are exactly right. that would be the kick @ss hi-fi sounding pickup from hell. Its the whole idea behind my neodymium p90 build. lower winds higher magnet power. but... we as humans some reason nostalgia harmonic complexity etc I still love a relative high wind low magnet power strat coil making hendrix chime sounds? A perfect speaker is what youd think you want too but the most common guitar speakers are all mids and not hi-fi at all cause the sound coming out of the output jack of the cranked tube amp is not actually that awesome marshall stack sound its pure fizzz and horrible hissing screaming harmonics the "BAD" alnico and construction paper speakers are filtering it out to sound sweet. the whole deal is pretty crazy really but you are totally on the pulse of it and you get it with the pickups 100%
Super cool. Would've been cool to have a direct level match di recorded to compare the tone without the output difference. Think you can make that happen?
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Vincent. I saw this comment last week and ive put some thought into it and with the mega output im getting at 24 volts into the magnets its something like 200 newtons so like 22.5 lbs of gauss so it would probably still overdrive my DI box. I was using a clean solid state mini PA for keyboards in the video and it usually doesn't get dirty at all even with humbuckers. It was just a whole lot of juice. This would be worth trying and its a good suggestion but as well I dont know that it would be good for my YT algorithm to post as a full video. I really should start using a spare channel to post short videos and small experiments to answer requests like this because that is a very good suggestion. I'll put this in my notes and use it as a consideration for starting up a second channel.
@@heavymetalATC A second channel for the extra nerds like me would be great! I suggest recording directly into an audio interface, they ofter have pads for the hi outputs and stay very clean. If you don't have an interface you can get some for cheap. I recommand. Berhinger (cheap) & Audient (value). I suggest to record in Reaper. -You can level match with a limiter or compressor. -Show eq graphs. -Get some great tone quick with amp sims. Keep up the good work.
interesting idea , might be useful to experiment to see how different winding numbers react to different strength magnetism before commiting to a certain strength magnet dont think feeding power to a guitar to excite magnetism to get sound out of it would be a good idea to use on a stage , having depleting batteries in youre effect pedals allready is enough cause for stress during a performance (getting visions of guitar with a handcrank generator on the back of it with the guitar player cranking like crazy after every 3 bars of notes iwant.....you to..... hear this......)
Thank you for watching Casanova. Yes I very much agree... that is exactly what I expected from my previous experiments and thats exactly what I witnessed, it was much more apparent in the room than on video as well. SO, my question is: why does everyone believe the opposite, why is everything you find on the subject on google or pickup websites tell you more magnet equals brighter? I don't get it. I guess I need to put on an aluminum foil hat and stand outside the guitar store yelling about some magnet pushers Alnico conspiracy. Hahahaha.
@@heavymetalATC To my ears, through the mic at least, your electromagnet pickup increased the whole spectrum equally. Did you use any filtering circuit on the guitar? I have a suspicion that the "stronger magnet = brighter tone" thing is part confirmation bias and part what filtering is being used with a given type of pickup, along with the style that's played to demonstrate the pickup's "greater brightness". There's so many tricky variables.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Steve. Yes that is due to the strong output even though a small solid state PA was used it overcame the limitations of the input and "over drove" the amp.
Edit: Hi there. Just came to the realisation that what I said was a bit silly. The ferrous material in the electromagnets isn't magnetic without a current, but if you stick a bar magnet to directly to them they'll probably work as pole pieces (depending on the metal. If it's steel in there it'll work) and the same inductance principles would apply as with a more conventional design, though the way that the electromagnet is designed may mean that there's something in there to ensure that the core doesn't end up permanently magnetised when the current is turned off. Took me a while to realise that I wasn't looking at this from the right perspective. Not really, as the core isn't magnetised unless you run a current across the wire. You'd need a very robust power supply in order to get enough current across six of these to magnetise them and you'd also need to have separate winds of wire for each string wrapped around the magnets to produce a signal. If you wanted to make a hexaphonic pickup there would be easier solutions, such as creating a bobbin where there are several sections with dividers along its length. You could then wind the coils so that the direction of the winds runs in the same plane as the strings. This bobbin could be 3D printed, but there's nothing to prevent you taking a cylindrical piece of steel (with a magnet in direct contact with it to make it into a long pole piece) and adding washers to it at regularly spaced intervals. You could then use a power drill to turn it while you wind the coils individually (make sure that you have a means to keep the lead wires from getting wrapped up and lost inside the pickup. Tape them all together and make sure that they're as far away from the coil you're winding as possible until you're ready to solder them. The signal comes from the current induced within the coil, so having only the one magnetic element is not an issue unless you want to go crazy trying to make a humbucking version. Simplest way to achieve that is probably build two half-size versions with opposite polarity directions for the pickup magnet (though you could maybe solder the leads so that each coil is out of phase with its neighbours. Would probably sound weird through an amp but if you're going to be converting each monophonic pickup into a midi signal anyway it would probably improve the design by reducing cross-talk and giving clearer signal for the converter to interpret. This is part of why a lot of MIDI pickups use piezoelectric saddles: much easier to isolate and it doesn't really matter if they sound like regular pickups for that application. Outside of Roland and a couple of more experimental designs made by very small shops, where it's probably a passion project put together by a guy who makes them at home because they have a day job, it's really rare to see a hexaphonic pickup made with magnets, though the company that makes those little submarine pickups has put one out with dip switches to turn parts of the pickup on and off. That one doesn't allow for each string to be processed separately though, so it's definitely not a viable option for converting a guitar into a midi controller).
Could you make a plastic pickup with 6 cavities that are inducted , then put mercury or gallium in them , to see how if it would work ? Or maybe fabricate a surface mount magnetic strip and run it through the truss rod between the truss and all the notes on the neck and wire it into a potentiometer on the guitar?
I watch your videos with best of intentions. I say to myself, just one and then I'll get back to work. Soon as that one is done, I see another and think ok just one more...8 videos later 2 hours has gone by. Then another 4, another hour. I'm getting no work done today, again. Congratulations.
What if you made a "p bass" mod by removing the bass pole pieces from one side of the humbucker and the treble pole pieces from the other. It might reduce the overall gain, but it should increase the clarity without changing the hum canceling??? Also, the neodymium mods that I have seen replace the long pole pieces with a small "button" of neodymium near the strings and don't use any magnet on the back. That is a big change in the magnetic field shape...
Seymour Duncan and others claim the magnetized string vibrating over the coil makes the sound... Not a metal string disrupting a magnetic field. This was shown in a video where they took magnets out of a pickup and put it above the strings already magnetized by lower pickup and it sounded exactly the same. I'm still confused myself but old Seymour was talking about this back in an article from the 70s.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Fausto. Great suggestion I hadn't considered this. The only way I can think of doing this right off the bat is maybe making a pickup with many coil taps along the winding and maybe a rotary switch to select them. I will look into it and see what I can come up with. I am putting this in my notes and if/when I do a video on this idea I will give you a shoutout.
I'd second the suggestion of trying to get an understanding of magnetic circuits. When a guitar string gets closer to or further from a normal pickip, it varies how much of the "circuit" will fall inside the coil versus outside. The electromagnets you were using are designed to keep most of the flux very near the magnet, which improves the performance for picking up nails, but degrades it for the purpose you're after here. I think a better approach might be to use a humbucker, but replace the bar magnet with a bar of steel with many turns of magnet wire wrapped around it. If your resistance is 8 ohms and you drive it with 1.5 volts, it should consume about 0.16 amps, and dissipate about 0.25 watts. Enough to get slightly warm, but not excessively hot. Field strength might not be huge, but having the magnet in the humbucker's magnetic circuit connecting the pole pieces on the two sides should mean the magnetic field has a useful effect.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment FFT. I had not though about the flux staying so close to the magnets. I did try to spread it out with that ferrous rod. Yeah I need to read up on it for sure.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment Alaric. That is a great comment and you are always an awesome thinker. That would totally be the case but... I removed all that stuff and blocked the trem with a wooden block before I ever did the first video with this guitar. I didnt want the springs to affect the results in any way. I know some people stuff foam or paper around the springs but in my personal player Strats I like to use 4 or 5 springs even though I don't use the tremolo bar it seems to add some kind of reverb or resonance to the sound. It may just be in my head due to the fact that I can feel it against my body but I could swear I can hear it. Either way yeah, I removed all that in this guitar. Once again though, very intelligent comment Alaric.
listening to this in the background on studio monitors and not being able to see what you are doing I can hear no changes other than the occasional clicking that I did not even know was you changing the voltage on the magnet. no one else could hear this either.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment FLP. I can totally see where you are coming from on that. I went back and blind tested it myself and I could hear that the pickup was gradually becoming slightly more bassy and overloading the front end of the amp but everyone has different ears. I could have done better to A/B the most difference against each other because it is all the same except the magnet power so its only like a 8-10% difference in sound, if that. It was a fun experiment to do on my end.
@@heavymetalATC I am old and a bass player that has lost most of my high freq sensitivity, not from loud music but from wife and kids :-) If I heard any "difference" it was in volume. I bet if you put it on scope and looked at it you would see very little freq response shifts and bigger shifts in volume/amplitude. Just looking at the waveform in your editing software will probably show this.
Thank you for watching Allan. I would think it would have a very similar effect to turning the magnet up and down but then again there I go thinking LOL. Only way to truly know is an experiment, These experiments will give unexpected results much of the time. Thanks for the suggestion I will put it in my notes and if/when I do a video about it I will give you a shoutout.
more power and opens up bass frequencies. the lowest power setting, it sounded like the amp was in a tin can. towards the higher side it sounded like it wanted to drive the amp.
Thank you for watching Extra crispy. That is exactly what I witnessed and exactly what I thought I would considering my previous experiments. The thing is... This is exactly the opposite of what you will find if you look this up on google. It will say a stronger magnet equals brighter and harsher sound... not according to my experiments? It tends to increase bass and the only harshness it imparts is from over-driving the input amp as you stated. Its a magnet conspiracy I tell you Hahaha Really though I just dont understand why all available info on this subject is the complete opposite of what I have personally witnessed time and time again.
@@heavymetalATC I made a couple pairs of split/z coil neo magnet pickups. they are wooden bobbin pickups similar to what you've made. One set sounds good. the second set i wound hotter, and for some reason it sounds sort of honky/ cocked wah like especially with distortion. I've reversed the magnets and it swapped leads wiring the coils, and even when set up for proper humbucking they still sound weird. i think my problem is that i used some old 8/32 truss head screws as my pole pieces, and the gauss is very weak at the string side of the pickup. i think if i had proper thick pole pieces the pull on the strings would be stronger and give me a proper full sound. It was just an experiment, so it's not a failure as long as i learn something from it.
@@heavymetalATC Also i have an idea that you might want to try. I actually built one, but i severely underwound the pickup, so it was weak, and haven't been able to get the time to try it again. I was trying to make a neo dymium magnet pickup that worked with the same concept as a filter Tron. the filter Tron has a powerful magnetic and very weak coils. i wound two coils with i think about 2500 winds of 42 ga wire. I sandwiched an n95 bar magnet between the two coils so that the magnet laid on its side with north facing one coil and south facing the other. i thought that since the magnet was going to be much closer to the strings that the magnetic pull would make up for the low wind coils and give it a decent output but clear tone. They ended up being weak. I think the same construction with the typical 500ish winds per coil like a normal humbucker might make for a decent output pickup. i can send you a pic of it and an exploded drawing if my written description does explain it well enough. Sandwiching a magnet between the coils of your super humbucker might be interesting as well.
I've always wondered if having 6 individually wound coilf with their own magnet, all going to the output would sound different from a conventioal single coil where the outputs are kinda forced together. My hypothesis is that 6 individually wound coils next to each other under a single coil cover would deliver greater clarity than forcing all the frequencies together into one coil. Could you verify and prove me right/wrong?
Check out Hexaphonic pickups. They're exactly what you described and allow each string to be outputted separately or together. To me, they make chords clearer but the string noise also becomes more pronounced.
why would you think this? they still all get summed back to the same single down the single wire to the amp, which introduces another point for degradation. Also the 13 pin hex humbuckers on a Roland GK pickup do exactly this and there is no difference in "clarity". You want "clarity" get an Alumitone and try that.
@@daviddragan610 I have Roland GK pickups on multiple basses and guitars, they do not behave like you think they would. I have put them on scopes myself, no difference. The signals are all summed together regardless.
Had a bit of a brainwave looking at someone showing off a Peter Green style mod (reversing the polarity of the magnet and putting them out of phase) and thought about using an electromagnet with the ability to swap the direction of the current running through it in order to swap the polarity of the pickup, so I ended up back here 😅 Edit: I could see something interesting being done with a couple of small, low power electromagnets at either end of a ferrous cylinder, with the wire for the pickup wrapped around the cylinder, so you get a magnetic field that runs horizontally. The other pickup could just have regular magnets in place of the electromagnets. In theory at least this should magnetise the cylinder along its length. I may be completely wrong about how this works because I have no background in electrical engineering but it seems plausible given my limited knowledge on the subject.
what if you made the pwm frequency more than 20Khz, that way you cant hear the hum, and most of it would be filterd out by the tone control on the guitar, and at the same time if would be probably more efficiet and less powerhungry
Thank you for watching Woo. Yes I think that could work for sure. Your dog may not like it but they got used to the sound of cathode tube TVs LOL I can barely hear the high voltage in a CRT due to all the loud stuff Ive been around my whole life but my wife will yell from 3 rooms away cut that squealing bastard off!!! Hahaha I do think that is a good idea though.
Was the battery not capable of powering with the unit you bought? Did it get super hot because there wasn’t anything to govern the current, like a diode or something? I got lost around that point when it switched to mains. I kinda get the rest of it. I’ll have to go back and study the triad of electrical properties and read up on how electromagnets work. Sounds like a rabbit hole for bed time reading.
Interesting experiment. Now you need to remove the magnetic string pull from the equation. Stronger magnets pull the string downward and remove the “meat” out of tone. I suppose you could have another magnet over the strings that would pull them back up. Or maybe a split humbucker with one coil over the strings and the other under the strings. It’ll be a bitch to get the windings and magnetic poles right but science beckons.
thank you for watching and taking the time to write such a well thought out comment. problem is I have no Idea how to make a magnetic sheild other than maybe thick copper if I can figure that out I think ill end up working for some kinda aphabet stuff... Hahahaha
Thank you for watching Ryan. Absolutely but that is a much different animal all together. Active pickups are just normal passive pickups (usually low output) with a built in pre-amp circuit. In short its simply just a boost pedal inside the guitar instead of on the floor. This is an actual adjustable strength electromagnet in place of the permanent magnet found in normal pickups. Its like having every magnet type from weak Alnico through the strongest Neodymium at the twist of a knob.
Clementine I have a proposition, and idea for a guitar doo-dad, that might actually have some serious legs. But bc I think it’s so cool and possibly lucrative- and if you are interested- reply to my comment then we can get in contact one on one
Thank you for watching Vin Q. I aint much of a business man myself but if you want to discuss your idea and if you would want any help with the idea or maybe commission me to build a prototype or do testing? You can contact me: HeavymetalATC@gmail.com
very interesting, but no, thank you. I think if the attributes where deemed to be of enough significant importance, that someone would make a movable magnet pickup.
Dude. Usually, your experiments are the crazy thoughts that go through my head, but I'm too lazy to actually do. This time, the idea is something that fluttered through my head, but hadn't even formulated into an idea. I just assumed there would be crazy hum. Anyways, props man. Well done.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to write a kind comment SMarkelet. Yes, this is an idea I had a long time ago but was too lazy to try myself but when Erick asked about it I knew it was time to give it a go. I was surprised the hum wasnt worse than it was. I think if I would have plugged it into one of the cheaper amps I have... it would've sounded like a wasp.
I just said the same thing on another video of his the crazy things I think but I’m too lazy to do
Don't be lazy, that's a lesson for you
Finally a set up to settle the debate on "effects of magnetism on guitar tone"!!!!!
Thank you so much for watching Lisen. Im glad you enjoyed the information.
One day that test guitar will be canonized as a saint in the Quest for Tone
Thank you for watching Baron. Great comment. Yes I will keep chopping and drilling and beating on it until it denigrates then Ill build a new body for the parts and continue.
"The blue world inside of my mind" I love this channel so dang much
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Michael. I'm so glad you enjoy my unorthodox style and strange antidotes. Its hard to explain what you are thinking especially if you are a visual learner so I just use crude pictures it matches my crude thinking process.
Wow thanks for risking your life and safety for this interesting experiment!
I have been thinking about this for years. This is awesome
Thanks VON. I appreciate the kind words.
nice finally someone done it !! cool videos man!
Awesome. You're giving me ideas again Clemintine!
Thank you so much for watching Peter. Go with them, let them take you away... Hahahaha
AWESOME! Totally fun and informative!
Also, just a normal "Erick." Dad always said Mom mis-spelled it because she was on painkillers after I was born. But I've met a few others with both the "c" and the "k." I used to tell people to pronounce the "ck" sound at the end extra hard. But often they couldn't tell I was joking, so I stopped.
Thank you for the suggestion Erick this was a cool experiment. Hahaha your mom was on them meds. I saw that K and though maybe it was Nordic in origin. You may have gotten me with that one as well Id think ok the ck must make the hard Germanic Kh! sound with some spit on it.
Increíble idea, me encantó como lo llevaste a la práctica, muy buen experimento.
Muchas gracias por vernos y tomarte el tiempo de escribir un comentario tan amable fernando. Me alegro de que la información te haya parecido interesante.
Sweet sound 👍
Actually a pretty sweet sounding pickup you cooked up.
Been wondering about this for the past week and just hours before I found this video, I did me a little experiment with a couple of fridge magnets and just stuck them on the side of the pickup, results: more bass, more volume, cant say it sounds better though. Great video, couldn't have done it better myself
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment SP&C. I am so glad you found this to be of use. Yes its all a balance you can make good ceramic and even Neodymium pickups if you design around the magnet. Kudos to you for doing an experiment. You just did one better than 90% of the "guitar dudes" in forums that repeat misinformation like parrots.
@@heavymetalATCit's all in the wood you choose. Try some better wooden magnets and you'll see the power of tone wood magnets.
@@heavymetalATCI've got an idea I've been dreading trying to create, if you want to put the effort required into it, that's a big if but I've already subscribed so I'll see if you take up the challenge.
It will be a pain in the ass, BTW, there is also a question I haven't answered via experiment yet that will affect one aspect of the design and if ineffective only makes it that much more of a pain in the ass to build.
The question to be answered is what the result would be if the coil was oriented from right to left as opposed to vertical. Obviously a coil running the full length of the string spread oriented in this way would very much suck if it worked for any strings other than top and bottom E strings. Rather than a continuous coil, it would be many tiny coils with gaps between one another, basically like flat coils where the wire wraps around itself to form a one wire diameter length coil, or, as another way of describing the same thing, the Hypnosis cartoon graphic, a flat swirled coil. The purpose of the design was to see if a pickup can be design to pickup the back & forth motion of the string strong, as opposed to a normal pickup where the back and forth motion of the string adds very little amplitude, most of the amplitude comes from the up and down motion of the string as it vibrates towards and away from the coil.
So, into the pickup design. First of all, the intention is to have individual "pickups"(single pole pickup) per each string. So only one pole has to be built to test the idea.
This pole though, will be the pain in the ass, regardless of coil orientation but if the side to side motion of the string can't be picked up it'll just be that much worse.
If the coils can be oriented left to right:
Using the i's of a right sized transformer(or making the right size), to construct around a one inch length poll square/rectangle pole by stacking the silicone steel i's together BUT between each two i's is a flat swirled around coil, ideally only one wire diameter in length, as described above, covering as much of the steel sheet as possible with as tight of a "swirl wrap" as possible. The end goal working out to having square ends. Winding up with a single pole piece that is layered with a swirled coil between each slice of silicone steel. And if this weren't a high enough inductance, or just for extra amplitude, then wrapping a coil around that pole the normal way but, of course, the coil only going around that one pole.
If that coil orientation doesn't work, or work good enough to be worthy of using, then the same idea only the slices of silicone steel are little squares and the pickup pole built up vertically with the same technique.
- all the seperate swil coils would be wired in series, and if additional coil needed around the pole, once again in series.
The point of the design being to have individual pole piece pickups with high enough inductance to be able to fit them side by side in one pickup slot(not having to have them staggered). All the single pole pickups also wired in series to create one pickup that fits in a typical strat single coil pickup slot.
And the point of this design would be, for starters just to see how it would sound, but more importantly to have EQ adjustments on the individual poles, thus the ability to EQ each string separately(which would be a pickup with a shitload of wires because there would have to be output and input wires for each pole, to run through the EQ circuit after each pickup but still connecting all of the poles in series. Wire comes out from SPP(single pole pickup), goes thru EQ circuit, goes back to SPP, wires series to next SPP.
The ridiculous amount of controls were going to be made to fit if it would work good enough to be worth doing. While in the original idea all 6 poles would need to be built to link in series with enough inductance, to pick up enough signal, from watching your U shaped flat copper coil pickup with a transformer used to adjust the impedance would work to be able to test a one-pole version.
Being it would be such a pain in the ass, the biggest reason for why I haven't tried it yet, I can deDefinitely understand if you pass this one up 😢 😂
Oh yeah, and a tiny strong magnet on the bottom of each pole.
My understanding is that the difference in tone between various types of pickup magnets has to do with the inductance rather than the magnet strength. Magnet strength seems effect sustain more to my ears (assuming pickup height remains the same).
Here are some things to study; Magnetic circuits (you have one through your electromagnet, but not the pickup). Ferrous metals (by the looks, your baseplate is aluminium, which will not do the task you're after) Flux vectors (magnetism travels from N to S without exception) Phase, polarity.
Thank you for watching drum crazy as well as for this great information. Yes I don't know much at all about magnetic circuits or flux vectors. Ill definitely look into that. I do however know about metals. I actually went to school for that, I worked as a metal worker, welder, and machine engineer/fabricator for many years. I can assure you that the metal plate was ferrous it appears to be some type of coated mild steel. you can pick it up with a magnet. I have also learned quite a bit about guitar pickups over the last few years through all the builds and experiments on this channel as well. I have actually used non-ferrous back plates such as copper in the past for desired effects. It seems the introduction of a non-ferrous metal such as copper or aluminum into that magnetic flux slows the eddy currents and reduces the resonant peak of induction in the pickup. Basically if you want a fatter bassier pickup: slap a thick copper plate on the back. I can say I was well pleased with this experiment though, it worked great. The results I got in this video were perfectly in line with my previous observations. It seems that though the general consensus in the guitar community is that more magnet equals a brighter sound I have found the opposite to be the case and have built some very good pickups around this idea using neodymium magnets non-ferrous back plates and lower than average wind counts.
B and H both in magnetism matter. Most of those baseplates are copper plated steel. They work as concentrators for flux density (H) and alter coercivity of the magnetic assembly (permanent magnets and ferrous metals combined) so you'll generally see higher inductance and greater resistance to change in gauss levels in the magnets with other ferrous metals attached. Increase in flux density generally increases power (dyne/Weber) that drives the output higher and the resonant peak with it.
The " north" is just stronger of the 2
Dude, after all these years I have watched you this here is some next level (over 9000) shit.
Thank you so much General. I cant take credit for this one as it was Erick's suggestion but I am well pleased at the results. Stronger magnets are brighter huh? Well, once again the experiment doesn't show this result at all? In fact its the opposite... again. Hahahaha
@@heavymetalATC Yeah, and the funny thing is at 24v it became distorted. The best way to tell is while the note was ringing out and you changed the voltage. Sure, it got louder to the point of 24v being distorted but brighter? My ass.
Ascended saiyan!! In Atc voice. Great vid
This, this is gold !!!
Thank you so much Butter Finger. I'm glad you found this info to be interesting.
Way cool dude! I didn't know there was much debate on this issue, but it is a great experiment and learning tool. With G&L's Mfd's and the extra magnets that some Gretch pickups use, I would think the subject of increased magnetic fields and their affects on tone would be fairly clear. There is a balance of sorts in play though. I don't think overmagnatizing an overwound pup would be as desirable, unless wild distortion is the goal. Kudos to the both of you for the thoughts and efforts to make this possible.
Thank you so much for watching Troy. Yes the general guitar community doesn't have much of a debate on the subject however all the experiments I have done on this channel have proven to be the exact opposite of the basically accepted and understood consensus. I dont know why this is? However if you google it or ask in a guitar forum or read on a pickup website: What effect does a stronger magnet have on a guitar pickup? The answer will be "brighter and harsher" I haven't found this to be the case at all. Neodymium magnets are super boomy and bassy not pure treble or ice-pick highs. The balance you mentioned is the key! The info I have gained from personal experiments has brought me to that exact conclusion. Higher wind counts with a weaker Alnico magnet will give you that vintage chuggy bell sparkle and Lower wind counts with a strong Neodymium magnet will result in a super honest and revealing full range high fidelity sound. Swap those specs and you will get a harsh twinkly ice pick or a compressed muddy dull thing. I just wonder why all the info and the answer you get if you ask the general "guitar dude" is backwards? Thanks again for the kind comment Troy I am so glad you enjoyed the video.
@@heavymetalATC yeah, I definitely see what you're saying. I tend to do my own research and form my own conclusions too. The Gretch Super single coil design is what got me thinking down different roads than the stereotypical ceramic vs alnico debate.
@@troythompson1621 thanks for the heads up on the Gretch pickups
this channel is so underrated
Thank you so much roy!
I've been trying to figure this out for some time now and came to conclusion that it is not only a combination of pickup coil resistance and magnet strength, but also a pickup construction. I had a cheap invader style neck humbucker of very muddy sound, took out ceramic magnet and replaced pole pieces with alnico 5 rods. Result: Nice, soft, bright humbucker, also with pleasant single coil split. The more resistance on pickup coil, the more mids. Experiment with a single coil pickup by attaching much stronger ceramic magnet made it sound almost full as humbucker with more highs. So, looking for your own sound might not look as simple as just changing magnet strength. It will be a balance between coil, magnet and overall pickup construction. Thanks for the video.
Sure
Oh
No
Up down when the string goes round.
A disc will spin wildly when attached loosely at centre to string.
OH yeah, a magnet change can do a ton of difference in tone... if you combine that with say higher value pots a different tone cap and raise or lower the pickups... sound like a totally different guitar its all just working and talking together everything changed, changes everything.
hahaha you still on here kicking out wizardom huh wayne? HAhahahaha
@@heavymetalATC
Treating my dogs lymphoma day 90, now every five minutes of what to do next as he keeps fighting it off.
I mounted a pick up above the strings as well recently.
Then I made a cello type bridge and passed it through a hole where bottom pickup used to be, onto a 4 inch rigid speaker.
As you well know a cello bridge was designed in the 17th century, way before Chuck Berry. I want a resonant cello sound to my bass.
My eclipse experiment ready to try, using aluminum pie plate to make disc and matching hole.
Do I have to explain the rest, how the string pierces the disc that has the hole behind it, back lit with a ring of tiny LEDs and picked up by a ring of 12 tiny photo transistors.
You all start out with a vibrating string that vibrates in a circle till you all butcher its sound and add artifacts.
When did guitars lose their bridges as if I want to know?
I did the same with a Duncan Detonator neck pickup, it's great with alnico 5 rods.
Bright, clean, quacky, but also very full and with plenty of output.
Didn't try the split, i wired it as a series/parallel with a push pull pot and also in parallel it got a decent sound, much thinner and quieter, but still very clear and quacky.
Great mod to do on invader style pickups.
Saved me a lot of money for a new pickup, recycled my old strat unused magnets, and got exactly what i was looking for, exceeding even my best espectations.
this would be really fun to play around with to get different sounds for recording
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Andrew. Yes If you did a similar setup with maybe 18650 rechargeable batteries to get rid of the noise caused by mains power it could be made into a valuable recording tool.
Thank you!
Thank you for watching and taking the time to leave kind words patrick.
This is a fucking genius concept !!
Thank you for watching Joe, I gotta give Erick credit for this one. I have thought about it before but I would have never tried it if he hadn't made the suggestion.
Great work...I was not able to draw any conclusions..though
Freaking awesome!
Thank you so much for watching Brian. I am glad you enjoyed the video.
They really do make it so easy. I hate to be a walmart shopper too but goddamn grocery prices are fuckin stupid.
Cool experiment! I kinda like that extra breakup on the upper voltage values. It's crunch-a-licious!
I wonder if this could somehow be combined with the Copper-Tone idea?
Thank you for watching Rob. I do kinda wonder if that breakup is the reason all the info you find on pickup magnets says more magnet power = brighter because my own findings are the exact opposite? If you had an amp with a bright breakup I guess that could be a decent take away but Its all that extra bass and output that causes the amp to fuzz up... Yeah this could be used with the copper-tone but with a transformer and all that wiring pluss all this wiring and mains on the guitar I bet it would be hum city. I am thinking.. and yeah i know thinking is not always in line with results of experiments but I do think that the results would be very similar. More power would give more bass and more overall volume.
@@heavymetalATC I honestly thought you would say that it would start a fire, but I don't know much--LOL!
I think this boosted magnet tone is a good basis for a rhythm guitar tone for stoner rock or shoegaze, a la True Widow or early Stereolab. I like weird stuff, though, so don't mind me. 🤪
That is a good idea and a cool project! One thing (not a negative) is the decrease in sustain as the magnet power increased?!?! Did you notice any??
I recently subscibed to your channel! Your videos are awesome!
Thank you for watching Brian. That is a good point I really should have done a sustain test. I can tell you though that from my experiments in the past an even stronger magnet than this like N94 Neodymium behind the pickup doesn't really kill the sustain... Its just too far away to really pull on the strings. Magnets seem to lose power over distance very quickly its exponential. Though I can say from personal experience if you get Alnico slugs too close to the strings, this happened to me on a strat, you'll get a warble/wobble unpleasant chorus sound and the sustain will be diminished somewhat. This is what has kept me from building any Neodymium pole pickups. They would pull the strings way too much maybe to the point of sticking but a bar or even 2 bars and 8 buttons behind the pickup doesn't seem to kill sustain at all. Thanks again for the interest in the channel as well as taking the time to write such a thoughtful and kind comment.
Who needs a tube screamer when you have dial up field strength LOL
zackly hahaha
Hey man, just wanted to comment - been watching a bunch of your videos at work and love your approach to this stuff. My day job's a test engineer, and this is exactly the kind of "well heck, how how could we figure this out?" stuff I do and live for.
Awesome video. We're about to see musicman add another nob to their guitars with a mains power 😂
Thank you for watching Jay. Thats funny AF. You know... it really wouldn't surprise me though. It seems like these companies and the bigger youtube channels are constantly combing through all the odd little music channels like this one for ideas. He who patents it first owns it and he who puts it in front of the most eyes will get the $. Funny thing is this idea was patented back in the 30s LOL.
Holy shit that was funny as shit LMFAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I happen to stumble across this in my own research of magnetism because I was going to make a magnet mesuring device like a guass meter with Arduino, but im going with an ESP32 instead cause it has a hall sensor built in already. I googled every piece of electronic part i could find in my house that resembled the shapes made by the different form factors a Hall Sensor comes in and Ive been hording parts of pcb boards and random broken stuff since the chip shortages and I work on Computers as a Career and have had them since a kid when I learned the command line in 1977 "Atari Basic" so I got stuff when it comes to electronics. Took over 4 days of looking up everything just to find out ESP32's have them on board already and there only 6$ from Amazon but I refused to be defeated and buy one I new Id figure it out and You remind me of my own Silly Stouborness is why I rambaled all this out. Anyways that was awesome and very entertaining and funny I think because you wernt trying to be; like a comedy to me isnt funny because they are trying to be funny. You wernt so it was hiliraous or you wer being funny about how it wasnt funny and I couldnt stop laughing the whole video just about except for the playing at the end.. sorry for all the errors to busy right now to care LOL Peace!!!!!!
Very surprising! It is hard to judge though, as we did not get any magnetic field strength reading to put this in relation to the usuals magnets being used. I was however expecting a stronger effect on the actual sound (spectrum) of the pickup - not mainly a volume change. There was a slightly stronger low end at higher magnet strength, but it was way less pronounced than expected ...
Love this experiment! Since you've actually used neos in your own experiments, would you advice against putting small pills close to the strings towards the top end of the coils? I am toying with that idea. I think your copper alummatone had a neo bar underneth and that wasn't far away, right?
tried that myself on two basses I have. replacing the ceramic bar with small neos on top and underneath for each pole pieces. I can say its much better than any bar magnet and even better than alnicos. better low end response and mor focused low-mids. highs tend to stay the same so it seems weaker. brings the instrument more forward on the mix since it improved the articulation. best hack you can do to a cheap ceramic pick ups. I think alnicos will now be replaced. thats why big companies are now making neo pick ups.
@@dionaldtubang2894 interesting, thanks for sharing. I am gonna get a cheap ass guitar soon just to test this for myself. Squire affinity or Harley Benton start copy. Had planned that for a while but life got in the way 😂
I've bought 100 little disk magnets for about US$10 and I like the sound. One thing I've noticed is that if they're close to the string they can introduce a detuning effect which can range from pleasant to severely horrible. I mostly play around the fifth fret, and so have my pickup heights adjusted so the magnets sound good there, and they're not too bad at the 12th fret, but going beyond that the detuning becomes really bad, to the point that the horizontal and vertical vibration modes of the strings produce pitches that are almost a semitone apart.
All these tests are really interesting, i'm going to fix up a trash guitar just to gut it out and expirement as well. Somehow these videos are really inspiring to just fuck around and find out. For example i'd love to know what a pickup sounds up if it is parallel to the string, might be fucking awful but could also be a weird blend of neck and bridge tones. My intuition says it will be higher output, so i'm starting to dream up some pretty dubious pickup designs.
I hope you have been tearing stuff apart and cobbling it back together, If not its never too late to start. Im feeling ready to get back to jamming random junk together for the reason of what if. :)
Really old speakers were made this way. Called.a field coil design.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment yes, I know what you are talking about, I didnt even think about that. It might have some good answers in its design on how to do this better?
Do you think it would be a possibility to run it to a foot pedal, to use that strange shifting texture during playing.
What material is the heatsink material that you put on the pick-up?
I think I'm starting to understand. Magnet strength affects inductance, which is one part of output. It also seems to add bass and mids a touch more than it adds volume to highs. The DC resistance is a part of the output equation but also affects how much the pickup will naturally drive the amp. This is why higher ohm pickups are darker and grittier. So... Technically speaking, the best thing to do is use the strongest magnets, and the least amount of the thickest wire you can get away with for your desired resistance, that way you get all the highs, all the lows, decent output, and you dial in your drive/grit via the resistance/turns.
You got it down like down-down, great accurate thinking. More turns does also act as a physical capacitor to darken the sound it gets "sticky" to the electrons with all that wire bunched up where they can interact. when you say "technically speaking" you are exactly right. that would be the kick @ss hi-fi sounding pickup from hell. Its the whole idea behind my neodymium p90 build. lower winds higher magnet power. but... we as humans some reason nostalgia harmonic complexity etc I still love a relative high wind low magnet power strat coil making hendrix chime sounds? A perfect speaker is what youd think you want too but the most common guitar speakers are all mids and not hi-fi at all cause the sound coming out of the output jack of the cranked tube amp is not actually that awesome marshall stack sound its pure fizzz and horrible hissing screaming harmonics the "BAD" alnico and construction paper speakers are filtering it out to sound sweet. the whole deal is pretty crazy really but you are totally on the pulse of it and you get it with the pickups 100%
******g Awesome !
Thank you so much for the kind words LOC.
The 24 Volt setting was by far my favorite, but I would rather carry two car batteries wired in series than having to deal with that AC hum.
Super cool.
Would've been cool to have a direct level match di recorded to compare the tone without the output difference.
Think you can make that happen?
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Vincent. I saw this comment last week and ive put some thought into it and with the mega output im getting at 24 volts into the magnets its something like 200 newtons so like 22.5 lbs of gauss so it would probably still overdrive my DI box. I was using a clean solid state mini PA for keyboards in the video and it usually doesn't get dirty at all even with humbuckers. It was just a whole lot of juice. This would be worth trying and its a good suggestion but as well I dont know that it would be good for my YT algorithm to post as a full video. I really should start using a spare channel to post short videos and small experiments to answer requests like this because that is a very good suggestion. I'll put this in my notes and use it as a consideration for starting up a second channel.
@@heavymetalATC A second channel for the extra nerds like me would be great!
I suggest recording directly into an audio interface, they ofter have pads for the hi outputs and stay very clean.
If you don't have an interface you can get some for cheap. I recommand. Berhinger (cheap) & Audient (value).
I suggest to record in Reaper.
-You can level match with a limiter or compressor.
-Show eq graphs.
-Get some great tone quick with amp sims.
Keep up the good work.
2 pickups wired out of phase to kill the noise?
interesting idea , might be useful to experiment to see how different winding numbers react to different strength magnetism before commiting to a certain strength magnet dont think feeding power to a guitar to excite magnetism to get sound out of it would be a good idea to use on a stage , having depleting batteries in youre effect pedals allready is enough cause for stress during a performance (getting visions of guitar with a handcrank generator on the back of it with the guitar player cranking like crazy after every 3 bars of notes
iwant.....you to..... hear this......)
Definitely seems to add extra bass and overload the input of the amp more as the voltage across the two electromagnets increases to my ears.
Thank you for watching Casanova. Yes I very much agree... that is exactly what I expected from my previous experiments and thats exactly what I witnessed, it was much more apparent in the room than on video as well. SO, my question is: why does everyone believe the opposite, why is everything you find on the subject on google or pickup websites tell you more magnet equals brighter? I don't get it. I guess I need to put on an aluminum foil hat and stand outside the guitar store yelling about some magnet pushers Alnico conspiracy. Hahahaha.
@@heavymetalATC To my ears, through the mic at least, your electromagnet pickup increased the whole spectrum equally. Did you use any filtering circuit on the guitar? I have a suspicion that the "stronger magnet = brighter tone" thing is part confirmation bias and part what filtering is being used with a given type of pickup, along with the style that's played to demonstrate the pickup's "greater brightness". There's so many tricky variables.
Sounds like overdrive
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Steve. Yes that is due to the strong output even though a small solid state PA was used it overcame the limitations of the input and "over drove" the amp.
These 2 magnets - can they be used like a single string pickup? Would they make strong signal?
Edit: Hi there. Just came to the realisation that what I said was a bit silly. The ferrous material in the electromagnets isn't magnetic without a current, but if you stick a bar magnet to directly to them they'll probably work as pole pieces (depending on the metal. If it's steel in there it'll work) and the same inductance principles would apply as with a more conventional design, though the way that the electromagnet is designed may mean that there's something in there to ensure that the core doesn't end up permanently magnetised when the current is turned off. Took me a while to realise that I wasn't looking at this from the right perspective.
Not really, as the core isn't magnetised unless you run a current across the wire.
You'd need a very robust power supply in order to get enough current across six of these to magnetise them and you'd also need to have separate winds of wire for each string wrapped around the magnets to produce a signal.
If you wanted to make a hexaphonic pickup there would be easier solutions, such as creating a bobbin where there are several sections with dividers along its length. You could then wind the coils so that the direction of the winds runs in the same plane as the strings.
This bobbin could be 3D printed, but there's nothing to prevent you taking a cylindrical piece of steel (with a magnet in direct contact with it to make it into a long pole piece) and adding washers to it at regularly spaced intervals. You could then use a power drill to turn it while you wind the coils individually (make sure that you have a means to keep the lead wires from getting wrapped up and lost inside the pickup. Tape them all together and make sure that they're as far away from the coil you're winding as possible until you're ready to solder them. The signal comes from the current induced within the coil, so having only the one magnetic element is not an issue unless you want to go crazy trying to make a humbucking version. Simplest way to achieve that is probably build two half-size versions with opposite polarity directions for the pickup magnet (though you could maybe solder the leads so that each coil is out of phase with its neighbours. Would probably sound weird through an amp but if you're going to be converting each monophonic pickup into a midi signal anyway it would probably improve the design by reducing cross-talk and giving clearer signal for the converter to interpret. This is part of why a lot of MIDI pickups use piezoelectric saddles: much easier to isolate and it doesn't really matter if they sound like regular pickups for that application. Outside of Roland and a couple of more experimental designs made by very small shops, where it's probably a passion project put together by a guy who makes them at home because they have a day job, it's really rare to see a hexaphonic pickup made with magnets, though the company that makes those little submarine pickups has put one out with dip switches to turn parts of the pickup on and off. That one doesn't allow for each string to be processed separately though, so it's definitely not a viable option for converting a guitar into a midi controller).
Could you make a plastic pickup with 6 cavities that are inducted , then put mercury or gallium in them , to see how if it would work ? Or maybe fabricate a surface mount magnetic strip and run it through the truss rod between the truss and all the notes on the neck and wire it into a potentiometer on the guitar?
I watch your videos with best of intentions. I say to myself, just one and then I'll get back to work. Soon as that one is done, I see another and think ok just one more...8 videos later 2 hours has gone by. Then another 4, another hour. I'm getting no work done today, again. Congratulations.
What if you made a "p bass" mod by removing the bass pole pieces from one side of the humbucker and the treble pole pieces from the other. It might reduce the overall gain, but it should increase the clarity without changing the hum canceling???
Also, the neodymium mods that I have seen replace the long pole pieces with a small "button" of neodymium near the strings and don't use any magnet on the back. That is a big change in the magnetic field shape...
Seymour Duncan and others claim the magnetized string vibrating over the coil makes the sound... Not a metal string disrupting a magnetic field. This was shown in a video where they took magnets out of a pickup and put it above the strings already magnetized by lower pickup and it sounded exactly the same. I'm still confused myself but old Seymour was talking about this back in an article from the 70s.
Can you make a variable resistance pickup please?
Thanks for watching and taking the time to write a comment Fausto. Great suggestion I hadn't considered this. The only way I can think of doing this right off the bat is maybe making a pickup with many coil taps along the winding and maybe a rotary switch to select them. I will look into it and see what I can come up with. I am putting this in my notes and if/when I do a video on this idea I will give you a shoutout.
@@heavymetalATC Thank you so much
I love your channel
It's my idea I searched for finding that if any one has the same idea!
I'd second the suggestion of trying to get an understanding of magnetic circuits. When a guitar string gets closer to or further from a normal pickip, it varies how much of the "circuit" will fall inside the coil versus outside. The electromagnets you were using are designed to keep most of the flux very near the magnet, which improves the performance for picking up nails, but degrades it for the purpose you're after here. I think a better approach might be to use a humbucker, but replace the bar magnet with a bar of steel with many turns of magnet wire wrapped around it. If your resistance is 8 ohms and you drive it with 1.5 volts, it should consume about 0.16 amps, and dissipate about 0.25 watts. Enough to get slightly warm, but not excessively hot. Field strength might not be huge, but having the magnet in the humbucker's magnetic circuit connecting the pole pieces on the two sides should mean the magnetic field has a useful effect.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment FFT. I had not though about the flux staying so close to the magnets. I did try to spread it out with that ferrous rod. Yeah I need to read up on it for sure.
So. I bet you hit the whammy claw screws with the forstner bit. Prolly forgot that that all was back there didn't you.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment Alaric. That is a great comment and you are always an awesome thinker. That would totally be the case but... I removed all that stuff and blocked the trem with a wooden block before I ever did the first video with this guitar. I didnt want the springs to affect the results in any way. I know some people stuff foam or paper around the springs but in my personal player Strats I like to use 4 or 5 springs even though I don't use the tremolo bar it seems to add some kind of reverb or resonance to the sound. It may just be in my head due to the fact that I can feel it against my body but I could swear I can hear it. Either way yeah, I removed all that in this guitar. Once again though, very intelligent comment Alaric.
@@heavymetalATC I only figured this because I *have* done that. Turns out you're one step ahead of the game.
listening to this in the background on studio monitors and not being able to see what you are doing I can hear no changes other than the occasional clicking that I did not even know was you changing the voltage on the magnet. no one else could hear this either.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment FLP. I can totally see where you are coming from on that. I went back and blind tested it myself and I could hear that the pickup was gradually becoming slightly more bassy and overloading the front end of the amp but everyone has different ears. I could have done better to A/B the most difference against each other because it is all the same except the magnet power so its only like a 8-10% difference in sound, if that. It was a fun experiment to do on my end.
@@heavymetalATC I am old and a bass player that has lost most of my high freq sensitivity, not from loud music but from wife and kids :-) If I heard any "difference" it was in volume. I bet if you put it on scope and looked at it you would see very little freq response shifts and bigger shifts in volume/amplitude. Just looking at the waveform in your editing software will probably show this.
Awesome, now separate the magnets from the pickup, and see how the distance affects the tone
Thank you for watching Allan. I would think it would have a very similar effect to turning the magnet up and down but then again there I go thinking LOL. Only way to truly know is an experiment, These experiments will give unexpected results much of the time. Thanks for the suggestion I will put it in my notes and if/when I do a video about it I will give you a shoutout.
more power and opens up bass frequencies. the lowest power setting, it sounded like the amp was in a tin can. towards the higher side it sounded like it wanted to drive the amp.
Thank you for watching Extra crispy. That is exactly what I witnessed and exactly what I thought I would considering my previous experiments. The thing is... This is exactly the opposite of what you will find if you look this up on google. It will say a stronger magnet equals brighter and harsher sound... not according to my experiments? It tends to increase bass and the only harshness it imparts is from over-driving the input amp as you stated. Its a magnet conspiracy I tell you Hahaha Really though I just dont understand why all available info on this subject is the complete opposite of what I have personally witnessed time and time again.
@@heavymetalATC I made a couple pairs of split/z coil neo magnet pickups. they are wooden bobbin pickups similar to what you've made. One set sounds good. the second set i wound hotter, and for some reason it sounds sort of honky/ cocked wah like especially with distortion. I've reversed the magnets and it swapped leads wiring the coils, and even when set up for proper humbucking they still sound weird. i think my problem is that i used some old 8/32 truss head screws as my pole pieces, and the gauss is very weak at the string side of the pickup. i think if i had proper thick pole pieces the pull on the strings would be stronger and give me a proper full sound. It was just an experiment, so it's not a failure as long as i learn something from it.
@@heavymetalATC Also i have an idea that you might want to try. I actually built one, but i severely underwound the pickup, so it was weak, and haven't been able to get the time to try it again. I was trying to make a neo dymium magnet pickup that worked with the same concept as a filter Tron. the filter Tron has a powerful magnetic and very weak coils. i wound two coils with i think about 2500 winds of 42 ga wire. I sandwiched an n95 bar magnet between the two coils so that the magnet laid on its side with north facing one coil and south facing the other. i thought that since the magnet was going to be much closer to the strings that the magnetic pull would make up for the low wind coils and give it a decent output but clear tone. They ended up being weak. I think the same construction with the typical 500ish winds per coil like a normal humbucker might make for a decent output pickup. i can send you a pic of it and an exploded drawing if my written description does explain it well enough. Sandwiching a magnet between the coils of your super humbucker might be interesting as well.
I've always wondered if having 6 individually wound coilf with their own magnet, all going to the output would sound different from a conventioal single coil where the outputs are kinda forced together. My hypothesis is that 6 individually wound coils next to each other under a single coil cover would deliver greater clarity than forcing all the frequencies together into one coil.
Could you verify and prove me right/wrong?
Check out Hexaphonic pickups. They're exactly what you described and allow each string to be outputted separately or together. To me, they make chords clearer but the string noise also becomes more pronounced.
why would you think this? they still all get summed back to the same single down the single wire to the amp, which introduces another point for degradation. Also the 13 pin hex humbuckers on a Roland GK pickup do exactly this and there is no difference in "clarity". You want "clarity" get an Alumitone and try that.
@@fuzzylollipop1429 surely there would be a difference ?
@@daviddragan610 I have Roland GK pickups on multiple basses and guitars, they do not behave like you think they would. I have put them on scopes myself, no difference. The signals are all summed together regardless.
@@fuzzylollipop1429 what if you wired it up to have 6 Jacks and you ran those to an amp each?
Had a bit of a brainwave looking at someone showing off a Peter Green style mod (reversing the polarity of the magnet and putting them out of phase) and thought about using an electromagnet with the ability to swap the direction of the current running through it in order to swap the polarity of the pickup, so I ended up back here 😅
Edit: I could see something interesting being done with a couple of small, low power electromagnets at either end of a ferrous cylinder, with the wire for the pickup wrapped around the cylinder, so you get a magnetic field that runs horizontally. The other pickup could just have regular magnets in place of the electromagnets. In theory at least this should magnetise the cylinder along its length. I may be completely wrong about how this works because I have no background in electrical engineering but it seems plausible given my limited knowledge on the subject.
what if you made the pwm frequency more than 20Khz, that way you cant hear the hum, and most of it would be filterd out by the tone control on the guitar, and at the same time if would be probably more efficiet and less powerhungry
Thank you for watching Woo. Yes I think that could work for sure. Your dog may not like it but they got used to the sound of cathode tube TVs LOL I can barely hear the high voltage in a CRT due to all the loud stuff Ive been around my whole life but my wife will yell from 3 rooms away cut that squealing bastard off!!! Hahaha I do think that is a good idea though.
Was the battery not capable of powering with the unit you bought? Did it get super hot because there wasn’t anything to govern the current, like a diode or something? I got lost around that point when it switched to mains. I kinda get the rest of it. I’ll have to go back and study the triad of electrical properties and read up on how electromagnets work. Sounds like a rabbit hole for bed time reading.
Interesting experiment. Now you need to remove the magnetic string pull from the equation. Stronger magnets pull the string downward and remove the “meat” out of tone. I suppose you could have another magnet over the strings that would pull them back up. Or maybe a split humbucker with one coil over the strings and the other under the strings. It’ll be a bitch to get the windings and magnetic poles right but science beckons.
thank you for watching and taking the time to write such a well thought out comment. problem is I have no Idea how to make a magnetic sheild other than maybe thick copper if I can figure that out I think ill end up working for some kinda aphabet stuff... Hahahaha
Active pickups already exist
Thank you for watching Ryan. Absolutely but that is a much different animal all together. Active pickups are just normal passive pickups (usually low output) with a built in pre-amp circuit. In short its simply just a boost pedal inside the guitar instead of on the floor. This is an actual adjustable strength electromagnet in place of the permanent magnet found in normal pickups. Its like having every magnet type from weak Alnico through the strongest Neodymium at the twist of a knob.
yeah but this one is badass
I don't know...sounds like a volume control to me.
Clementine I have a proposition, and idea for a guitar doo-dad, that might actually have some serious legs. But bc I think it’s so cool and possibly lucrative- and if you are interested- reply to my comment then we can get in contact one on one
Thank you for watching Vin Q. I aint much of a business man myself but if you want to discuss your idea and if you would want any help with the idea or maybe commission me to build a prototype or do testing? You can contact me: HeavymetalATC@gmail.com
very interesting, but no, thank you.
I think if the attributes where deemed to be of enough significant importance, that someone would make a movable magnet pickup.
Hahaha yeah, it's just an experiment. The moving magnet is a pretty good idea 💡💡💡