View Single Post
Old 11-13-2007, 06:00 PM   #107
J Kennedy
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: ocean mists
Posts: 860
Default Not so great mod

Was going nuts with the Neodymiums. Drew first blood when I got a finger pinched between two bars and wrecked my thumb trying to pry the things apart all day yesterday. Lost a couple of them as they flew off into something and shattered. They are brittle.

I redid a 3 pickup Hagstrom III with N42 bars. Sounds fantastic. Started on the Gibson SG and a 3 pickup Fender Mustang and problems started. Bigger and stronger is not necessarily better it seems. Scrap the idea of the N52 discs and the small N50 bars. The N52 discs may work on bass guitars. I’ve got a couple of them in line for a makeover and will let you know what results.

I screwed up the Gibson pretty bad at first. The SG single coil pickups have a system of two weak bars magnetized thru the width. The poles are screws that go thru an inert bar in the center. The stock system has an alternating north and south pole down the side in contact with the inert bar. The bar/screw combination channels the flux.

Ripped out the stock and replaced them with the N42 bars. Wow, what a sound!! Only problem is that it was unusable because of the variation in gain. Hi E and lo E and A were several times louder than DGB. I tried several alterations and did get a boost and sound/gain improvement by using two of the small N50 bars against the screws in addition to the stock magnets reinstalled.

I tried to redo the small humbucking with discs and small bars and came up with a weird option that picked up every sound of the wood or plastic being touched but had very low gain and knocked the lights out of any pickup it was mixed with. I ended up epoxying the small N50 discs on the bottom end of the protruding screws, with the small N50 bars across (two bars, each across 3 discs). This looks like a Lego setup but turbo charged the one coil so much that the second coil is barely functional in comparison, in or out of phase, the neo magnetized coil takes all the presence. This guitar now sounds incredible, but not easy to initially configure an optimized magnet system.

Struggle with the Mustang was getting the larger discs to stay still. Another factor comes into play that the edges of the disc repel each other, so there is some clash and inevitable phasing warp in the fields. I did finally get all 3 pickups redone, N52 3/8 discs and the N42 bars across. Once again, sound is fantastic and gain is way up.

The small N50 bars also have a problem with end to end placement. They attract and slam together on the ends only if the thickness field polarity is reversed, which would give too weird phasing cancellations.

Point of all of this as I am finding out, the strong N52’s are great, but much harder to work with. I can’t tell any real advantage over the smaller quarter inch N50’s. Optimum setup I’ve found so far with these things is still the quarter inch N50 discs on each pole of the pickup and the 2 inch N42 bar centered over the discs. I haven’t experimented with the Neodymium rods yet, but these hold promise.

Best,
John K

Last edited by J Kennedy; 11-13-2007 at 06:05 PM.
J Kennedy is offline   Reply With Quote