Brainwreck,
Thank you much for the reference to stewmac for the alnico magnets. These are really useful in upgrades across many brands, and if they can be gotten without having to tear up pickups… Please let me know if you find the other source.
There are several things you can do to the pickups you have that may help out by increasing the field. My rule of thumb is that more is usually better but not always and that with more complex phasing arrangements, what you do to one pickup should be done to all. Listen to the mod and if it sounds better not just louder, go with it.
Note on pickup mod on general. None of this stuff takes any brains to do, but some mechanical skill and caution are definitely needed. The wires in a pickup are thinner than a hair with a thin coat of shellac for shielding. Heat is necessary for soldering but is a major enemy to the magnets and windings. Very easy to melt and short a pickup or damage the field. Even taking off the lower bar magnet has to be done carefully if it’s bonded since the stress can abrade a few windings and the pickup is fried beyond repair. Break even an exposed lead on the winding and you’ve got maybe a half chance of soldering it back.
Pressing out the inert poles is usually not an option on the cheaper pickups. Humbuckings have a nice plastic channel to fit the alnicos. The cheap single coils are often glued in place to waxed cardboard with the windings in contact with the poles. Test it anyway with a slight push to see if it slides easily. Even if it does but it’s not in a plastic channel, risk is too high for killing the pickup. You may get the pole out, but you’ll never get the alnico back in. There are several alternatives, the best to replace the pickup with a real one having individual pole magnets.
Otherwise, replace the bar magnet with a stronger one. Downside may be that since the bar magnet field is not uniform from the perspective of the coil, you can get soft spots in the middle strings if you crank things up too much. Compensate by adding a bar on top of the original (polarity in mind) and tweaking the second bar if needed by sliding it a bit until the volume is nearly constant. Tack the second magnet with some super glue when you’ve got it right.
Warning on super glue. It will flash off a film of hi resistance acrylic stuff that will coat all your contacts if it’s not completely dry before enclosing the pickguard.
Tip on taking the guitar apart too many times to test, and reaming out the screw holes. Small section of half the width of a wooden match in the hole will fix things.
Another good option is to glue the alnicos on each inert pole (polarity preserved again with reference to the original bar). May require drilling some wood out for depth. Good to get a couple “drill stops” from an aircraft supply store to protect from inadvertently going all the way thru the guitar. Vacuum and paint drilled wood inside body with wood glue.
Best results are from drilling pole-width holes in the bar magnet and adding alnicos, but this opens up a whole bunch of problems. I can get more into this if you need.
Note on extended magnets. These work great until you’re on stage with a few fluorescent lights. Flux fields operationally can extend way beyond the boundary of the coil. Big magnets can also even change the sound of the adjacent pickup. Ground the entire cavity with copper foil so you can solder a link wire to ground. Otherwise use aluminum foil with a braided ground lead you can fan out and attach to the foil with a paper clip.
For what it’s worth, I’ve got a yard sale Squire strat with Radio Shack bar magnets bulking the fake pickups and major resurrection circuitry mod. The guitar as a whole is a piece of junk, but the sound has blown away every vintage hi end American variant it has been compared to.
Regards,
John K
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