Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Electric guitar pickup - without permanent magnets: Core material, etc
2N3055:
--- Quote from: Benta on June 05, 2019, 10:11:01 pm ---As an old "electric" guitarist with a lot of experience tampering with guitars, this whole discussion about "damping" is hooey.
The pickups have close to zero influence on the "damping" - the guitarist expression is "sustain", meaning how long the string will continue to vibrate after being picked. This includes fundamental frequency, as well as harmonics, which are there due to the "pick" place on the string.
Central points on a solid-body guitar (apply to hollow-body as well) are:
- how rigid is the body
- how rigid is the fretboard
- how is the bridge mounted and how is it built
- which saddle mount and material
The last 0.1% goes to the pickups (regarding sustain).
Now, experimenting with the pickups makes sense, but in a different way: using single-coil pickups produces a different sound from humbuckers, and varying the magnetic field from the pickups might give some new sounds and harmonics.
But it won't change the sustain.
--- End quote ---
On a bass guitar that has long sustain, putting pickups with stronger magnets an bringing pickups close to string will change sustain. Not much but it will. It will have more influence on neck pickup too, because of larger amplitude of string.
But in practice, you would newer bring pickups so close because strings would hit them during playing. So like you said it doesn't matter in practice.
But purposely built magnetic damper could be made, another question is why would anybody want that....
Electro Detective:
Chuck in some EMGs, crank er up, and rock out 8)
or if you need truckloads of sustain that just won't quit, the old school Fernandez Sustainer pickup system won't disappoint :clap:
2N3055:
--- Quote from: Electro Detective on June 06, 2019, 01:03:33 am ---Chuck in some EMGs, crank er up, and rock out 8)
or if you need truckloads of sustain that just won't quit, the old school Fernandez Sustainer pickup system won't disappoint :clap:
--- End quote ---
Yeah, on a bass guitars, active pickups are superior. Guitar players are always a bit complicated about things, so I learned not to go into discussion with them about "best pickups" or guitars or amplifiers or anything to that matter......
Electro Detective:
Active pickups (decent linear response ones) usually don't 'lie', especially if the player can achieve the desired sustain with technique, and a controlled bond with the amplifier in close proximity.
i.e. if you like the sound of the guitar unplugged, then active pickups (single coil or humbucker) should be first choice to consider
OTOH, if an axe grinder is a clueless 'elusive tone' chaser, and or can't hold their chops, rolls with cheap or semi-flat 9v batteries
then chances are good they won't 'like' active pickups, then they'll bore us with their negative 0pinions ::)
and forever swapping out passive pickups till they hit on the tone they think they want,
till that goes south after fitting a new set of strings,
or guitar upgrade or new purchase,
or different amp, pedals, suss PSU/batteries, crusty leads bored impatient partner
;D
SiliconWizard:
Just a thought, but replacing permanent magnets with an equivalent static magnetic field generated by some coil would draw a significant amount of power. That may not be very practical unless you're ready to use a big battery.
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