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Performed the "magnet trick" on a Ric


isaac42

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The so-called magnet trick is a simple, easily reversible mod for Rickenbacker 4001 and 4003 basses. Could be done on guitars, too, I suppose. Works best on their high gain pickups.

Background first. As most folks know, the amplitude of a vibrating string is usually greater farther from the bridge, closer to the neck. If pickups are identical, then the neck pickup will be louder than the bridge pickup. Some manufacturers will simply lower the neck pickup so that it's farther away from the strings, reducing its output to better match the bridge. Others will use different pickups. The Rics have always had different pickups. Originally, they had a horseshoe pickup for the bridge and a toaster for the neck. Later, both had high gains, but the bridge had a larger magnet.

Now things get a little tricky. The Ric bridge pickup came with a capacitor in series with the pickup. That cap reduced its bass response and thus its volume. That was okay, because the neck pickup picked up the slack. The neck pickup ismounted in such a way that it can't be brought too close to the strings, limiting its output, so the two match pretty well. But a lot of players would bypass or remove the bass-blocking cap to get a better sound from the bridge pickup. Once that is done, the neck pickup can't keep up.

What to do? Well, I recently learned that some players will put a neodymium magnet underneath the neck pickup. This increases the magnetic flux and thus the output. Conveniently, it does this without increasing the electrical noise picked up by the single coil pickup. One guy complained that, after doing this, his strings buzzed on the frets because the magnets were pulling them down! Fortunately, I didn't have that problem.

Anyway, I opened up my 1979 4001 MG (mapleglo) bass and put a couple of neo magnets on the bottom of the pickup. Put it back together and tried it out. Noticeably higher output from the neck pickup. No increase in fret buzz, no other noticeable effects people sometimes get when the magnets are too strong. At least one guy said that he had to lower his neck pickup because it was overpowering the bridge pickup, but I didn't have that problem, either. On some models, the pickup leads come out in the middle of the pickup, so the magnet has to be broken in the middle, but I used two smaller magnets, so that wasn't a problem, either. I think my smaller magnets are also weaker, so I didn't get too much of an increase in output.

So, I'd say that this was a success. I'm looking forward to trying it on my 4003W.

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16 hours ago, DeepEnd said:

Happy New Magnets Day? :thu: I guess that's a thing now? I'm guessing some of the potential negative effects are similar to Stratitis. Anyhoo, as long as it sounds good to you, that's what counts.

I got positive feedback from the band, too.

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13 hours ago, 1001gear said:

Curious, can you mount the magnet outside the pickup?

Not sure what you're asking. The magnets are stuck to the bottom of the pickup. Here's a picture of a pickup with four circular magnets stuck to the bottom:
39969350-7544-475F-ADF6-37608A4EE4CA.jpeg

So, they are outside the pickup.

The magnets I bought are rectangular, each one taking the place of two of the circular ones shown above.

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15 hours ago, 1001gear said:

Yeah that's what I wanted to know. Never occurred to me that you could goose a pickup without opening it.  Thx.

Cool.

I think a lot of people get hung up on the windings. Makes sense, as we can measure the DC resistance of the coils easily. That gives us something we can talk about and compare. But very few of us have magnetometers or gauss meters to measure the magnetic fields of our pickups, so we can't compare the magnetic strength of different pickups, leaving us with nothing to talk about.

I have enough electric theory to know kinda how pickups work, so I've known for a long time that magnets were important. It was driven home to me a few years ago, when I changed out the pickups on a P-style bass. Frankly, I couldn't hear all that much difference, even though the windings had very different resistances. With similar basic construction but very different windings, the magnet strength had to be different, too.

Anyway, I'm having fun, and it isn't costing me much.

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Weird.

 

I know Ricky guitar have a blend knob, but couldn't you just turn down the volume a bit on the pick up with the hotter output.

I guess, If you like, you like.

Personally I wouldn't have done anything like this.

 

Any idea what pull magnets you used?

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Mikeo said:

Weird.

 

I know Ricky guitar have a blend knob, but couldn't you just turn down the volume a bit on the pick up with the hotter output.

I guess, If you like, you like.

Personally I wouldn't have done anything like this.

 

Any idea what pull magnets you used?

No blend knob on the basses.

Yes, could turn the bridge pickup down, but where's the fun in that? ;) Besides, there are some advantages to doing it this way. Electrical noise is a function of the windings. Increasing the strength of the magnet increases the output form the strings, but doesn't increase the electrical noise, so the signal to noise ratio is higher. Additionally, this particular bass has another modification, the RWRP(reverse wound, reverse polarity) mod. That mod turns the two single coil pickups into a humbucking pair. If they are run at the same volume, then the electrical noise induced in the two pickups cancels out, leaving the bass very quiet. Turning down either of the pickups reduces that effect. This way, I get balanced pickups at equal volume settings. And philosophically, I just like the idea of the pickups being more or less equal in volume at equal settings; it seems to me that that is the way it should be.

Why would you have not done anything like this? It's not as if it somehow damages the instrument.

No idea. Is there a definition of "pull" as a magnet characteristic? I'm familiar with teslas and gauss as measurements of magnet strength, but not pull.

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Took the "magnetized" Ric to band practice yesterday. I like it there because it's a noisy environment, and I've done the RWRP mod on that bass, so it's quiet.

As I was playing, I noticed that the low end seemed more solid, and the sound seemed more balanced across the board. Sounded good all around.

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On 11/2/2020 at 12:03 PM, daddymack said:

anything that makes a Ric bass sound bassier is:thu:

I wonder what would happen with some 'rare earth' magnets...y'know the kind you can just barely get apart if they touch...?

These are rare earth magnets. Neodymium is a rare earth element.

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Of course, there are more powerful magnets. Some people use 60mmx10mmx3mm magnets for this trick. I imagine that they are considerably more powerful than the ones I used.

What difference does it make?

With a more powerful magnet, output will increase, which is good. If the magnet is too powerful, the pull on the strings can have undesirable effects. One guy said he got fret buzz when he did it. The magnets were pulling the strings closer to the frets. Then there's something called wolf tones, and too strong a magnet (or having the pickups too close to the strings) can reduce sustain.

On a couple of my Rics, I've not liked the sound of the bridge pickup until I lowered them.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-players-room/eliminating-wolf-tones

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I recently bought a gauss meter for measuring magnetic flux. Measured the magnets on some Bartolini pickups that I installed in a Glarry Jazz bass. They measured at about 27mT. Then I took it to band practice. The humbucking pickups on a Gibson 336 also measured about 27mT. On my 1979 Rickenbacker 4001, on which I did the magnet mod, both pickups measured about 35mT. The pickups on a Squier Jazzmaster measured about 90mT.

Seems to me that this means that there's a lot of room to increase the output of some pickups without any danger of deleterious effects.

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