Magnet and polepieces how they affect dynamics.

[CarlosG]

Hi!
First of all, I would like to point out that dynamics is the difference in volume depending on how hard I hit strings. Compression is the opposite of dynamics.
I want to discuss the impact of several elements on dynamics/compression.
Hex vs standard polepieces.
I noticed that hex compresses more, standard polepieces more dynamic.
How does magnets affect dynamics with the same wind?
Many people tell me that the A5 will have the most dynamics. Im my experience the a2 seemed the most dynamic but sound muddy and has hum. Big ceramic seems the most compressed, but I didn't check regular size ceramic.

And size. Does it affect the sound? I have mini hb in my steinberger. Looks like regular size but when I rub it with a screwdriver, only half of the coil sounds, so I think is mini HB. Has about 8k (I don't remember exactly) and probably ceramic magnet (it's cheap guitar). This steinberger HB is most dynamic HB that I used.
Sorry for my English. There are the best specialists on this forum

[zionstrat]

Great question... Looking forward to hearing input from the gurus..

It may just be semantics, but one thing did stand out from a recording engineer's perspective...

As you said, dynamics refer to the range of volumes available.

Although compression might look a bit like the opposite, it's really just a subset of the dynamic range.

When a signal's dynamic range is decreased it is compressed... When it is increased we call it expansion...

This may have no impact whatsoever on the questions you asked about pickup components, but it is an issue that is regularly confused in the recording community.

So apply if useful and ignore if not :-)
Thanks for an interesting post!

[Rex_Rocker]

I've always felt that the lower the output, the more dynamics statement is kind of a misconception. I personally feel that if you keep the wind the same, Ceramic feels noticeably less compressed than Alnico. Especially A2, which to me, is the squishiest. Ceramic always feels bolder, stronger, and more immediate, thus capable of responding responding faster to quiet vs. loud playing.

Then again, that's my perception. I don't really have anything scientific to back it up.

This is when speaking about the pickups' actual dynamic range. Of course if a pickup is hotter, it will hit the amp harder, thus causing it to compress. But at that point, it's not the pickups being less dynamic. It's the amp. And if the amp has the headroom to take the hotter output, then it will be no problem.

I've also always felt that by the time you tweak an amp to sound good with the signal level that you have going on, it's even harder to discern how dynamic a pickup really is. For example, let's say you have a guitar with a set of Black Winters and the other with a set of A2P's. Of course, the same settings are not going to work for both pickups. So if you lower the gain and tweak to accomodate the Black Winters, the A2P's might sound weak, dry, undergained, thin, etc. But the other way around, if you tweak to accomodate the A2P's, the 'Winters are going to sound compressed, bloated, muddy, undefined, etc.

[Chistopher]

A2 magnets won't induce hum in a pickup. What magnets and polepieces are the most compressed will tie directly into the amp you are using. If your amp has scooped mids for example, generally the mids will compress more, so an A2 pickup might sound more compressed. But in my setup, if a pickup is too compressed it just means my gain is set too high somewhere in my chain.

Hardware dynamics isn't something I notice too often, but this is what I've found.

[CarlosG]

I personally feel that if you keep the wind the same, Ceramic feels noticeably less compressed than Alnico.

You mean regular size ceramic?

[Rex_Rocker]

You mean regular size ceramic?

I mean any Ceramic.

[freefrog]

Serious can of worms. So much that I've hesitated to answer, having not enough free time to argue in vain.

Let's try at least to sum up what the lab tests in my archives suggest!

*Dynamics of passive pickups has largely to do with their coils and more precisely with the parasitic capacitance of their coils. The less inherently capacitive is a pickup, the fastest it will react, with more amplitude in the attack/transients. And if one wants it to sound less immediate/hard, what should help is a capacitive wiring from guitar to first host (due for instance to a capacitive cable, like a long and/or coily one).

*Magnetically, what slowers the attack/transient are mostly Foucault currents (eddy currents). The less metal there's in magnetic parts, the less eddy currents they cause. A coil with screws has a rounder resonant peak than the same coil with slugs because of eddy currents.
So a coil with screws should exhibit less "dynamics" than with slugs ? Yes but musical experience might suggest the contrary for a simple reason: more eddy currents requires to dig harder to obtain the same attack. So what are technically the worst poles for dynamics might appear as the best friends of dynamics to a player...

*Strongly charged magnets and pickups with a stronger magnetism above their poles should favor dynamics since they make a pickup more sensitive to attack. Comparing a single coil to a humbucker illustrates that. BUT if the weakest pick attack produces a transient going immediately to the roof, the pickup will be felt as "compressing" while technically, it's effectively the most sensitive to dynamics... So a weak magnet might be heard as giving more dynamics for the same reason than with screw poles: it requires to dig harder to obtain the same attack/transient.

That's probably a simplistic sum up with forgotten factors but that's what comes to my mind this morning to sum up the data that I've at disposal AND to explain why... "dynamics" of passive pickups is a can of worms. :-)



Side notes replying to the OP:

*As already discussed in other topics, your Steinberger HB's appear to be passive EMG clones. EMG HB's host small coils like those of mini-HB's under the appearance of full-sized humbuckers. So, it wouldn't be surprising if these Steinberger pickups are built in the same way.
But no, the width of magnetic windows is not really a key factor in dynamics, AFAIK. It mostly affects the harmonic comb filtering shown by the good old Tilman applet (Google about this if necessary).

*If you've heard more hum with A2, it's potentially due to a higher inductance, itself due to the higher iron content of A2. But when a pickup sounds muddy with an A2, it's not due to the magnet: it's mainly due to a high parasitic capacitance of coils (a pickup with a low coil capacitance will NOT sound muddy with an A2. Test some hand-wound HB with A2 like a Skatterbrane PU and you'll hear what I mean... along with some really wide dynamic range, BTW: Skatterbrane's have a strong and fast attack with high amplitude, among the hardest that I've heard from humbuckers).

*Your Steinberger HB's have not really a low parasitic capacitance: it's rather the contrary because of their epoxy potting. But they have potentially low eddy currents because of how they're built: without metallic baseplate and with efficient magnetic poles (which are most probably plain metal bars in their coils). And they host ceramic magnets, more powerful than Alni(Co). As already mentioned, these specs are those of the most famous Bill Lawrence humbuckers (or of a SH13 if we stay in the Duncan catalog).

FWIW. I stop here, I'm tired.

[jeremy]

great post as usual!

[freefrog]

Thx for the kind words. :-)