Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

[bulldogXTRM]

Well, I've been in love with these pickups since I installed them in my PRS 245. They are amazing for the style of player I am (a little bit of everything and usually with too much distortion).

I've been wanting to know what they would sound like with a magnet swap but because there were double thick ceramics I hesitated on messing with them. Well, tonight I finally said the heck with it and did the swap. I was going to go with an A8, but I had a set of A9 magnets I had bought a while back and decided to use them, the problem was I needed spacers. So I decided to destroy a set of Epiphone pickups for the plastic spacer in them. The Epi pickups were from the full soapbar/wax potting era and were total crap anyway.

Tone Report:
The tone and aggression is still there, but the dynamics of the pickups is richer, not quite a mushy when chugging. This was a good choice, I'm still interested in trying A8's in them, but I'm gonna wait a bit before I do it to give my ears time to adjust to the sound with A9's.

Caution: A9 is badass magnet, it gave the pickups a more organic sound but the output increased, so unless you like playing with distortion I wouldn't recommend using them in most pickups, but in the BW's they're simply perfect. Pickup height is a concern here because the A9 is just that strong. Gotta tweak it to get the right balance between the neck and bridge and far away enough to keep the strings from warbling. Good stuff though.

 

[spn_phoenix_92]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I've been planning for a while to swap an A8 into mine to check it out, but wasn't sure how many mags were in it. Do I just need 1 mag & a spacer?


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[bulldogXTRM]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

You'll need 2 spacers, one for each coil. 1 magnet. As long as the magnet and spacer are standard thickness or at least are the same thickness, then you won't have any problems. As it happens, after I posted this, I decided that the A9 thinned out the bridge pickup to much and the bottom end was weak. So I put the A8's in and I like it much better. Doesn't hit the front end of my amp as hard. I'm getting outstanding cleans now that have a good sparkle and when I switch to my distortion channel. I will say that they are not nearly as dark as they were with the ceramics, the A8 I believe is where I'm going to be keeping them for a bit. I'm going to play them for a while like this.

I think you would need a higher DC on the coils than the Black Winter's to use the A9. Maybe something around 18-20K vs 16-18K. They're just that much stronger, I wish I had a Gauss meter so I could measure and see how much stronger they are than the A8's.

 

[Edgecrusher]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I think you would need a higher DC on the coils than the Black Winter's to use the A9. Maybe something around 18-20K vs 16-18K. They're just that much stronger, I wish I had a Gauss meter so I could measure and see how much stronger they are than the A8's.

If your talking residual induction (which is measured in gauss) then A5 has more than A8 or A9... If you mean coercive force then an A8 is stronger than an A9. But these measurements dont necessarily reflect how they sound when used as part of an inductor pickup.

 

[bulldogXTRM]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I'm talking coercive force, the A9's that I have seem to have a stronger attraction than the A8's I have. This may not be typical, but it does seem to be slightly harder to pull the A9's apart from one another than the A8's.

As for the DC, I'm simply saying that from what I see so far with A9's, is that they are going to be brighter than A8's in a given setup so to use the A9's you would need coil wound with a very strong bottom end and very rounded highs for them to sound right to my ears. Like I said after playing the A9's for a while I found the BW neck pickup to be good but the BW bridge was a bit thin on the bottom and the high's a bit sharp. Not bad, just not quite what I was wanting. Either way the A8's and A9's in the BW's seemed more responsive to pick attack than with the stock ceramics.

 

[Myaccount876]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I'm talking coercive force, the A9's that I have seem to have a stronger attraction than the A8's I have. This may not be typical, but it does seem to be slightly harder to pull the A9's apart from one another than the A8's.

As for the DC, I'm simply saying that from what I see so far with A9's, is that they are going to be brighter than A8's in a given setup so to use the A9's you would need coil wound with a very strong bottom end and very rounded highs for them to sound right to my ears. Like I said after playing the A9's for a while I found the BW neck pickup to be good but the BW bridge was a bit thin on the bottom and the high's a bit sharp. Not bad, just not quite what I was wanting. Either way the A8's and A9's in the BW's seemed more responsive to pick attack than with the stock ceramics.

DC resistance dictates nothing about the sound of an inductor. A higher DC resistance does not mean more output, less highs, more bass, etc. Henries is the unit of measure for inductors, and a higher inductance on a pickup will result in a darker sound. A function between DC resistance and the EQ of a pickup does not exist.

 

[Demanic]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

Doesn't the BW have spacer magnets? If so, did you keep them in or swap them out?

 

[agentzero12]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I love the a9 magnet. But I like my sound tight and bright. I have a jb9 that I am in love with. The a9 is definitely harder to work with than some, but I like what it gives me in the right guitar.

 

[dominus]

Re: Black Winter magnet swap - A9's

I've got a couple of A9s that I need to try.