pickups that sound different after a short ime from new

[gimmieinfo]

Listen, before you assume certain things after reading this, i am very well versed in the phenomenons that go along with human hears, placebo effect, etc etc etc. Been playing since the early 70s and couldn't possibly remember a fraction of the pickups i have swapped and mods i have done and all that. But theres one thing i have come across a few times thats really puzzling and makes me wonder if some pickups can change the way they sound considerably after first being installed and played. I have no idea what could be responsible....maybe once a current is introduced from new maybe certain magnets are affected somehow or some such wacky thing. I really have no idea. But this has happened to me a number of times over the years.

I'll give you and example with the last time which was just recently. I bought a van zandt tele bridge pickup. It was HELLACIOUSLY bright. To the point i had never heard a tele bridge pickup even close before. Luckily he agreed to let me return it in exchange for a different model that is wound much higher. (around 6k vs 7.4k for the exchange) It turned out to be usable but still very bright, close to the first one. But this one i kept rather then yanking it 5 minutes after install like the initial pickup. In time i came to find it sounded much less bright and i couldn't understand why. Note that i also compared it to another pickup i previously had in the tele that was 6.2k (bootstrap) and same A5/42AWG and was not near as bright. But now that pickup sounds only a little brighter then that pickup. Recently i decided it's too hot and put the bootstrap back. A while later i decided to see what the van zandt would be like unwound to around the same as the bootstrap. I unwound it till it read 6.1k and it now sounds fabulous, hardly any brighter then the booststrap. What the H happened? Both this van zandt and the first one were crazy bright and i haven't even changed my amp settings. Now it sounds clearer than the bootstrap but i can't really say it's any brighter, at least not to any degree thats notable. By the way, the bootstrap was a custom wind i had done that initially was 74k and i unwound that too. It lower output now but hardly and tonal change and has never changed. How in the world did the van zandt for from kill me with treble to close to the originally far darker bootstrap after playing it a short time. I have had others where this has happend in other ways where not a case of bright to dark but just changing to a different sound thats just too different to be placebo effect. And if it WAS placebo, how do i explain why this has only happened to a handful of pickups of the probably 150-200 or more i've bought over the years?

I just posted this to see what other have to say, see if anyone else has experienced this, and if indeed there IS a reason someone knows of.

 

[beaubrummels]

The only time I've had a pickup change sound within a week of install was after doing a magnet swap. Apparently, it's advisable to demagnetize all the other pickup parts while the magnet is out before installing a new magnet. I've never unwound a pickup partway then continued to use it. I can only guess why a full pickup swap might result in a sound that changes over time.

 

[Mincer]

I have had that happen with amps, but not with pickups.

 

[AlexR]

There is nothing in the pickups that would change - unless you've been storing it next to a super strong magnet.

You said you wired it in a few times. Which means it way more likely something in the wiring changed, or you set the pickup up at a different height.
Or more likely the environmental conditions were different between listens, or your ears were having a different day. Lets face it your description indicates a fair bit of time between auditions of the same pickup.
I mean quite literally the same guitar with the same pickups and the amp with every aspect of it controls the same sounds different day to day due to these last reasons - something you should have already come across.

 

[freefrog]

Did you change the strings or were they the same than with the previous pickup(s)?

in both cases, there's something to think about in these pages and quotes:

1) https://travelingguitarist.com/are-guitar-strings-magnetic/

2) Seth Lover talking to Seymour:

That’s right, the magnetic field comes up to the stings there and magnetizes the strings. That’s one of the things that most people don’t understand. They figure that string is waving there and cutting the magnetic lines of force. Nuts. That isn’t it. The magnet, all it does is magnetize the string. Now you’ve got a waving magnetic field. And we have a fixed coil with a waving magnetic field to induce voltage. If you want to, take the magnet out. Once you’ve magnetized your strings, it will play until the string loses it. Players think the string, the magnetic field from the magnet comes up to the string and by twisting the magnetic flux back and forth that’s what induces the voltage. That’s not what happens. There’s a certain amount of that, but that’s minor. What is happening is you have a magnetic field that is moving back and forth across the coil. And when you move a magnetic field back and forth across the coil you induce voltage. If you move the field up and down it wouldn’t induce any voltage. It’s the motion back and forth across the pickup that does it.

Source: https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/latest-updates/seymour-w-duncans-interview-with-seth-lover

Knowing that single coils with rod magnet poles have a much stronger magnetic field than humbuckers, draw your own conclusions. ;-)

 

[GuitarDoc]

Nothing about the pup will change. Period.

However, if you changed strings when you reinstalled it, or if you installed it at a different height than it was previously, then it could sound different. I could imagine that you will say that you covered those bases and it still sounded different, but no, it didn't. I've had a bit of experience with this. I've been playing for 65 years. Built my first guitar from scratch (a 12 string electric acoustic) 58 years ago. I have been modifying guitars and pickups ever since. I have been building custom electric guitars for 15-20 years. I currently have over 50 guitars that I have either built or modified. I have installed, re-installed, modified literally hundreds of pickups...NONE of them has ever magically changed their tone when time was the only variable.

 

[gimmieinfo]

I didn't change the strings. I never change them when swapping pickups. I usually put a capo on the first fret to hold the striings in place and remove the neck. Or if i don't wanna remove it because it's playing so perfectly or whatever i remove them from the posts and tediously put them back on afterwards.
It IS interesting about the strings being magnetized. I suppose if the amount they are magnetized could change from the time of install and the first play till a bit later on. Maybe that could play into it. Might happen only rarely because it only happens if the magnets are charged stronger than typical of some such thing. Just speculating at possibilities.

 

[Chistopher]

I didn't change the strings. I never change them when swapping pickups. I usually put a capo on the first fret to hold the striings in place and remove the neck. Or if i don't wanna remove it because it's playing so perfectly or whatever i remove them from the posts and tediously put them back on afterwards.
It IS interesting about the strings being magnetized. I suppose if the amount they are magnetized could change from the time of install and the first play till a bit later on. Maybe that could play into it. Might happen only rarely because it only happens if the magnets are charged stronger than typical of some such thing. Just speculating at possibilities.

Please don't remove the neck when you do a pickup swap, that's how you strip the holes in the neck pocket.

 

[GuitarStv]

My pickups change all the time after install . . . but that's usually because I'm fiddling with pickup height and pole piece adjustment for at least a month after putting them in.

 

[gimmieinfo]

Please don't remove the neck when you do a pickup swap, that's how you strip the holes in the neck pocket.

I know what i'm doing and realize that potential and how to avoid it. Been working on guitars since the 70s and am a hopeless fiddler.

 

[freefrog]

It IS interesting about the strings being magnetized. I suppose if the amount they are magnetized could change from the time of install and the first play till a bit later on. Maybe that could play into it. Might happen only rarely because it only happens if the magnets are charged stronger than typical of some such thing. Just speculating at possibilities.

Pickups winders / guitar techs periodically talk on the Net about how the magnetic circuit "settles" or not in guitar PU's recently mounted, or whose magnetic parts have been changed, and so on. Sadly it most often degenerates in a sterile argument between personal beliefs/subjective experiences (whose differences might be simply due to how consequences of magnetism vary with situations but such a relativistic explanation is apparently not prized).

Now, there's a simple way to stop speculating and to avoid arguing: put a Hall effect sensor upon the strings after a pickup change and see if the Gauss / Tesla readings evolve with time...I can't send you our Teslameter but it's not as if such lab meters were so hard to find or to rent. ;-)

Off topic footnote: the luthier / winder for whom I still work did design a pickup with a modifiable flux. A magnetic transducer version of the Eminence Maverick loudspeaker, so to speak. Or an adjustable iteration of DiMarzio Air Technology... Many tonal nuances can be obtained from subtle flux variations and the best proof of this statement is that swapping magnets has for main effect... to change the flux.

And an on topic footnote: Dr Scott Lawing (founder of Zexcoil pickups after a PhD on magnetic transducers) has shared a "string centric" model that I find interesting to put on the table in this topic. See there: https://lawingmusicalproducts.com/dr-lawings-blog/how-does-a-pickup-really-work

FWIW.

 

[AlexR]

^ The only 'educated' discourse I've had about magnets and 'settling' is with James Finnerty from ReWind.

He's tested vintage mags vs modern ones extensively, and looked at gauss of old magnets in the pickups, then charged them. Generally the greatest time he found for any settling after charging was about 10 days. By this stage it had settled to a level more or less what the charge was after the 50-60 years - or however old the pickup was.
Of course the only magnets that substantially discharged over time in pickups in normal use were those in p90's, where they are fitted repelling.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

You didn't use a soldering gun, did you?
Pretty basic, but not everyone knows not to.

 

[dave74]

Speakers can mellow a bit after a short time if they are driven hard. Never heard of pickups doing it in the short-term.

 

[AlexR]

^ Things with a physical component that moves or is under force are certainly subject to change. The wood chassis of a guitar certainly settles (acoustics are the best known examples of tonal shift), as it adjusts to having permanent string tension applied as well as the stress release after parts of its mass has being routed/sanded away to shape.

 

[freefrog]

Delayed add - BTW, the subjective experience evoked in this topic involved Tele BRIDGE pickups, whose magnetic field is not that simple... Not only it's shaped by the plate under the coil itself (https://dylantalkstone.com/blogs/dy...er-vs-telecaster-pickups-whats-the-difference) , but it's also conveyed in a specific way by the bridge plate around it:
https://ironstone-guitar-pickups.co...ratocaster-Telecaster-Pickup-Comparison-1.jpg

Generally, such components are took in account only to talk about Foucault currents. But depending on their composition, they might interact in some way with some "residual magnetism" due to a previous pickup, a bit like adding steel to a magnet increases its flux - at least if the Tele bridge plate involved is magnetic, as it happens with such parts.

No time to dig further right now... but if something else comes to my mind once the dust will have... "settled" down a bit more, I'll share my thoughts. ;-)

 

[Wound_Up]

Did you change the strings or were they the same than with the previous pickup(s)?

in both cases, there's something to think about in these pages and quotes:

1) https://travelingguitarist.com/are-guitar-strings-magnetic/

2) Seth Lover talking to Seymour:



Source: https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/latest-updates/seymour-w-duncans-interview-with-seth-lover

Knowing that single coils with rod magnet poles have a much stronger magnetic field than humbuckers, draw your own conclusions. ;-)

This right here is related to what I've heard about "stratitis". People like to bring it up any time somebody plays a Strat but my research suggests it's only the alnico poled pickups that cause Stratitis. Because the pickups with steel poles and bar magnets dont produce the magnetism that the alnico poles do. Somebody else much smarter than me came to this conclusion but I forget who it was.

 

[freefrog]

Yes. I didn't mention Statitis above but it came to my mind too, since it illustrates how strong the flux can be with Fender style single coils.

Below is an interesting article about it (containing the following words : "The string usually contains either Fe or Ni, and so is ferromagnetic. The region of the string nearest the magnet thereby acquires its own magnetization and creates its own magnetic field").

https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/artic...atural-frequency-splitting-of-a-guitar-string

Funny (?) side note : for decades, I use a same screw driver to assemble and set pickups because it has a handle with a square section, making turns count easier. Pretty sure the metallic part of this tool was not magnetized initially. But having been close to countless magnetic transducers, it behaves now like a permanent magnet - and powerful enough to attract several Strat plate screws at once...

 

[Wound_Up]

Please don't remove the neck when you do a pickup swap, that's how you strip the holes in the neck pocket.

Wait what? The holes in all of my neck pockets are smooth. The screws screw into the neck, not the neck pocket. In fact, many people like to drill their body holes oversized so the screws fall through easily and so the wood can't contract around the screw and crack, IIRC.

You strip screw holes by overtightening normally. Not by removing them and reinstalling them. Especially not in a wood like Rock/Hard Maple. Basswood? Sure. But not a maple neck.

It's people like you that are the reason so many folks are afraid to work on their own guitars. You fill them with misinformation and scare tactics. Come on, man.

I replaced my first nut 6 months into owning my first guitar while people told me "you need to wait another x months before you try that", as if learning to play better would somehow help me replace a nut. Did a great job the first time, too.

All the while, we have people on YouTube that hundreds of thousands of people trust telling them "it takes YEARS to master replacing a nut and getting it right" & "if you cut the slots too low, there's nothing you can do to fix it and you have to start over with a new nut". It doesn't take that long for everyone and you don't have to start over with a new nut technically. More scare tactics, IMHO, that do nothing but keep people from attempting to work on their own stuff.

 

[Artie]

What is happening is you have a magnetic field that is moving back and forth across the coil. And when you move a magnetic field back and forth across the coil you induce voltage. If you move the field up and down it wouldn’t induce any voltage. It’s the motion back and forth across the pickup that does it.

It's kinda funny that Seth himself, got this wrong. Up and down, or closer and farther away, is what causes the voltage. Not back and forth. This is really simple to test if you have access to an o'scope. But you can still do it with a meter. Just put it on a low DC volts setting. Bring a screwdriver up against the poles, then yank it away. You'll see a pretty good voltage spike. Move the screwdriver back and forth, and you'll see little to no voltage. Even easier to see on a scope.

You strip screw holes by overtightening normally. Not by removing them and reinstalling them. Especially not in a wood like Rock/Hard Maple. Basswood? Sure. But not a maple neck.

I agree. I routinely remove bolt-on necks for pup changes and such. Never had a problem. But there is a "trick" so to speak. Whenever you're putting a screw back into already cut threads, you turn the screw backwards, 'til you hear it "click", then go forward. This aligns the screw with the existing threads. It's most important with wood and plastic, but works equally well with chassis screws, spark plugs, and mayonnaise jar lids.