Question about exposed pole pieces

[Nate183]

I stripped out one of the screws on my pickup. When this happened I got metal shavings all over the pole pieces. Although, I think I got the shavings all off with tape, I think some may have got into the small crevice around the pole pieces. These are bass pickups, 1 humbucker and a 1 single coil.

If some metal is in there, will this effect the sound or performance of the pickup? Or, potentially damage the pickup in the future?

thanks for your help

 

[Dave Z]

Re: Question about exposed pole pieces

SOme maniacs might warn about eddy currents, but I would not fret about this. Any damage would have to be from someone rubbing the shavings against the coils or insulation, not a likely case.

Only other thing I would worry about would be microphonics but even then, I doubt a tiny shaving has a resonant frequency.But, hey now you have an excuse to build a FREAKING POWERFUL ELECTRO-MAGNET and see if you can pull those shavings out of there. Wind 1000 windings of 600V 24-ga wire around some rebar & run it to the DC output of a Twin Reverb's rectifier tube (not really that would probably kill you if you screwed up and fry the tranny)

Safer route: If you are in CA go to the San Jose children's museum, they have a monster magnet from a radar set that could pull the eyelets outta your sneakers.

OK an exaggeration but you can drop a steel washer several inches away & watch it fly sideways into this thing...