UOA5 magnet in a 59N?

[SF audio]

I swapped out the A5 in a Custom 5 with an unoriented alnico 5 - seems to smooth things out a bit, add a touch of midrange and the bass is tamer. So far so good, but need a few more hours on it to be sure...

The other pickup is a 59N - I have another UOA5 that I'm thinking should go in it.....less bass in the neck position is usually a good thing, but will the softer highs mush up the sound of the 59N too much?

 

[freefrog]

The answer basically depends on external parameters: height settings of your PU's (and their screw poles, and their angle or not under the strings), resistance of your pots, capacitance of your cable, impedance of the input in which you plug it, acoustic resonance of your guitar, strings that you use, etc.

Now, UOA5 has the advantage to modify the magnetic field without increasing the inductance so it shouldn't make a PU that muddier than a stock A5 mag.
And even if the sound becomes muddy in this case: lower a bit the pickup under the strings on the bass side might solve the issue...

Anyway, the only way to know for sure is to try it. Then let us know if you like it...

 

[krovatron]

I rocked that combo in an LP for a long time. Great moderate output with more vintage feel. I didn't find the 59N character change too much, maybe leveled the EQ? A little more vintage vibe/feel? That guitar gets swapped all the time. I ran a Seth Lover for a long time with a push pull that would add a .047 in line. I loved that tone. Now it has a pair of BKP True Grits and not sure if it will get swapped for a long time. (knock on wood!)

 

[freefrog]

Swimming in my archives, I've found a test from years ago that I had forgotten and that I'll share below as an attached file.

It shows the frequency response of an old SH1 in a Flying V (neck position), played in chords, direct to the board, through a 1M input.
Ouput levels have been aligned. They were slightly different. Not much.

Orange line = stock A5 mag.

Blue line = UOA5 mag.

Now, I'm really not sure this pic is meaningful because...

-the SH1 was an old one, made of different materials than current 59's - including a rough cast A5 magnet, not fully magnetized;

-the same UOA5 bar in other pickups would have given different results (it has been tried here, among dozens of systematical comparisons between various mags in various PUs);

-the same pickup with either mag would have sounded differently in another instrument (it has been tried too).

The only thing that I find really characteristic might be the harmonic peak above 10khz with the UOA5: this soft sounding alloy awakened the same sparkling "ping" with any pickup, hand wound or machine wound.


EDIT - during the tests mentioned above, UOA5 revealed a property that other Alni(Co) alloys don't share: it slowers the attack. Hence the perceived tonal softness while the magnetic field of UOA5 seemed stronger to our lab Teslameter than on a regular A5 charged in the same way.


FWIW.

 

[beaubrummels]

When I tried a UOA5 in a 59N it was similar to an A4. The mids thickened and it felt perceptually louder because of that, rather than sounding like the highs and bass were tamed. Really, it became more even across all frequencies, but because the mids filled in, that sounded prominent and made the overall pickup be perceived as louder, even if it wasn't really putting out more output.