Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

[Leftyluthier69]

Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

When I hear 54’ strats, am I hearing Alnico 3 magnets or 5’e?? What Vintage style pups does Duncan craft, that use Alnico 3’s??? Why did FENDER CHANGE MAGNETS?? Was it just a supply & Demand issue or actual tone hunting??? I must know!!

 

[Discharged]

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

When I hear 54’ strats, am I hearing Alnico 3 magnets or 5’e?? What Vintage style pups does Duncan craft, that use Alnico 3’s??? Why did FENDER CHANGE MAGNETS?? Was it just a supply & Demand issue or actual tone hunting??? I must know!!

The Duchossior book says A5 for all of them. So, no production Duncan strat p'up ever used A3 rod mags, nor did Fender, except for the Elite, that used A2 rod mags.

/Peter

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

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The Duchossior book says A5 for all of them. So, no production Duncan strat p'up ever used A3 rod mags, nor did Fender, except for the Elite, that used A2 rod mags.

/Peter

First generation Highway 1's used A3's too, with a light old-style wind. They are outstanding pickups IMO. They are some of the best factory Fender Stratocaster picksups ever made, in my opinion. They are excellent for driving low headroom amps into distortion using your right hand, while still remaining clear. This would likely have been after that book was published.

 

[Silence Kid]

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

I might be wrong, but weren't 100k pots used for at least some of that period?

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

If we are talking "real" '54 Strat pickups/electronics, then yes, the early–mid '54 Strats had 100K pots, and the pickups usually had under 8,000 turns on the coils. All these are the variety of early Strats that had ash bodies with either no yellow color in the middle of the sunburst (if *very* early), or sprayed on yellow (as opposed to dyed yellow, which began around '56 with the change to alder). 250K pots came in in late 1954, when Strats were still ash with sprayed on yellow in the burst. Point being, the 100K pots happen to have only been used with ash bodied Strats.

Fender didn't order magnets of a certain alnico mixture; they just ordered rod magnets of various lengths. Invoices show that almost all supplied to them were A5, but from time to time, the supplier would send them different types (for reasons unknown – probably just because they didn't have A5 in stock at the time). It is certainly possible for a Fender pickup in the "old days" to have been made of A3. A3 is definitely documented as having been delivered to Fender. I'm not sure about the other alnico mixtures, such as A2, but maybe.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

Re: Were 54’strats Alnico 3’ OR 5’??

The other thing to consider is that the composition of old magnets are a bit different. Metals could not be extracted so purely as now, so quite a few impurities were in the final mix. Plus the actual compositions of the desired elements were a bit different. The PAF clone makers often have to order specific casts made for them if they want to mimic the old mags - so what happens for the less particular winders is they choose a different magnet which brings in an element of the tone that the modern mags (of the same grade as vintage) wouldn't be able to achieve.