Re: What if you used magnetic poles and figure 8 winding?
I think you would run into practical problems caused by the bulking out of the coil where the strands crossover between the pole pieces. It would be like that thing where you can only fold a piece of paper something like eight times, however large the paper is.
There is also the issue of how the hell would you wind it?
I experimented a few years ago with the idea of splitting a coil between the D and G strings, the E,A,D and G,B,E being reversed polarity.
It cancelled the noise well enough but there was a massive dead spot in the middle.
I think that's what would happen with this as each neighbouring pole fed flux into the other rather than reaching out to the strings.