My main players are always Ibanez guitars. I love the old IBZ/USA pickups, but I’m not a fan of Quantum’s. I just purchased a 1992 RG550 with V7 and V8 humbucker pickups on Reverb. If they sound rough, I may try doing the swap. I had never heard of it before this article.
Have you tried it before, and were you happy with the result? It looks like a pretty straightforward mod to perform.
Here’s a photo of the RG btw. Very excited for its arrival!
I swap magnets all the time, as do many others here. Pretty standard stuff. It can make a substantial change in both the way a pickup sounds and how it feels. Sonically it effects both the output and the eq. In terms of feel it effects the interaction between the strings and pickup itself by way of magnetic pull. It also effects sustain, articulation, and the amount of stiffness or sponginess of the attack.
Most recently I swapped the magnet in my single humbucker Brownsville New York Bat Guitar. It had one of those fat ceramic magnets and measured round 15.5K. It didn't sound terrible, but I wanted something different. I put an A5 in there and left a little "Air Bucker" gap. It took on a very cool, woody, open, JB type vibe with both coils engaged; and with the pickup split it sounded like a righteous P90. Very happy with it.
You can do single coils too by removing the ceramic bar magnet and steel poles and putting in rod magnets. I little more involved, but I've had spectacular results.
Beautiful RG BTW. Looking forward to more pics when it arrives.
“There are only two means of refuge from the miseries of life: Music and Cats!” Albert Schweitzer
My main players are always Ibanez guitars. I love the old IBZ/USA pickups, but I’m not a fan of Quantum’s. I just purchased a 1992 RG550 with V7 and V8 humbucker pickups on Reverb. If they sound rough, I may try doing the swap. I had never heard of it before this article.
Have you tried it before, and were you happy with the result? It looks like a pretty straightforward mod to perform.
Here’s a photo of the RG btw. Very excited for its arrival!
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I did that exact swap in an RG I bought a few years ago (based on that article, IIRC) and it made the guitar sound noticably better. Pretty good for a no-cost mod. Give it a shot!
Aaron
---------------
"What is perfect pitch?"
"Perfect pitch is when you toss a banjo into the dumpster, it hits an accordion and they both break."
I just tried it for the first time a little while back myself. It's really not too difficult - honestly the hardest part was that the pickup was heavily wax-potted and I had to get a ton of wax out before the old magnet would move. Was I happy with the result? Yes, but something to keep in mind is that the magnet is only one part of the pickup. Changing magnets won't change DC resistance, which is a major component of the sound.
DC resistance is not a major component of the sound. If all other items are the same, a higher resistance will mean more winds, more output and less high freqs. I can go from 7k to 10k by changing wire sizes and have the same sound and same output.There is about 20 items in a pickup which effect the sound and a lot of them interact with each other. One company may use A5 magnets and another may use A5 magnets from a different foundry and the pickups will not sound the same. I've found out recently A4 is not the same formula as 50's-60's A4 magnets used. People are praising A4 mag swaps. One major maker has said in his testing he never found A4 mags in older pickups only A2 and A5. Yet another large makers has said the majority were A4 and has seen Gibson invoices with A4. People have spoke and given no proof to any of this when asked.
Most all older Gibson humbuckers were not wax potted. Slug steel is not the same as the old. Higher wire tension will increase the resistance for the exact same number of turns.
Inductance is more a player of how it will sound yet pickup makers mostly won't tell you what inductance their pickups are. Changing magnets will not change resistance as you said yet it will change the inductance, which moves the resonant peak higher or lower in frequency. Stronger magnets will also pull the strings more and decrease sustain and change the harmonic content.
Nickel silver baseplates and covers compared to chrome plated brass will totally change how your pickups sound with leaving everything else the same.
It's kind of like the thread wear rating on tires, one may be 500 and another maybe be 380, they only make sense if you are comparing the SAME manufacturers line of tires. Your Nissan Frontier with 310 HP is not faster than my Mustang with 260hp.
I've done it before and it's pretty easy and pretty fun. I had a Screamin' Demon and swapped the A5 for an A8. Sounded sick and it made it sound...actually screamin'!
