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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on December 11, 2016 at 12:15pm

Just about any ferrous, [magnetic] material should do the job Reynhard, i used just a strip of steel on this one

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Permalink Reply by Reynhard Boegl on December 11, 2016 at 8:12pm

Looks great! How do you fix the strip of steel to the pup?

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on December 11, 2016 at 9:04pm

It's not fixed, the bar just sits in the slot, and is held by the magnetic pup, if you want to lower the pick up, just file a bit off the bar, if you want to raise it, cut a new bar, but higher

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Permalink Reply by Reynhard Boegl on December 20, 2016 at 7:10am

Thnx, will try it at my next guit... ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 20, 2016 at 9:23am

Magnetic pickups will pickup the vibrations of the wood and transfer them to signal, so they can be mounted under the soundboard.

If the pickup used is wax potted, the results will be dulled or low output because they are less microphonic.

If you use a single coil pickup, you can have problems with feedback and squeal that will require shielding.

Drilling small holes for the pickup's poles to"peak through the top" can give the pickup better performance.

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Permalink Reply by Reynhard Boegl on December 20, 2016 at 9:38am

Magnetic pickups changes the vibration of the steel strings into a signal, not the vibrations of wood...

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Permalink Reply by Reynhard Boegl on December 20, 2016 at 8:17pm

Ah, I understand, the vibration of the box let also vibrate the pickup, and so the distance to the strings will change a little. Yes, that sounds logical ;-)
I plan to mount as less as possible directly on the soundboard, but the same story should work with a pickup mounted on the neck in the box.
I will do some tests...

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 20, 2016 at 9:14pm

You can turn the volume up on your git and mute the strings(also works without strings attached) and knock on various parts of the git and the pickups will transfer those wood sounds to the amp. This is why guitars sound different from one another. Different types of wood, or different amounts of resonance from one board to another within the same type of wood and different hardware can color the tone of a guitar that is picked up by the magnetic pickup.

So your strings, wood and the parts reacting to the string vibrations all have something to do with your guitar's sound. This is true for any type of guitar whether it's hollow, semi-hollow or solid. All the parts will vibrate and add to the sound because they will be changed to signal by the pickups along with the string vibrations.

This is where people get into the "tonewood debate". Really that debate is miss-understood by many. That debate is really about whether you can achieve a certain tone by using a certain type/species of wood, not about wood having something to add to the tone of an instrument.

All types of wood and other materials that have been used to make a body/neck have their own unique tone to offer, but due to variables in each piece it becomes hard to achieve a certain targeted tone. You can put a great pickup in one guitar and get crappy results, put it in another guitar and it sounds fantastic. Why is that? Variables in wood, electronics and hardware.

You probably didn't want to hear all that, but there it is. Hahaha

Pickups are wonderful things, but all their abilities get overlooked sometimes along with the body and neck.

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Permalink Reply by Reynhard Boegl on December 20, 2016 at 9:29pm

I like to hear that... :-)
But I never thought wood have so much influence to magnetic pickups...

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 20, 2016 at 9:45pm

I had always heard people say that wood didn't matter when I was younger, but after dealing with building guitars, repairing guitars and setting them up for myself and others over the last 25 years, I've come to a changed mind.

I started experimenting with "what will this pickup sound like in this guitar". I always got different results, some small, some great. So then I used the same hardware and electronics to isolate those variables. Still got different results. 

Because wood can have variables, the only way to get a true answer to the tonewood debate would be to put together 100 bodies of each type of wood and transfer the same neck, hardware, electronics and pickups to each one to get a generalized result. And you would need to use some sort of robotic picking that would be consistent. Problem is this would be an expensive and laboring test that most people wouldn't or couldn't put themselves through.;)

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on December 21, 2016 at 2:02am

that theory has legs, but Henry Ford, you aint

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 21, 2016 at 8:35am

One of the best guitars that I've ever played was a Guild acoustic/electric made of all Maple. It was like Heaven opened up, an Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh experience. Went back the next day with money in hand, but the guitar had sold. Bwahhhhhhhh sob.

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