Post Type Archives: SWD

A pickup actually uses the strings as a keeper with an air-gap in between the poles. A keeper is usually used on a horseshoe magnet to complete the magnetic circuit. A keeper is not a working part of a magnetic circuit but it keeps the circuit stabilized when not being used for any specific purpose….

Calibration of a magnet is to reduce the level of magnetization to a predetermined or custom strength of a particular magnet. Alnico magnets are my favorite to calibrate and I can control the amount of magnetic field to the strings. I feel you don’t need all the magnetic field you get from certain Alnico magnets…

Early magnetic investigators attempted to describe the magnetic fields present in magnets. The invisible force field or magnetic field that travels through the air and when moved through a coil produces or generates a alternating current. The field travels from North to South through a magnetic circuit.

An isotropic magnetic field is a magnetic field where the properties are the same in all directions. Rod magnets are normally magnetized with one end North and the other South and have an anisotropic magnetic field. Bar magnets can be made to be isotropic and can be magnetized in several directions.

A material that is attracted to a magnetic field such as a guitar string made of spring steel and wrapped with a desired outer wrapping. The vibrating ferrous string disturbs the magnetic field and induces a current in the pickup that is sent to the amplifier through a variety of controls to blend, enhance the…

An Alnico magnet is made from various element combinations for different grades of Alnico. Alnico magnets were developed by G.B. Jonas in 1939 and his patent for Alnico’s is 2,295,082. Cast Alnico is a combination of Aluminum, Nickel, Cobalt, and Iron as a filler. There are around 12 grades of Alnico with both Isotropic and…

A sintered magnet is the mixture of aluminum-nickel-cobalt and iron (Al-Ni-Co) that is formed under high pressure for making commercial grades of sintered Alnico 2 (unoriented) and sintered Alnico 5 & 8 (oriented) magnets and another process is used for making sintered ceramic magnets. Sintering is done on smaller size Alnico magnets to produce a…

A modern samarium-cobalt is a rare earth magnet and a manufactured into a dry powder and then pressed into basic shape with a strong magnetic field and sintered under high pressure and are oriented. You can’t make the samarium-cobalt magnets into many shapes and is limited in size.

A magnetic pole is a magnet with a North or South seeking magnetic field. If you break a magnet in half, it will have another North and South seeking pole. In other words, each magnet will have it’s own North and South poles. No matter how many times you break a magnet in half, it…

All ferromagnetic materials contain regions that are microscopic and are called domains by which all magnetic moments are aligned. They contain 1017 to 1021 atoms and the boundaries between the different orientations are called domain walls and when unmagnetized the domains are at random and have no specific magnetism at the moment.