Please Dylan, do the Alnico and Ceramic differences video.

Dylan, there's this one thing one been thinking about and couldn't find it in the webs: a given pickup+ pot + cap setup sets a specific resonance peak. A different piece in this combo means a different result in resonance peak. Ok. But does this actually mean that it CHANGES as you sweep the pot?

I just heard that part, and thought, wait.. The Duncan Distortion is a ceramic magnet, and basically a hotter JB (or so it said on their website when I bought a JB)

Magnet decay is real, but not in 70 years as far as I know unless there are extreme things happening to that magnet to get it to lose remanence, like it being exposed to rogue strong magnetic fields, or like really vast temperature changes(Yep you covered them), I mean there is literally no guide in science to predict the half life of a magnet its not like Radioactivity where you can measure it specifically, so in another couple hundred years we may need to talk about it but the question then would be how many Tesla did it lose over a couple hundred years I would bet it is a very slight difference. Pickups well guitar playing is weird when it comes to quantifying "Tone", Pickups are designed and are a sum of all the parts that go into it, I kind of stick to saying the Tone is from you to the speaker and its a sum of all the parts, if your tone sucks figure out where specifically it needs alteration, but I strongly object that there is bad Tone, just bad placement. Some of the most famous songs in rock and roll history had bad tone when taken in isolation, on its own, but as part of the whole and why it was used to get the overall sound and effect that is needed it ends up an amazing combination and thus doesn't suck.

@@haveagoodone5830 The peak level (detemined by the cable Capacitance) drops and shifts slightly down as the tone knob is turned down until it gets to the point on the knob where the pot resistance on the tone cap is low enough that the tone cap value determines the peak. That's generally at 3~4 on an audio taper pot.

There are. Ceramic don't sound worse if properly designed.

​@@jordimateubartroli951 ceramic sound better for metal sometimes, not so great for jazz and not the same as alnico. Same with speakers I have found I love ceramic speakers for metal and rock and alnico for jazz/blues/vintage cleans.

@@realtruenorth It depends on the design: the comparison I saw was between strat pickups, clean. Ceramics sounded as good and sweet as alnico. They were well designed.

@@jordimateubartroli951 yes, I have ceramics that sound great. Ceramic and alnico sound different. But better is subjective.

This is very likely beyond the scope of what you want to do, but: it would be really cool to also hear the same test on speaker magnets in otherwise identical speakers, w/a breakdown on the effects produced on those separate ends of our tone

Me too. Frequency analysis and Chart comparison would illustrative as well. I've heard good sounding Ceramic Magnet Pickups in blind tests.

Ceramic (ferrite) magnets are intrinsically noisy and this translates into the output. Alnico magnets are much quieter and this is audible.

Matters not what magnet it depends on whether you like it. Jack Pearson, used to play with Allman Brothers as well as others, is considered one of the top most players, plus other top players are using stock Squier Bullet guitars w/o changing pups in all kinds of gigs. They sound just fine.

Having both ceramic and alnico magnets in my pickups, there isn’t much difference I can hear, at least for my guitars and what I play. But I remember once hearing you should buy and use ceramic magnets because they hold their magnetic properties much longer and your alnico magnets will eventually stop working. Guitars that are much older than I am still have their original pickups and they still work. But even if they lose that property I have heard of them being re-magnetized

@stevelaferney3579 nah those pickups are junk and noisy. The higher end Squiers with the SQR pickups are sooooo much better.

I think there's a lot of caveats in that situation. They were a production floor, not a custom shop, so there wasn't a lot of thought going into it let alone reproducing it. Especially when "it" was such an elusive target. They were just trying to sell guitars. Remember, the LP got canceled for a reason. That hard rock adopted the PAF LP as "the sound" was a happy accident. Like the reverse of the "Friday Ford" concept. In the many decades since, there are a plethora of "magic PAF tone" pickups, but how can you tell except in isolation? I could probably tell the difference in a small room with me, the guitar and an amp or in a very controlled studio recording of guitar and amp, but otherwise? Nah. I mean BFG famously "recreates" the Pearly Gates live tone for all of his other guitars with a rack of stuff.

It's amazing how videos where they do that (like can you pick out the cheap vs expensive pickups or cheap vs expensive guitar) in blind test videos and don't reveal the answer until a later video always gets so few comments :D :D

Stratocasters. Tremolo. Vibrato. The most egregious. :D We forget that EEs are designing modern pickups and have been for a few decades now. It's science folks.

wow...didn't know...and they are truly exceptional pups!

Well music is more an art than a science, so sometimes it doesn’t fit science, it depends on feelings. So things like pickups can sometimes be perceived to make differences that science won’t support But of course thee are still many myths that people won’t let go And these kinds of videos can still be cool

@@dw7704 pickup is not a music. it's technology

@@endajd. but it’s used to make music. It’s part of the process of what we hear, which is why they exist. Yes you can use science to explain how they do what they do, but the results are not necessarily science They are music

Agreed. Science is important if you want to avoid malfunctions, fighting noise, DIY, etc. if you have a hired handyman then it’s probably not that necessary

@@dw7704 have people invented music or is music older than people?

"curiosity *piqued*" I promise, I'm not trying to be a grammar nerd, but you seem to care about your words, so I figured I'd just pass along that tidbit as someone did for me many years ago. I'm grateful for those that correct me. 👍

I would disagree, every genre and every song from every band has a specific sound, tone plays a part into manipulation of a person's psyche and Emotional state, both Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie have had published works based on this. Paint it Black would not even remotely sound the same without that shrill high end of the highs played by Richards, or a band like Korn that used a 7 string that gave them a very very unique sound. Lets go back to early telecaster days would those songs have sounded right if they didn't sound overly compressed, how about Sevendust and the guitarists story about using a small shitty amp and when it didn't sound right in the studio with all that high end gear he ended up recording with his little Roland amp that gives them that weird heavy sound he has. Or what about U2 and the Edge. How about Brian May would We will rock you sound better or worse if he didn't fuss over that solo bit he does giving way to one of the greatest rock anthems ever made. How about the Kinks. I mean I would argue strongly against your statement because that as a guitarist is what makes you you and is what makes you stand out in the mix versus everyone else. I could compose a masterpiece but the song would be complete crap if not done by the right people in the correct way, there are countless examples of people butchering music. I can take a poorly composed piece and make it sound better, I cannot take a masterpiece and make it sound better than it has already been done and in the off chance I can it would be the exception not the rule.

This one's for the mechanics not the race car drivers

Jimmy page paid people fuss about the tone. Joe walsh fussed about the tone, jimi hendrix fussed about the tone

Totally correct. It doesnt matter if its a $50 guitar or a $5000 guitar, its whats comes out of the person who plays it.

Yes!!! I misspoke. JB jr is ceramic

At that point it's the trivial details that add up to make it more than trivial. Or least that's what the marketing told me. :D I mean have you read anything about the late Ken Fischer of Trainwreck amps? Dude said he could hear the differences in wire coating in his amps/transformers. Seymour Duncan and Larry DiMarzio basically created an entire industry on paying attention to pickup construction. I liken it to putting together a signature wardrobe. The amp/speakers/pickups are the major pieces and from there you refine, refine, refine.

Yes, but this capacitance is depending on the distance between wire coils. You can make the pvc coat thickness appropiate for the capacitance you need or want.

lol me too and I’m convinced we both have outlets not grounded, but honestly I hate that old cloth wiring with the ground shield wrapped around it. I’m slowly rewiring my house with modern three wire romex . I do think the old cloth covered wire is cool in guitars and easier to work with but it doesn’t make any difference on tone. I’ve used data wire to wire guitars before because it’s what I had laying around and it had different colors to make my own wiring diagram color coded and easy To follow

I think they used it because they could machine the screw shape with it.

@@jordimateubartroli951 Rumor had it that back in that day, the mix of metals (iron) made it difficult to cut the threads on the screws. Maybe they have changed the recipe, I dont know.