I've done this so many times on customer guitars that don't want to spend extra on upgrading pickups. I charge £15 each pickup to add alnico slugs ( I buy them 100 at a time for around £17 from China) and they definitely make a huge difference. Super easy to do also

For those of you watching this video in the southern US, you need to know he's using a "clothes ARN" to heat up the pickup to remove the magnet. Some people just don't understand correct pronunciation.

The best thing about this video is the delivery guy edit! hahahaa

Great video but did you check the polarity of magnets when installing new magnets, its important too.

Great video, the delivery guy chucking the package just casually edited in there is hilarious!

Not sure anyone will see this but here I go. If you are considering doing this, please make sure that the flatwork (top and bottom of the pickup) are joined together with some kind of structure. If not, your pickup will fall apart. Not all slugs are held in place within tubes.

I think you forgot to make sure that all pole pieces are oriented in the same magnetic orientation .....

How about the magnet orientation Noth/South before you push the slugs in...?

I have some cheap single coil pickups and I've been thinking about doing the same thing. Maybe experimenting with different types of magnets...alnico 2's and 5's. I wondered about neodymium magnets too. I made a few 3 pole cigar box guitar pickups and used neodymium magnets on those and they sound pretty good! Thanks for the video, Ron!👍😎🎸🎶

do you pay attention to the polarity when installing new magnets?

Thankd for posting material cost at the beginning, I didnt notice the first watch through

On a serious note thank you for this

Nice Ron!

Thanks Ronald great video

Great job sir. One suggestion if I may ... Understandably you have a foot feed variable speed controller correct?. If so use it and... you may want to test & include a variac to further slow your winder down. In other words, plug your device into a variac starting with '0' volts and the foot feed FULL ON. Next bring the variac up full slowly and down slowly. If your motor runs without complaining, start around 85 Vac and adjust accordingly; then use your foot feed for finer control if you like. Just saying....

This is a great idea, I just have one request- can you add in a "before & after" or A/B test two identical cheap pickups (one modded one not) on camera so we can hear the results? Thanks for sharing this cool trick!

Even easier would just be to swap out the ceramic magnets to ceramic 8. Sounds great! And it's easy to install.

Great little video, Just to make it easier on others pull or pole pieces, are actually called Guitar Pickup Magnet Slug.

Heres a tip: You can easily get the bottom magnet off by simply holding it next to a hot clothing iron. The iron in just seconds will melt the glue and the magnet will pull right off.

Are the Firefly tele's pickups upgradable?

I've seen this done with neodymium slugs as well. Anything buy scratchy ceramics, unless you have a really nice noise gate.

thanks! gonna try this on a pawn guitar i got yesterday. got it for practicing mods. this is a cool one to try and i don't want to throw money at this thing, just not mess up my other guitars lol. (tho i ended up liking it. usually not a fan of Squiers but this one is diff and i got a GOOD deal. talked em down. but it's a welcome addition to the fam, just an unexpected one. my dude blends right in. diggin the blackout and the metal faceplate. dunno if it's a mod or a special edition. nicer neck than ones i've tried also. maybe a 2001 thing?)

upon changing pole pisces can I make it staggered pole? like different height? or do I need to cut the pole to different height?

If you buy pre-magnetized slugs you have to put them in the right way around. If you buy them unmagnetized you have to magnetize them. This is easy with a couple of NDfeB magnets in the jaws of a vice.

How are you going to know which way up the pole pieces go? North at the top or south at the top?

This is a great video, good way to experiment with the mag pole differences in tone... but I'm not sure about prompting folks to run the risk of messing with lead wires for the sole cosmetic-only purpose of push-back wiring. I say leave well enough alone. Maybe I missed something. Well done video.

I like how the Fed Ex guy just throws your packag carelessly on you concrete porch. Thank for showing how to improve these pick ups.

Urban recycling. Many people don't realize how well pickups are actually wound compared to the famed hit or miss pickups of the 50's and 60's. The magnets are the weak link. Dont sleep on alnico 2!

i waited till the end then i liked the ceramic sound more :)

Hei guys i have a question. I always really hate that black tapd around the winding. Can I actually just tear it off? The windings are out at the solder holes

You need magnetized pole pieces right??? Or a bar magnet on the bottom. I noticed that your pole pieces were not stuck together, so were you just using them as an example? Good idea to help fix sound issue without having to rewind with better wire. Thanks!

How to get better single coil: burn it on a hot iron, hit it with a hammer, rip it apart with needle nose pliers The end ^^

.. the part where u peel off the outer shield then u cut the two wires at almost the same place/length, only to solder them to another pair of wires .. so what's the cut for? Also the way that u did it would only cause the two wires to touch each other .. short circuited!? Why ?

How about the resistance? Any change??

The magnetized pole pieces should placed adjacently north - south. You can check which ends attract or repell. Hope I am correct!

I have a Peavey Predator USA I'm might overhaul with new pole pieces. The guitar was made in Meridian MS but I suspect the pickups were not.

guys it worked no humming anymore... I dummy coiled my Fishman Neo-D SingleCoil. Only a really really insignificant clean and really low db noise left on 32khz, easily cut it off through eq.

You can buy a set of alnico 5 single coils from China for like $20-30. The effort alone is worth that.

You dont put the magnet down anymore?

That was easy n kicked ass i hope i can seem to remember the idea bc my wifi is hacked by mr glass n the G.L.O.W. Entourage smh (FML)

It's all subjective I took a super cheap strat copy bridge pickup With a bar magnet on the bottom Put a tele baseplate on bottom And a metal pickup ring on top And it sounds better than anything else I have

Boy, that delivery scene was action packed! I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Fricken slob! I’d chew his ass out if he threw my package like that! Back to the show!

maybe this is stupid but i am wondering if the magnet can be put back after completing this? will it effect the sound at all?

Great info, - nice accent, as well. Recently discovered that I prefer the Alnico 5 and 3 to the " vintage " 2. Suprising difference, with the 2 really lacking that high end sparkle usually equated with Fender single coils.I have heard certain ceramics that were still harmonically complex, but your example was generally an accurate comparison. Thanks, - more people ought to learn the how and why in addition to the what.

Proper FED X style

awesome ..

Where can I get this alnico ?

If we do this we have no reason to buy new guitars! I will not stand for it!!!

The image i see before clicking on the video is pickups being shielded with copper tape. Where is the video where you do that ?

Hi Ronald, the lead pic on your video does not match the content: do you have a vid showing the shielding with a copper tape directly on the single coil pickup, just like the photo shows...? Greets

That cheap pickup you had in your hand at the beginning of the video looks like an older Fender Mexican pickup which MANY people including me thinks they sound great.

Good video, but I think I will just buy new pick-ups.

i was pretty lucky the mim pickups i have, have 2 bar magnets on the bottom of the bobbin. and usually they are glued to the steel blanks-pole peaces..mine wer not, meaning i could drop the pole peaces from a legit 1955 strat pickup that i have that has a dead coil, without having to remove the old bar magnets!. and wouldn't you know it brought the pickup to life! it now matches the volume of the bridge pickup witch is a semour Duncan sh6 distortion witch is wound to 16-17 k..so that's a big boost in volume! its amazing how good the tone is! wen its clean it has a chubby round tone! it was exactly what my rig was missing! and it cost me nothing!

what if I turn a humbucker pick up to a dummy coil? I can't find a single coil magnet and also I am afraid to split them because I have break one humbucker already. Sorry rural area guy here.

That fedex guy though 😂

I just order a preloaded pickguard with Alnico V pickups for about $30.

How would you get an out of phase position between two pickups like that if its only the poll pieces that are magnetic?

Interesting. With P90s the slugs are not magnetised. It's the magnet itself. Also you can add a steel base plate to the underside of single coils to increase output (inductance measured in Henries). The p90 proves that magnetic slugs are not necessary but magnet quality is in that case. It's just a bar magnet. Beware of polarity, if you want RWRP in 2 pickup guitar forsilent middle position. It's easy to change the polarity anyway on a P90. Look up on KZfaq. On a Fender single coil polarity change is a pain.

The thing people have to remember is comparison between magnet pole pieces and bar magnets is apples and oranges. The weakest Alnico pole slug will slaughter a ceramic bar in single coil pickups. Much easier to upgrade to 500k or even 750k pots and leave the ceramic bars alone. That’s the thing, everyone hates anything higher than 250k pots with Alnico pole pieces. So you have a lot of wiggle room with just changing out your volume pots.

Good job not checking the polarity of the magnet you just dumped.

I wonder what a second bar magnet added to the pickup would do?🤔

There's a lot more to a high end pickup than than alnico magnets...

Nice, however you DIDN'T address the orientation of each magnet slug & how they all have to be around the SAME way!

Swapping magnets may move “q” around, or RF, it will not make a cheep pickup into a Ron Ellis, or Virgil arlo……not by a long shot. I have messed with this stuff for 40 years. If you want great pickups, you get hope a top winder will wind for you, pay the money and wait in line for them, they are expensive, and have long wait times, the impatient need not apply, if you want to change the tone of current pickups, just buy a longer guitar cable, it will do the same exact thing, move resonate frequently around. And no soldering is required.

I tried this with neodymium slugs and found they are a little to powerful as the will suck the sustain out of your strings.

Go FedEx 😂

interesting./..

im hear same sound...😂🤣🥴😂👍👍👍

I don't quite get the deal with changing the ceramic magnets to alnico. as the power output of a pickup is a factor of the number of "turns" of coil wire; the strength of the magnet(s); the distance from the strings; & the shape of the coil (flat/short & wide puts the whole "kebob" closer to the strings...as with a Jazzmaster pickup, increasing output). The point is that, all else being equal, alnico magnets are weaker (lower gauss) than ceramic by a factor close to 10. Hence, if you were to simply swap out the flat bottom magnets from ceramic to alnico, you'd get LESS output. Replacing non-mag pole pieces with magnets puts those magnets closer to the strings, but raising up a ceramic mag pickup should accomplish much the same thing. In fact, swapping the ceramic magnet for alnico (but 2-3 times thicker), and raising the pickup will accomplish most of what you accomplish in this video. In addition, sticking a steel or nickel plate under the bottom magnet also helps. And, few people mention this, but neodymium magnets are much stronger event than ceramic, so you could try swapping out one of them for the ceramic. The ceramic pickups do have a higher resonant peak than alnico, but that can be lowered by increasing the value of the tone capacitor to 47nF or even 63nF and putting a resistor in parallel with the capacitor (say, 100kOhm), which makes the capacitor driven low end cutoff more gradual. This is part of a "grease bucket" circuit, which also adds a resistor in the pickup's "hot wire". I'd try all of these things...all dirt cheap...before going to the trouble of swapping out the pole pieces.

What about the bottom magnet? Or the polarities of the pole pieces?

See meant or C ment? That is the question.

Where can I buy the magnet and what size

Oh Ron.

My FedEx guy rolled my guitar box out of delivery van

A5 sounded much clearer.

After 7:07 what you usually do, is effing your shielded wire. Any idea why those single coils are great at humming? Lack of shielding. So you'd better forget your bad habbit. When you use lots of coppertape for every cavity in your guitar, you might get away with cutting perfect wiring. But smart? Dude, you replace a shielded wire by a worse one! Why?!

!!!!! H E L P !!!! HELP ME PLEASE !! I ran a magnet over the pickups to clean them of splinters and ferrous dust accumulated over time (done on other guitars without problems) and today the pickups no longer play! They have no magnetic attraction and the volume has dropped by 70/80%!! It is a "Gilmour" setup with reversed-phase (RW) single coil pickups and 7-combination selector switch. Help!!! What happen!? Is it reversible? 12 hours have passed and nothing has changed! Only the magnets involved in contact with the magnet have "turned off", the central ones... the lateral ones work perfectly (low E and high E)...!! What happened? Can I save them? Can magnetic charge be recovered? Do I need to replace the magnetic cylinders? Is copper safe? Please 🙏 help, in my region there is no one to turn to..! Lucius

Can't hear you.

Dont move the pick ups around when holding them> It looks like dont us to see them.

Neodymium is good but sound detail will loses,

thats a lot of stuff. i think i would just buy some new pickups

That wire should not break that easily, the pickup is defective;used.

Turning the pickup over and over in his hand is NOT an interesting video. It is annoying.... just show what is to be done and stop fondling the pickup.

He removed and back thats all😕😅

lol

You just showed and explained how to create a short in your wires. No mention was made for insulating the signal and groud wire from each other , you just pinched them together in the vid and never mentioned it.

I think the ceramic sounds way better than alnico. They are warmer, more rounder.

The picture was what i came here for. Its clickbait, i dont see him touching any colper tape or the black tape.... M

.......!!! dude...whath a fuck ay just..see...!?!

Sonic I 5 pole pieces.... On a ceramic magnet. Why waist your time

Just buy new better pickups # that’s not worth. It

There's no point in adding push back wire. It has absolutely no tonal quality.

Guess polarity doesn’t matter ? 😂 and attaching cloth wire to the cheesy pickup wire does nothing to better tone, output signal is only as good as the flimsy stock wire you left on ??