Anyone ever swap pickup magnets?

pharmd07

Experienced
I have Classic 57 pickups in my Les Paul. I like the sound of my bridge pickup, but the neck pickup sounds pretty wooly, especially on lower notes, even with a very low pickup height.

I could get a new neck pickup, but then I would have to replace all the electronics as well since my Les Paul has the circuit board in the control cavity. The pickups need to plug in to the circuit board and no one sells aftermarket pickups with the plug installed.

That leaves me with considering changing the magnet in my neck pickup. Classic 57s have alnico II magnets, and changing to an alnico V magnet should, in theory, make the pickup brighter and less wooly. The process looks fairly easy.

Has anyone done a magnet swap? How difficult was it? Were the results significant?
 
Not terribly difficult but I didn’t really notice any major changes. I dare say it borders on a bit of cork sniffery......

I should add though that I never really heard differences in tube brands and stuff either, all caps sound the same to me too lol

I think it’s more placebo than anything, you get your fancy a3 magnet, or NOS $25 cap, and you think your guitar sounds a lot better, even if you maybe couldn’t tell if someone switches without telling you first...

still pretty easy to do, so doesn’t hurt to experiment, but don’t expect too huge of difference in most cases, unless your ears are a lot better than mine.
 
I have Classic 57 pickups in my Les Paul. I like the sound of my bridge pickup, but the neck pickup sounds pretty wooly, especially on lower notes, even with a very low pickup height.

I could get a new neck pickup, but then I would have to replace all the electronics as well since my Les Paul has the circuit board in the control cavity. The pickups need to plug in to the circuit board and no one sells aftermarket pickups with the plug installed.

That leaves me with considering changing the magnet in my neck pickup. Classic 57s have alnico II magnets, and changing to an alnico V magnet should, in theory, make the pickup brighter and less wooly. The process looks fairly easy.

Has anyone done a magnet swap? How difficult was it? Were the results significant?

I had Classic + Classic Plus in my LP 295. They are alright but like you said, a bit wooly on the neck pickup.

I changed them for a set of Spirit of 59s by Amber. Fantastic set. Just like Klein and Klopmann, Amber makes boutique PAF replacements.
 
Not terribly difficult but I didn’t really notice any major changes. I dare say it borders on a bit of cork sniffery......

I should add though that I never really heard differences in tube brands and stuff either, all caps sound the same to me too lol

I think it’s more placebo than anything, you get your fancy a3 magnet, or NOS $25 cap, and you think your guitar sounds a lot better, even if you maybe couldn’t tell if someone switches without telling you first...

still pretty easy to do, so doesn’t hurt to experiment, but don’t expect too huge of difference in most cases, unless your ears are a lot better than mine.

I can’t say that I have very discerning ears. Fortunately, an alnico V magnet from Stew Mac is only about $10. For the price of a burger from Five Guys I could potentially get an improvement in tone. If not, I’m out $10, I guess it’s no big deal.
 
I had Classic + Classic Plus in my LP 295. They are alright but like you said, a bit wooly on the neck pickup.

I changed them for a set of Spirit of 59s by Amber. Fantastic set. Just like Klein and Klopmann, Amber makes boutique PAF replacements.

I’m glad to hear it’s not just me who thinks the neck Classic 57s are too wooly. I was wondering if I was just having unrealistic expectations.

I’ll check out those Amber pickups. I’ll have to bite the bullet and get new electronics for the control cavity if I go that route. Looks like Mojotone has some good prewired wiring harnesses.
 
You may start with the electronics first. The circuit boards use 300k pots, which are dulling the sound. A 500k or higher reading pot for Vol and Tone makes these pickups less wooly. A smaller cap makes the pickup brighter too. 0.015uF is nice for a neck pickup.
Did you try to turn the screws of the polepieces closer the strings, while lowering the whole pickup?
 
Last edited:
I've done this quite a bit... the difficulty IMO is predicting how magnet x is going to sound in pickup z. You can read all the descriptions like "a2 is oaky with a slight hint of nutmeg" but the wire and winding seem to blow that away for me. Plus it seems increasing treble (for instance) is likely to cause a loss somewhere else you may not like (at least that was my experience). I think the next time I do this i'll do a short recording after each swap of type so I can contrast them all at the end.
that said... in your case it would seem that just removing the cover might be a good choice. I've heard of folks using a hair dryer to loose some potting wax... could result in squeal but would also add treble.
just some things to think about anyway - cheers and def let us know what you do!
 
You may start with the electronics first. The circuit boards use 300k pots, which are dulling the sound. A 500k or higher reading pot for Vol and Tone makes these pickups less wooly.

+1!!!

I replaced the pots on my 87 LPC with 500k CTS pots. Huge difference, it's like someone lifted a blanket off the guitar. The T-Tops I have in it came alive. Not sure why Gibson decided to use 300k pots at the time.
 
I replaced that circuit board on my '17 SG Special along with the ridiculously overwound mini humbuckers. I put in a DiMarzio Virtual P90 at the neck and a DiMarzio Super Distortion soapbar-sized at the bridge, and used 500k pots.

Much clearer and more useable.
 
+1!!!

I replaced the pots on my 87 LPC with 500k CTS pots. Huge difference, it's like someone lifted a blanket off the guitar. The T-Tops I have in it came alive. Not sure why Gibson decided to use 300k pots at the time.

Maybe because they were available at the time? And considering most guitar players are more conservative then ISIS who think Fender and Gibson got it right the first time Gibson just persisted with it. If that's what the market wants, true to vintage specs, that's what they will get.
 
I've done this quite a bit... the difficulty IMO is predicting how magnet x is going to sound in pickup z. You can read all the descriptions like "a2 is oaky with a slight hint of nutmeg" but the wire and winding seem to blow that away for me. Plus it seems increasing treble (for instance) is likely to cause a loss somewhere else you may not like (at least that was my experience). I think the next time I do this i'll do a short recording after each swap of type so I can contrast them all at the end.
that said... in your case it would seem that just removing the cover might be a good choice. I've heard of folks using a hair dryer to loose some potting wax... could result in squeal but would also add treble.
just some things to think about anyway - cheers and def let us know what you do!
Generally, switching to a ceramic magnet will make a pickup brighter, as compared to any AlNiCo variety. The magnet acts as a ferric core and increases the coils' inductance, which makes the resonant frequency lower.
 
Has anyone done a magnet swap? How difficult was it? Were the results significant?
I have done it and the results were positive, but-.

I did it as a, “what the hell” moment. Took a pair of Seth Lovers out of a Les Paul and put in some Joe Bonamassa Skinnerburst pick up’s (which I like allot BTW). The Seth Lovers had Alnico II’s and the Skinnerburst had Alnico III’s.

At the time I was thinking was hmmm--, the Seth Lover was a recreation of a 50’s humbucker and the Skinnerburst was a recreation of a 50’s humbucker also but aged almost 60 years. The upfront difference being the magnets. So was just curios and swapped magnets and put Alnico III’s into the Seth Lovers. Were results positive, yes. But not night and day more of a gentle push, still sounded like the Seth Lover. Although I do like the result and would do it again, think I could add or subtract 10-15 of cable out of a guitar rig and have a much more drastic result.

As it being difficult to do, if the pickup has a cover that is the most annoying part after that easy. Just make sure you orientate the magnet poles correctly.

But like allot of other people have already said 500k pots! Start there.
 
Thanks for the suggestions regarding the 500k pots. The pots I have are already 500k CTS pots in my guitar. The model of my Les Paul Classic has push/pull CTS pots for all 4 pots, all of which are 500k (CTS model 450S 3912). Despite the fact that my guitar has the infamous circuit board in the control cavity, the quality of the pots appears to be top notch. As for the rest of the guitar, it plays amazingly well. I'm just getting nit picky with the tone, as many guitarists do.

I went ahead and ordered some alnico 3 and 5 magnets. I'm going to try the alnico 5 in both the neck and bridge positions. If either pickup becomes too bright, I'll try the alnico 3 magnet. If I don't like that, I'll just put the alnico 2 back in. Fortunately I don't have pickup covers, so I won't have to deal with that mess.

I'll make some before and after recordings. You all will get to enjoy my terrible playing!
 
Last edited:
I've been using Ducan JB's in all of my guitars for years but always swap the alnico 5 magnets for ceramic 8's. This creates a pickup that's right between a JB and a Distortion in terms of intensity. In fact, the only difference between the JB and the distortion is what magnet is used. Easy mod that makes a huge difference when my guitars are tuned down.
 
Do you think Alnico 5 sounds better than Alnico 2?

Depends on how you define 'better'.

AlNiCo 2 will have a little softer sounding attack than AlNiCo 5.

Some Fender-style single coils use a mix of 5 and 2 magnets, with the 2 used to take the spiky attack off the plain strings and the 5 used to get more crisp lows....
 
I swapped out the alnico 2 magnet on my neck humbucker with an alnico 5 magnet. There was a slight difference, but it wasn’t massive. A little brighter and slightly tighter low end.

To put things in perspective, I can affect my tone much more by switching to a lighter pick, which also results in a brighter tone with less low end.

Give the magnet swap a try. Magnets are fairly cheap and making the swap is pretty easy.
 
I swapped the Alnico 5 magnet in my SD Custom 5 for a ceramic magnet, effectively converting it to the SD Custom, since that's the only difference between those pickups.

The difference between the two was about what I expected. The Ceramic made the pickup a bit more aggressive, with a slightly extended high mid presence and slightly stronger attack.

However, the first thing I'd do on any Les Paul is change the pots from whatever "300k" pots they load in there at the factory (that actually usually measure around 280k or so) to actual 500k pots. That's arguably going to do as much or possibly even more for improved clarity and articulation than swapping a magnet.
 
Back
Top Bottom