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Author Topic: magnet ageing - fact or fiction?  (Read 5875 times)

gwEm

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magnet ageing - fact or fiction?
« on: October 24, 2007, 09:03:03 AM »
some experts reckon even the magnets in the earliest PAFs wouldn't yet be showing signs of aging. other experts think that you can hear differences in a relatively short time - after just a few years.

what is the truth behind this urban legend? what would the effect of aging ceramic and alnico magnets be, are there any differences in the way the two types age?
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hunter

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magnet ageing - fact or fiction?
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2007, 09:19:50 AM »
I think they lose their magnetic force and need to be recharged from time to time. At least I heard mentions from people that they had their magnets recharged by pickup manufacturers.

However, this kind of maintenance activity seems far less mainstream than for example changing tubes on an amp.

Also not sure if this just happens or is related to wrong usage (e.g. electric drills or computer monitors on pickups and stuff)
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Ratrod

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magnet ageing - fact or fiction?
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2007, 11:43:48 AM »
Here's some quotes by Lindy Fralin and Bill Lawrence:

http://www.flyingvintage.com/gcmag/PAF.html

Quote
PAFs sound better because the magnets have weakened - Guitar magazines articles in the past have reported that the ageing of the magnets over 40 years has changed them and produced a better sounding PAF. However, magnet manufacturers report that these Alnico magnets only lose 0.2 - 2.0 % of their strength over 100 years. It's not weakened magnets. Beck, Clapton, Page, Gibbons and the other PAF guitar players made a bunch of great music with these instruments in the late 1960s when the pickups were only 10 years old. If the ageing story made sense, 1970s Gibson humbucker pickups should sound wonderful with 20+ years of ageing, but they still exhibit less warmth with more high-end than PAFs.


Quote
Before the introduction of alnico magnets in 1935, permanent magnets were not quite that permanent. During a certain time, they lost a good amount of magnetism till they finally reached a stable condition. The process to accelerate this decay was called in the industry, "magnetic aging." In modern science, it is called "stabilizing." Since the ‘50's, we use Alnico 5 magnets which lose, under normal conditions, less then half a percent per 100 years.
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MDV

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magnet ageing - fact or fiction?
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2007, 06:32:51 PM »
It really depends. there are a lot of things that affct a magnets retention of magnatism. Obviously the magnetic material is one, then theres temperature, temperture variation, imapact and shock (if the pickups been taken out or dismantled), presence of other magnetic feilds (they're all over the place and over long periods of time, they dont need to be as strong)

All told the degredation of a magnet over time is quite unpredictable unless you have data on how that magnet degrades over long periods (years/decades) with all possible variables controlled (never been done) and even then it would be vary hard to determine, simply because you dont know where its been or how its been handled in its few decades of life.

Speaking as a physicist here, there is no way you can quantify the degredation of a magnet over long time scales if its never been baselined in a controlled test, and theres no way you can ever give a set answer to this question for any given magnet and say "thats it, all the time" because you dont know how the other factors have affected it.

All you can do is measure the magnet now. If youre lucky maybe you can compare it to one from then (near meaningless result but it would probably convice some) or a large sample from then, but that would be a statistical assesment because you arent measuring the same magnet, so it still doesnt tell you anything if you dont know what that magnets been up to in that time.

Edit: and the data for 100 year lifetimes is also very iffy since it'll be based on extrapolations from very much shorter periods of time. The errors in such large extrapolations are significant, and there is the possibility that the real behaviour undergoes unpredicted changes in trend.

Henk

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magnet ageing - fact or fiction?
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2007, 08:17:35 AM »
I think any loss of magnetic field strength in pu magnets is insignificant to the aging process of an entire pickup or even the sound of an entire guitar. I second the idea of any pickup (magnet) stabilizing with age, the same goes for guitars by the way. I have guitars from all ages, dating back to 1969, and those oldies do sound rounder and more balanced than comparable new models.

Same thing with speakermagnets by the way, well used older cabs always seem to sound better IMO.
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