magnetic pick

[catweazle]

I love dismantling old hard disk drives. The platters are lovely shiny disks that make fabulous wind chimes.

Also in there is the head motor drive and part of that is an amazing magnet. These can be a couple of inches square in big, old drives; but smaller magnets can be about the size of pick.
So I had to try it...

The magnetic field distorts the field of your pickup and so changes the sound you get. Mostly it just kind of dulls the tone, but if you play close to the pickup, you can get a sound a bit like a badly set-up compressor. If you wave the 'pick' close to the pup, you can get a tremolo-like effect.

Caveats!!
The pup will pull (or push) the pick surprisingly firmly - keep a good grip.
I don't know whether you might begin to demagnetise the pup if you mess too long.
Do NOT keep the pick in a pocket near your credit cards!

[ChrisK]

Yep, you betcha!

These are neodymium magnets.

They are the strongest magnets commercially available.

They are used to magnetize pickup pole pieces.



They will change/destroy the magnetization of your pickup magnets.

Keep them far away from any pickups that you want to keep.

[D2o]

Apr 9, 2009 11:47:07 GMT -5 ChrisK said:

These are neodymium magnets.

They are the strongest magnets commercially available.

In my endless aimless quest to obtain the best quality recording of my worst quality playing, I never did get around to employing the DIY ribbon microphone intructions that I bought, which call for some pretty strong magnets if I remember correctly.

Hmmm ... I wonder ...

[ChrisK]

Here we go again.....cow magnets.......

Watch out for hardware disease, which is not to be confused with software disease..