Can I mix alnico and ceramic pickups?- created 06-06-2009

Schneiter, Henrique - 06/06/2009.10:10:42

I read today from some pickup dealer that you shouldn't mix alnico and ceramic pickups in the same guitar, hence the risk of demagnetizing the alnico ones. I get scared because I've been using this on a few guitars, including some quite expensive pickups. Anyway I had no problems so far. Do you know something about it? Is it true

I don't believe it is true. I've never heard of it anyway, and I've been wrong before but this sounds ridiculous to me

ceramics will not demagnetize alnico pickups, assuming that both are mounted in the guitar and you're not continually passing the ceramic over the alnico to feel the reverse polarities "fight" with each other

I have more than a few examples here that disprove that theory. I mix and match pickups all the time and it's never been a problem for me

Thanks people. At first the information seemed silly to me too, and I never heard it before, but it came from a serious national pickup manufacturer, so it's better check with you

Maybe the point is that alnico can be more easily demagnetized by time, AC fields, opposing magnetic fields, and strong shock. Not likely by a pickup with a ceramic magnet in the next slot.

But alnico slugs are easily remagnetized with strong super magnets.

Lets be clear that there are different grades of Alnico. Alnico II is much more susceptible to demagnetization than the Alnico V or 5 that we find in 90% of our pickups.

I would be very careful with large neodymium magnets around any alnico magnets, I know this because I use a large neo to flip the polarity on pickups that aren't behaving. It works every time.<g>

EMG's been selling the "Zack Wylde" 81(ceramic) 85(alnico-5) set in the same little cardboard box long enough that if this were so they'd have qiut doing so long ago

Good point Johnathan. I guess it closes the discussion