Strat Ceramic Vs Alnico

Alnico aluminum nickel and cobalt or ceramic.

Strat ceramic vs alnico.

Donate to guitars for good causes. The result is a slightly hotter sounding pickup with more treble response. Magnet material is usually one of two varieties. What s the difference between ceramic alnico magnet pickups.

Magnetically speaking ceramic magnets produce a stronger field than alnico. You often hear that the sound of a pickup is dominated by the choice of magnet used in its construction. Technically more efficient ceramic magnets took over in a wide variety of commercial applications starting in the 1960s but ceramic magnet guitar pickups were found to have a generally harsher more brittle sound with sharper peaks than their alnico predecessors. Ceramic vs alnico discussion in stratocaster discussion forum started by ratherbefishing.

Alnico tends to produce a very musical pickup in most. Whereas ceramic is used in metal as it sounds tight loud and cool. Let s listen to how they sound. So we often hear.

Ceramic magnets tend to boost treble response and have become popular for pickups with extra coil winding to compensate for the treble loss. By some players the ceramic magnets are given a bad reputation when compared to alnico which is probably due to their association with cheaper instruments. Ceramic magnets are made from ferrites often iron oxides. Alnico is nice and warm and great for blues.

Whereas alnico pickups use magnetic slugs direct loading. I haven t seen a strat pickup yet where ceramic magnet rods were used instead of metal polepieces or alnico slugs but it would be interesting to be able to compare them. Alnico was used in all popular vintage pickups and generally has a warm and smooth response.