Tonerider Magnet Polarity

Floydoid

I’ve got an awesome Tonerider Generator bridge pickup that I want to install into an old Ibanez Les Paul. I have no idea what the humbucking pickup is that’s in the neck at the moment. It has no markings or name but it sounds very good so I don’t want to remove it.

I want to ensure that the polarity of the magnets of the 2 pickups are correctly orientated to allow them to be in phase.

My question is – How do I check the polarity of the Tonerider’s magnet? I want to be able to turn it around if it’s not the same as the existing neck pickup.

tonerider

Floydoid, you’ve actually answered yourself – if it sounds out-of-phase then you just turn the magnet around in one of the pickups, irrespective of what its polarity is, but take care to turn it through its width and not its length.

If you really have to know buy yourself an inexpensive compass from one of those “toys for men” shops that you find in every shopping center. Put the humbucker on a flat surface and move the compass closer to it approaching it from its side, either from the adjusting screw side or from the slug side. The red tip of the compass will always point towards the south pole of a magnet and be repelled by its north pole.

The best is to wire the guitar and then to hear if the 2 pickups are in-or-out of phase. If they’re out of phase you can then turn any one of the 2 magnets around. (It’s actually a lot easier to just turn the + and – wires of one of the pickups around)

On Tonerider humbuckers the north pole of the AlNiCo magnet points toward the slugs & the south pole towards the adjustable pole pieces. This is generally the way magnets are placed in humbuckers, but not in every case! Hand winders have been known to disregard this general rule.

Good luck!

Floydoid

AndreM wrote: Floydoid, you’ve actually answered yourself – if it sounds out-of-phase then you just turn the magnet around in one of the pickups, irrespective of what its polarity is, but take care to turn it through its width and not its length.

If you really have to know buy yourself an inexpensive compass from one of those “toys for men” shops that you find in every shopping center. Put the humbucker on a flat surface and move the compass closer to it approaching it from its side, either from the adjusting screw side or from the slug side. The red tip of the compass will always point towards the south pole of a magnet and be repelled by its north pole.

The best is to wire the guitar and then to hear if the 2 pickups are in-or-out of phase. If they’re out of phase you can then turn any one of the 2 magnets around. (It’s actually a lot easier to just turn the + and – wires of one of the pickups around)

On Tonerider humbuckers the north pole of the AlNiCo magnet points toward the slugs & the south pole towards the adjustable pole pieces. This is generally the way magnets are placed in humbuckers, but not in every case! Hand winders have been known to disregard this general rule.

Good luck!

I want to do it by moving the magnet around, and not by un-soldering and then re-soldering the wires again. I want to keep the Tomerider color coding as it is in full humbucker mode. So I will change the magnet in the other older neck pickup, if need be.

Please explain the "take care to turn it through its width and not its length" a bit further. I don't get this!

Thanks

tonerider

Floydoid wrote:Please explain the "take care to turn it through its width and not its length" a bit further. I don't get this!

Seeing you’re using Tonerider I’ll explain a bit further. Once you’ve loosened the 4 base-plate screws a bit and lifted the bobbins away from the base-plate to free the magnet, all you have to do is to slide it out and turn it 180deg through its width and slide it back in. The pickup’s phase rotation has now been turned 180degrees and if was out of phase with the other pickup shall now be in phase.

A humbucker magnet’s polarity is across its width (the widest part) and not across its length (the longest part)

Capiche?

Here’s a pic to simplify further.

PS: It’s still a lot easier to just turn the hot and ground of the pickup around than to change the magnet. Be careful not to damage anything!

Floydoid

Aaah I get it now! So the bobbin with the adjusting screws will be the opposite in polarity to the other bobbin with the non-adjusting "slugs" and if I turn the magnet around like you say the polarity will be reversed from whatever it was before.

I'm starting to think that turning the wires around might actually be the way to go. Doing the magnet thang is just so much work. ?

Thanks for all the great help man and the time taken with the explanation. ?

Floydoid

So, the pickups are in, Tonerider Generator in the bridge, Ibanez Super 58 in the neck. It turns out that the 2 pickups were indeed out of phase which was confirmed by the horrible nasal sound in the middle position. I had second thoughts about the whole magnet issue and instead changed the 2 wires of the Super 58 around. Worked like a charm and the sound is very good.

The Generator bridge works very well with the Super 58, and in the middle (blend) position it has a nice chimey bell-like sound that's very nice. The Ibanez Super 58 is very similar in tone to the Tonerider Generator neck pickup, just by way of comparison.

raithza

Hey! I've also got one of those old ibanez LP's. Can you post a pic? ?

Oh, if you have a white pickguard for it that you're not using, I'd be interested in buying it...

Floydoid

raithza wrote: Hey! I've also got one of those old ibanez LP's. Can you post a pic? ?

Oh, if you have a white pickguard for it that you're not using, I'd be interested in buying it...

It's not worth taking pictures of. It's black, bolt on neck, made to look like a Les Paul Custom, but in reality it's a nasty cheap piece of s*** just like all these 1970's Ibanez copies are. Just take the thing apart and you'll see how cheaply it was made! ? Mine doesn't have a scratchplate sorry.

raithza

Floydoid wrote:
It's not worth taking pictures of. It's black, bolt on neck, made to look like a Les Paul Custom, but in reality it's a nasty cheap piece of s*** just like all these 1970's Ibanez copies are. Just take the thing apart and you'll see how cheaply it was made! ? Mine doesn't have a scratchplate sorry.

Agreed! though I really like the pickups/sound...