What Happens When You Touch Two Guitar Pickups Together?
When removing or replacing electric guitar pickups there is a small chance of weakening or degaussing the internal magnets. While it's possible to demagnetize or weaken a pickup's output, this error is often misunderstood and can be avoided by keeping an organized work area and taking a few precautions.
Other People Are Reading
-
Accidentally Touching
-
When the pickups of an electric guitar are removed from the body, it's common for them to wind up getting stuck together briefly by mistake. This is highly unlikely to cause any kind of lasting effect on the pickups' tone or performance. It is recommended that one should try to avoid this, but the pickups touching briefly, or the magnets sticking together for a very short period of time is not a problem.
Pickups Stored, Touching for a Long Time
-
If two or more magnetic pickups are stored close to one another for an extended period of time, it is possible for the magnets to degauss, which can lead to a mellowing or quieting of the tone during performance. If kept around a particularly high-powered pickup, it's possible for a magnetic pickup to become weakened to the point that it can be ruined.
-
Degaussing Magnetic Pickups
-
Many vintage electric guitars have a mellow tone that is attributed to the degaussing of the pickups over time. This can often happen due to the pickups being placed too close to a guitar amp's speakers, which contain high-powered magnets. Players who prefer a more vintage sound have been known to degauss their magnetic pickups deliberately, using bar magnets or other pickups to achieve the performance results they want.
Keeping a Clean and Organized Workbench
-
The unwanted degaussing of guitar pickups can be avoided by keeping a clean and organized work area. When working on an electric guitar, remove the pickups and separate them, keeping them clear of one another. When storing pickups for longer periods of time, make sure they are separated and isolated from other items with magnetic fields like speakers and laptops.
-
Resources
- Photo Credit S Dunn/Digital Vision/Getty Images
