Alemany Flea Market

Spent a couple hours this morning at the flea market. I scored a handful of germanium transistors including 9 RCA 2n408s. Those were the original equipment in the Mosrite Fuzzrite fuzz pedals. Also came across a couple Amperex BugleBoy 12AX7 preamp tubes and quite a few PIO capacitors at suitable values for guitar tone caps. I hope to start building a few transitor based fuzz boxes in the near future. Probably a Fuzzrite, a Harmonic Percolater, a Rangemaster, a two transistor and a 3 transistor Tonebenders. Its always easy to start projects like that. The hard part is finishing them.

How Many Ways Can Vintage Pickups Become Demagnatized Over Time?

1) Natural decay. I'm not sure how much of a factor this is but if it exist it is unstoppable.

 Being exposed to an opposite magnetic field for a prolonged period of time. This could happen in any number of ways;

2) like on an electric train near powerful electro magnetic motors,

3) having someone drill or dremel on your guitar with the pickups in,

4) being near a power generator,

5) being stacked or stored with other pickups with opposite polarity,

6) getting banged directly like with a whammy bar or something metal

7) being stored near an electric fan or other motorized device that runs constantly and produces an electro magnetic field.

8) having your wife vacuum around your guitar collection regularly.

9) keeping your guitar or pickups near a speaker with a powerful magnetic field.

Why is this important? well maybe natural loss of some magnetism over time is part of that vintage sound. If your pickup magnets become totally demagnetized the pickups will not work. I've seen a set of Stratocaster pickups, where the middle was reverse wound reverse magnetic polarity, actually have the middle pickup switch polarity because of being stored between the other two pickups sandwich style. So the moral of the story is; If you like the way your pickups sound, be wary of having your guitar or pickups in the presence of powerful magnetic fields for any length of time.

Vintage Guitars and Electronics

A brief speculation on the nature and quality of "vintage" musical gear. Why does it sound so much better than modern gear?

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Gain Staging and Distortion

Whats the best way to achieve distortion while preserving tone? Distortion overdrive and gain staging.

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