Ceramic Or Alnico Pickups

You often hear that the sound of a pickup is dominated by the choice of magnet used in its construction.

Ceramic or alnico pickups.

Alnico seems to be the popular favorite but on the other hand there is no shortage of popular recordings that feature ceramic. The result is a slightly hotter sounding pickup with more treble response. Whereas ceramic is used in metal as it sounds tight loud and cool. Due to the strong magnetic pull the alnico viii is a nice middle ground between the punch and clarity from a ceramic pickup and the sweet organic sound of an alnico which brings us to ceramic.

Alnico tends to produce a very musical pickup in most. Alnico vs ceramic pickups if you re into guitar or bass guitar pickups and mods you probably hear the words alnico and ceramic a lot call us today. Alnico is a lot more expensive than ceramic. So much so that alnico is almost never used in grades of 5 or higher grades are used to tell a magnet s strength but only in comparison to magnets made of the same material.

Magnetically speaking ceramic magnets produce a stronger field than alnico. Alnico vii is in some pickups but this is rare. To crown a winner in our alnico vs ceramic magnets shootout we would need a way to accurately compare the two which is not an easy task. Ceramic magnets are made from ferrites often iron oxides.

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. Alnico vs ceramic magnets. Alnico is nice and warm and great for blues.