Alnico 5 Unoriented Rough Bar Magnet 2.5 x .5 x .125 Magnetized Qty 2

Sweet Vintage tone..No ice pick..

Great Magnets.. Sweet Woody Sound. Very musical.

Not so fast.... The mags arrived and fully charged. Good so far. Comparing them to a typical A5 bar mag (oriented) using a magnetometer I saw the the unoriented A5 was not as strong as the oriented version. (FWIW, they are supposed to have the same gauss strength). Since I have a pair of neodymium mags that I use to confirm a full charge on typical bar mags (A5, A2) I gave these mags a go. DON'T DO THIS. Even though I had the neodymium mags correctly oriented, when I made the pass the charge of the unoriented A5 mag's charge was diminished by 75%. In other words it was so minimal in gauss strength it wasn't worth using. So there's a lesson. And, too, where I see that ThroBak made a recommendation to one of their customers to use an unoriented A5 mag in a neck HB, it became clear to me that this is a magnet that is very susceptible to (in a bad way) a magnetic field. You've heard that story where ppl say the secret to how the old PAF got some of it's mojo by leaning the guitar against the amp (exposing the mag to the stray magnetic field of the amp speaker) and possibly reducing the gauss strength of the HB mag? Man, if you did this to this mag you would be walking home from the gig mumbling to yourself. So these mags were a experiment and something I needed to try, no stone unturned kinda thing, and now back to typical A4, A5, and A2.

I put one of these into a well made, if unexciting, 7.8k, A5 neck pickup. It took about 5 minutes. The results were very good. The pickup now is a little darker, but complex and smoky, full of character and even the split coil mode sounds good.

Custom Super 58 humbuckers are standard on Ibanez AS103 guitars. No doubt Ibanez chose a magnet that would sound very clean, but I wanted more character. The UOA5 magnet set in the neck and bridge is chimey without being harsh. Harmonics can be heard clearly and both positions sound great with a little overdrive. The change was well worth the effort. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a more complex tone.

Threw these in some Seymour Duncan Black Winters that were obnoxious. WOW, did it fix em!! Totally mellowed out that ridiculous ceramic tone! (Which if it's your thing, try original Black Winters :P)

I got a pair of these, and I don't know if it was the setup or what, but one in particular had more of an A5 chimey sound but without the overbearing loudness of a regular A5. In the neck pickup it gives a lovely, woody tone that I can't get with any other magnet. It's great!