Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

johnallg wrote:

walker wrote:Another note for what it's worth - those magnets I used in the video are by far stronger than the horseshoe magnets of the pickup. If your touch the HS mags with an average size screw driver, you get a "sticky" pull, but those others would practically pull the screw driver right out of your hand. And although they'll stick to the HS mags on either side, they stick to each other and my refrigerator on only one side, and repel strongly on the other.

A good source for very small but strong magnets are old hard drives.

+1! Those NIB magnets are killer strong! I've got a bunch of them out of old 5-1/4 drives that are seriously dangerous. I mean, if you get your finger pinched between 2 os 'em you WILL be hurtin' (don't ask me how I know )...

walker wrote:I have my "go-to" guy for recharging the HS mags that I know is reliable, but Tony Matura and John Algaier have developed do-it-yourself methods with independent magnets that have also proved effective.

The two magnets I use are from a VERY old IBM System mainframe 10MB hard drive. The whole drive looked like a large model of the Starship Enterprise. Really. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. Anyway, the white magnets are SUPER strong and were about 3/8" thick, 1" x 2" or there about. One is broken in half, and I stack the halves together and put them in the gap like in the picture. I leave them there for a day but I don't think that long is necessary. The first one I know of to use magnets to charge the shoes used a very large magnetic structure of a bass woofer and he put the shoes on the side of the magnet structure with the top of the shoes the same side up on the magnet. I can't remember who was the first to post this about 6 years ago.

cjj wrote:

johnallg wrote:

walker wrote:Another note for what it's worth - those magnets I used in the video are by far stronger than the horseshoe magnets of the pickup. If your touch the HS mags with an average size screw driver, you get a "sticky" pull, but those others would practically pull the screw driver right out of your hand. And although they'll stick to the HS mags on either side, they stick to each other and my refrigerator on only one side, and repel strongly on the other.

A good source for very small but strong magnets are old hard drives.

+1! Those NIB magnets are killer strong! I've got a bunch of them out of old 5-1/4 drives that are seriously dangerous. I mean, if you get your finger pinched between 2 os 'em you WILL be hurtin' (don't ask me how I know )...

Yup, me too. In fact two of the white ones snapping together is how they broke in half.

johnallg wrote:The first one I know of to use magnets to charge the shoes used a very large magnetic structure of a bass woofer and he put the shoes on the side of the magnet structure with the top of the shoes the same side up on the magnet. I can't remember who was the first to post this about 6 years ago.

I don't know if Tony Matura was the first guy, but he did this successfully some time in the past. Maybe he'll chime in here and talk about what he did.

walker wrote:

johnallg wrote:The first one I know of to use magnets to charge the shoes used a very large magnetic structure of a bass woofer and he put the shoes on the side of the magnet structure with the top of the shoes the same side up on the magnet. I can't remember who was the first to post this about 6 years ago.

I don't know if Tony Matura was the first guy, but he did this successfully some time in the past. Maybe he'll chime in here and talk about what he did.

Found a post by the guy, though this thread was not the first posting on it. It does have the picture he posted. Stephen Lodge (stevebasshead) was the guy.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=391098&hilit=horses ... er#p571761

Cool. That'll work!

When doin any of these re-mag processes, do both side of the shoe (top and bottom) have to make contact or is close OK? meaning if i had like 1/16 of an inch gap between the magnets one side of the shoe would it need to be shimmed up with a piece of steel or something like that?

I was curious about that too, Tom. Magnetic pull still happens to some degree even without direct contact, but I'd assume that the closer or more direct, the stronger the re-charge. When I did that experiment in the video, you may notice that the change in sound starts becoming apparent before the magnet even touches the horseshoe. But I still think that's a good idea - to put in some kind of shim to fill the gap.

Yeah the field thing should happen in close proximity I would think. We used to magnetize nails without touching them with magnets as kids. So now as to why the sound changes with the heavy mag influence... I would think the C of the shoe would be relatively the same magnetic charge all around. So does this mean that the more powerful the magnet, the more the highs are suppressed? is this something similar to the effect that water has on light - as one gets deeper (and more dense) bandwidths are filtered out? Curious minds want to know!

walker wrote:

johnallg wrote:The first one I know of to use magnets to charge the shoes used a very large magnetic structure of a bass woofer and he put the shoes on the side of the magnet structure with the top of the shoes the same side up on the magnet. I can't remember who was the first to post this about 6 years ago.

I don't know if Tony Matura was the first guy, but he did this successfully some time in the past. Maybe he'll chime in here and talk about what he did.

I didn't come up with that idea. Mr. Allgaier turned me on to it.

ram wrote:When doin any of these re-mag processes, do both side of the shoe (top and bottom) have to make contact or is close OK? meaning if i had like 1/16 of an inch gap between the magnets one side of the shoe would it need to be shimmed up with a piece of steel or something like that?

I think so. My magnets JUST wedge into the shoe gap as I have it drawn in my very artistic rendering.

Looks like you did that on an Etch a Sketch John!

opticnerve wrote:Looks like you did that on an Etch a Sketch John!

Shhh! Don't tell him, he thinks it's a computer screen...

Now THAT is funny. Actually it was Paint with a lousy mouse.