Martin Herrick Neo pickups

[GreeneKing]

I saw some overwound neodymium Martin Herrick pickups on eBay with a 'make an offer' tab. I offered £75 and was well chuffed when it was accepted. That is £45 less than the usual price.

I fitted them today and after some fettling I'm very pleased. Punchy and bright with great mids. I think they look good too.

I initially installed them the same height as the original pups that came out (that are actually surprisingly good anyway). The Neo magnets are so strong that, particularly with the E string they were seriously affecting intonation and causing fret buzz! Lowering the pickups solved this although I was a little confused about what was going on at first.

The originals have magnets epoxied to their underneath. I wonder if this is a mod? As I say they sound surprisingly good for Mexican standard pups.

Here's a photo of the bass now and the magnets stuck onto the old pups:

 

 

Edited February 15, 2019 by GreeneKing

[GreeneKing]

Just a request to ask if these are standard pups or modified ones. It'd be nice to know as they sounded better to me than I expected.

[fleabag]

The same happened when i bought some Entwistle Neos, and the magnets got close and ipso facto, i more or less needed a crow bar.

 

[TheGreek]

I have Martin's pick ups in the neck position in my Psilos bass - more than happy with them. A friend bought a pair of J pups a couple of years previously which he fitted to a mid priced Jazz copy. The Bass sold a couple of times, mainly on buyers being impressed with those pups. 

I met Martin at LBGS - lovely fella and definitely knows his stuff. He is a top luthier and can build you virtually anything you could want..

He's a member here too - I'm having a senior moment - I'll add his username when I remember it..

[joeystrange]

Those are fairly common for cheaper pickups, especially Mex Fenders and Squiers.

They use ceramic magnets under the pickups which magnetise the pole pieces through contact whereas higher end pickups will often magnetise the pole pieces themselves instead.

I don’t know why (nor do I know the technical details, as you may have guessed) but this is the gist of it.

[MoonBassAlpha]

So those pickups would be considered ceramic as opposed to alnico, or  indeed neodymium.