"Alnico V P90 Guitar Pickup Set Humbucker size Single Coil HB90" is ceramic

Thanks for letting us know!

 

I trust anything from China as far as I can throw the entire country.
Did you install and then wonder what was wrong or just curiosity as to construction ?

 

I ve made P90s using a HB coil w AlNiCo magnets from a Guitar Fetish Strat single size HB. If the magnets go past the coil edge, ie they are wider than the coil, they don t sound as good. I tried Firebird magnets as well since they are available as magnets instead of cannibalizing cheap p-ups. The proper size smaller micro HB magnets were noticeably better. So thats another problem w your p-ups, the magnets are too wide.Guitar Fetish has discontinued the doner p-ups.

 

Did you get a refund? I seriously doubt that the copper foil is an attempt at deception. First of all, most buyers will never open the cover. Secondly, those who did would never mistake the obvious copper foil for an AlNiCo bar. It's probably there for some kind of tone modification, shielding, or mechanical integrity. Hard to guess why.

 

Did you find any such aluminum foil inside the pickup? It looks like no. What do you actually see at the back of these before they are opened? Copper? I think the photos actually show two Alnico bars. If you look very closely you can see the criss cross saw marks (look where the cable goes in). I think what has happened is that the seller has either switched suppliers, or has a different batch from the same seller and continued to use the outdated or misleading photos. Most of the sellers have no clue about pickups really, they just buy and sell them. I think the deception has probably taken place between the wholesaler/manufacturer and the seller.

I'm not suggesting that they should evade responsibility for the misrepresentation, I just doubt that they really knew. Remember, this is a store that sells bicycle accessories.

 

A lot of Chinese vendors don't know the difference. I've seen obvious ceramic bar Strat pickups advertised as alnico.

The person selling you the bits often isn't the maker, which is a factory churning out parts for Squire bullets, SXs and other entry/chainstore brands. They buy a box out the side door for a workers monthly wages and sell them on the web.

They just cherry pick terms - a white single coil pickup that sells for $50-100 in America? Good - I will copy the buzz terms to sell my generic $5 pickup.

 

Tin foil? Anyone missing a hat?

 

Maybe the aluminum foil was for "Noiseless Pickups". Aluminum will cut out some noise so....

 

How do you know they are ceramic? If they were alnico bars they would be placed exactly like that.

How do they sound?

 

Good point. Actually, I thought, "yeah those look like ceramic" when I looked at the photos. But looking back at the photo now, I'm not sure. Ceramic is a dull dark grey, not really metallic looking. But now I see that the light is from the side and it's really hard to make out the true appearance. rrr969, please post some better pictures and please explain why you talk about aluminum foil when the wrap on the magnets is obviously adhesive backed copper foil. You have only provided one picture of the back and it shows no aluminum. How thick are the magnets? Ceramics are usually thicker than Alnico.

From your posts, it sounds like you inferred that the silver coloured pickups have aluminum foil vs. Alnico solely on the presence of copper foil in one gold set. That is a bit of a leap unless you also have examined the silver ones.

 

Looked like ceramic to me too.
The ceramic bar magnet that was underneath my GFS Minibird was only 3mm thick x 10mm wide x 56mm long.

 

I have one of these in my guitar. It's a good sounding pickup, but it doesn't sound like a P90. I also bought a Belcat brand 'alnico' bass pickup that also was probably not true alnico. The seller described it as some kind of ferrite/alnico hybrid that I can find no other information on and no other pickup manufacturers use. It clearly has a ferrite magnet on the bottom, visible without even opening up.

 

That is another possible reason for the copper foil - ceramic is brittle and they might wrap it to protect against cracking. 3mm is very thin for a ceramic.

 

I buy next to nothing from China - especially anything you eat or wear. Deception, use of hazardous and poisonous materials in construction - what's been caught is almost unbelievable and is the tip of the iceberg compared to what we haven't caught.