difference in thickness of PU cover to pole pieces?

[SAP]

I'm constructing new pickup covers for a bass with lindy fralin Jazz style pickups. I'm quite new to this and one of my concerns was how thick the top of the cover should be for the pickup to still pickup the vibrations of the strings.

FYI: I'm constructing the non-exposed pole piece type covers.

If anyone has an idea of how thin the top of the cover should be or what range there is to where the pole pieces can no longer pickup the sound, please let me know.


Thank you!

 

[line6man]

If the pickup covers are plastic or wood, they will have no effect on the magnetism or string vibration.

If they are metal, you will have a slightly more muted high end.

 

[darkstorm]

My thinking is that it would need to be very thin. No thicker then the average plastic pup covers found on pups with no exposed pole peices. If you take a thick peice of plastic or wood, and try to pick up a screw with magnet on otherside of the wood or plastic. It doesnt have as much magnetic ability thru the wood or plastic. If too thick, the magnet will have no effect on screw or even a compass. I wouldnt want to have wood cover that was more then 1/8 thick over pole peices and would prefer thinner more like 1/16 inch.

Hopefully some of the peeps with wood cover bass pups will chime in about what builder said in regards to wood covers and magnetism of pup for strings pickup. I may be wrong, but I though wood blocked magnetism more then same thickness plastic.

 

[David Jayne]

I may be wrong, but I though wood blocked magnetism more then same thickness plastic.

Actually, neither wood nor plastic actually 'block' magnetic fields at all. Those materials are transparent to magnets. You do want to keep it as thin as possible though, simply to reduce the distance between the string and pickup as much as possible. You wouldn't, for example, want it to be 1/4" thick, because that would be the same as raising the strings(or lowering the pickup) by that amount, which reduces the signal considerably.

 

[darkstorm]

O ok dmusic148. That makes sense. Its more about distance of pole peice top from strings. In my thinking in post the distance needed to affect how magnet affected magnetic screw was to far away when regarding desireable pups to string distance like you pointed out.