Will the magnets in an SVPick effect the pickups in an electric guitar?
I had the idea of putting of putting a neodymium magnet in my guitar pick in June 2019. I made 5 SVPicks, out of my favorite V-Picks, and I still have all five today. Keeping five favorite picks for over a year, was an Impossible task, as I was traveling daily, and living in hotels. I told my wife about my discovery, and I explained all of the places on my guitar where I could put them. She had a few questions, her most important being, “will the magnet interfere with the pickups?“ That was a good question, and although I didn’t hear any difference in the short time I had been using them, I didn’t know for sure? Although I was already thinking about selling SVPicks, I didn’t want to put a lot of work into it if it wasn’t going to work with electric guitars. With that, I started researching applications involving magnets in proximity of pickups. My first discovery was Relish Guitars, a Swiss company, uses Neodynium magnets to hold both their guitar body, and pickups. Ive never seen one of their guitars in person, but watching the videos, they use pretty large magnets, and they don't seem to have a problem. Looking at their website, I see no mention of magnet interference.
I also searched youtube, and although I found some interesting videos of adding and subtracting magnets on the pickups, I found nothing about a single magnet near a pickup causing any issues. I did find an interesting video of a magnet being rubbed directly on a pickup magnet. Its true that if a bare neodymium is rubbed directly on a pickup magnet, the polarity will change. However, to get close enough for an SVPick to do anything to a guitar pickup, would entail taking apart most pickups, and digging the magnet out of the inside of the pick.
Neodymium magnets are pretty strong, but the magnet needs to be completely horizontal to a stick to anything. While playing, unless you are intentionally putting the magnet on the guitar strings, it is typically more vertical, than horizontal, and your fingers and thumb are additionally over the magnet. While picking, the magnet in the SVPick doesn't have any pulling power.
The way Neodymium magnets attract, and the way we embedded them in the pick, makes us confident that there wont be any problems. Additionally, the fact that magnets are being used in a variety of different ways on electric guitars, adds to our confidence that there is no discernible effect on pickups. Its a good question though, and something we put a lot of thought into before we decided to make and sell these picks.
Thanks, Steve
SVPick.com #neverloseanotherpick
