Single coil bar magnet underneath pole pieces?? Help pls

LionAquaLooper

Hi all - I'm setting up a used HSS guitar I recently bought.  On the two single coils I saw a bar magnet underneath each one.  Not waxed, glued or attached by any special means. They're just stuck there via the magnetic attraction to the 6 pole pieces.  I've personally never seen this before but I'm not as experienced as most.  

Anyone know why the need for an extra bar magnet when there are already magnets within the pickups?  Do these increase the DC resistance, or are they meant to be some cheap-o way to make them noiseless   ?  

Cirrus

Mo magnet = mo power

Funkfingers

A fully charged bar magnet should be strong enough to cling to the steel stud polepieces unaided. It would take a fairly hard impact to cause the magnet to fall off. 

Cirrus said:

Mo magnet = mo power

It is possible that a previous owner attempted to increase the output of the single coils by adding the bar magnets.

The problem with this is that rod magnets have their poles at the ends whereas bar magnets usually have them along the narrow edges.

Thus, the additional bar magnets would need to be mounted edgewise to the rods.

I have encountered budget single coils with dual ceramic magnets of square cross-section, arranged a bit like a P90. This is probably the only way to fit the additional magnets into the pickup cavity.

LionAquaLooper

Well you guys were right.  I took off the bar magnets and tested the pickups and the difference was huge.  So much weaker without them.  

I'm now guessing the previous owner put these in to balance the outputs of the singles to the humbucker (somewhat).  

Thanks for the help!

thermionic

Are they actual polepieces that direct the magnetic field from the bar magnets, or AlNiCo rod magnets like Strat single coils? If they were just polepieces they would probably retain some residual magnetism when you took the bar magnets off - although any signal they’d pick up would be very weak I would imagine. The lack of glue to retain them suggests they were a later addition though.

ICBM

The type of magnets used on cheap single coil pickups with plain steel polepieces do in fact have the poles on the flat faces, so adding these to an existing alnico rod magnet pickup will boost its output significantly.