Neo Magic Magnetic Buttons Reviews 
5 / 5 based on 1 reviewsMetalic Silver finish, bigger than a shirt button, but thinner. Any number of strings, just buy enuf buttons.
$4 for 4 buttons in the artsy craftsy aisle at Walmart.
It makes your PUs really powerful. They securely stay put without adhesive. IOW it's an accessory, not a mod to your ax. Also, they add a slight chorusing effect. They seem to work equally well on passive or active EQ'ed basses. The resulting tone is different, but not weird. It's still in the realm of 'normal electric bass tone'.
It fugz with your intonation, even on a fretless [if I explain it to you, I'll hafta kill you]. But it's not totally wacko. You can move the saddles [always waaaaay forward] and find a workable compromise tuning. You cannot just tune the open strings. You got check a range along the neck and strike a compromise. I use them only on open pole PUs, cuz they raise the effective height of the pole pieces, and a layer of plastic over your pole pieced ['hidden pole' PU] would just add to that height increase. You wind up lowering your PUs about as far you they go, even with an open pole PU design.
They look like silver metal, but are apparently ceramic or sintered metal dust, as they can break or crumble from strong impact. These are extreeeeeemely powerful little magnets. Thaz why they fuggup your intonation.
I only use them on passive PUs [but it's OK if the ax has an active EQ-pre]. The cool thing is that these would simply magnify the power of your PUs if you put them on ALL the pole pieces. But you can SELECTIVELY boost some poles while leaving other poles untouched .... in that way you're 're-designing' your PU. IOW if you have an 8-pole MM type PU, just enhance two poles in one row and the alternate two poles in the other, and you've effectively switched to a P-bass split PU design. Or you can emphasise the bridge or neck PU of a Jazz bass to a degree that cannot be approached just by fiddling with PU height adjustments and volume knobs. You cam use them on 'large singe' type poles [MM etc] or on the 'small pairs' type [Fender Jazz etc]. On a 'small pairs' PU, one button covers a pair .... IOW, 4 buttons will do one whole J-PU.
Golem rated this unit
on
2010-12-09.
