Pickup magnet swaps

[hclapp219]

I've finally admitted to myself that I'm not crazy about the pickups in my Ibby AS-73. If it's the only thing I've played in a while, they sound good, but if I switch to it after playing my Les Paul Special (p90s) or strat it just sounds like mud city. I'm thinking of swapping out the ceramic magnets with some AlNiCo magnets from StewMac: http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics ... agnet.html

Has anyone ever tried a magnet swap? What can I expect sonically? Is it hard to do? Any advice is appreciated. I figure it might be easier than a whole pickup swap...

[MEC]

I've never swapped magnets but it doesn't seem too hard and for the price of the magnet, I'd say it's worth a shot.
Worst case scenario, you end up replacing the pickups entirely and loose a few bucks on the magnets.

Replacing the pots and caps can also make a BIG difference and can be done for cheap too.
Do you know if it has 250k or 500K pots?

[hclapp219]

Looks like all pots are 500k minis with .033 uF minis. The thing is, I've never played around with pickups or electronics, and I have a feeling doing that on a semi-hollow would be jumping into the deep end. And I would need to buy a soldering iron... I might order some magnets and see how it goes.

[MEC]

Yeah, if they are still muddy with 500k pots maybe the magnet is the way to go.

If that doesn't work out and you like the P-90 sound, you should check out the Harmonic Design Z-90:
http://www.harmonicdesign.net/allpages/gibsons.html#z-90