I was trying to find some info on a pickup I bought and ran across these pages.
http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/Pi...evaluation.htm
http://www.billlawrence.com/Pages/Al...ickupology.htm
It's interesting to note that while the early Fender pickups used alnico magnets, virtually all of the pickups that Leo Fender designs for G&L used ceramic magnets. I think that most of the aftermarket blade pups deigned by Bill Lawrence also used ceramic magnets.
Another similarity that I have noticed between my G&L "MFD" pickups and my Bill Lawrence pups is that they have relatively low ohms, but very high output.
My BL pickup had low enough ohms readings that it prompted me to find the specs. Sure enough the ohm and inductance specs were dead on and the output was high IRL.
Bill Lawrence the person used a lot of test equipment to measure some pretty esoteric stuff like current eddies (at least that seems esoteric to me). From what I've heard about Leo Fender, he used a lot of trial and error for position of the pickup as well as composition. As far as I know though Leo Fender didn't leave a lot of writing about his his method.
FWIW, I have come to think that, for an ordinary person who is not an EE, the most reliable way of judging output and how will pick up is going to sound is to listen to the pickup in a guitar similar to the one you want to put it in, where the player is using a style that something you might use too. I've had reasonable luck selecting pickups listening to recordings on YouTube. Playing a guitar in a store that has the pickups you like is even better, probably, but harder to find with a lot of the aftermarket brands. The one mistake I've made in buying pickups, probably could have been avoided by listening to a few recordings. I bought a set of DiMarzio J's some years ago mostly because they got good reviews. When I went back to YouTube and really listened to basses that had them installed, I could hear pretty much exactly what I didn't like about them. That's not to say they're bad, it's just to say they were not my cup of tea, and I could hear that in the recordings.
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