rare earth magnets in pickups

[Kobalt]

Kind of vague cause i havent done enough research about it, but yesterday my uncle (resident aeronautical engineer and MIT Grad) asked if pickup making companies use rare earth magnets to make pickups with. I knew that they used Alnico for some, but i was unaware of any rare earth metals up until he told me of them. He said that some rare earth magnets the size of half a pea could pinch your finger and make it really hurt...anyway off on a tangent there can anyone enlighten me on this topic?

[trouble311]

I would think not. Magnets that strong would KILL the vibration of the string.

[frankfalbo]

APC used rare earth magnets. I have some that I absolutely love. That company's founder is the brother of the Lace Sensor guy. Actually most of the genius was on the APC side of things, and the brother stole a lot for use at Lace Sensor. APC basically won all the lawsuits. The point being that I don't know if Lace Sensors also used rare earth magnets, or if they just copied the noise reduction techniques, etc. Lots of different magnets will work. They just all do their job differently, so the magnet type's influence on the sound varies by the way the magnetic field is interrupted by string vibrations.