Alnico Magnet Photos Courtesy of Magnetic Hold, Inc.

Like most industrial materials, I have been very surprised to discover the random uses for magnets, which pop up in cool places, such as musical instruments and equipment, where I never would have expected to find them. Specifically, it is alnico magnets, which are made from a combination of cobalt, nickel and aluminum that are used within musical systems. A couple other elements are also used to create alnico magnets, but they are used in such small amounts they are rarely mentioned.

In general, magnetic materials are not easy to shape because they are such hard materials as well as the fact that ferrite magnets have permanent magnetism and therefore are always drawing certain types of metal to themselves. These types of industrial magnets also tend to be a bit more brittle and must be handled with care. However, one of the reasons alnico magnets are popular is because they are not as brittle, although they can be difficult to manufacture they are useful enough that manufacturers suffer through to create a variety of products.

Guitar pickups, which are everywhere in our musically obsessed culture these days, utilize alnico magnets to pick up the reverberation and sound from an electric guitar and move the sound through the amps and speakers to the ears of the people in the crowd. Other musically oriented equipment that utilizes magnets, specifically alnico magnets include microphones and speakers as well. It is not just instrumental and musical equipment manufacturers that use alnico magnets. Scientific research and education settings often utilize alnico magnets for experiments as well as demonstrations of the basic magnetic energy that surrounds a permanent magnet. They are also used in classic metal fabrication environments to collect and move metal scrap as well as work within automotive systems such as DC motors and generators.