Expensive PuPs vs cheap ones...

[Rockin John]

... is the difference in price really worth the extra cost?

Well, I know this is a dangerous generalisation. And I know there's not really a proper answer. But I also know that a PuP is a coil(s) of wire around a magnet(s) and that there's only so many different ways of putting those two components together!

My main gigging bass is a Harper, a crappy far Eastern made fretless 6 that cost me £100 on the bay (one of the best 100''s I've spent, btw). It has the factory PuPs fitted, which are y' regular 4 1/2" x 1 1/2" soapbars (3 wire, not 4). They are epxoy potted cos I had a look.

The bass sounds great! I had complements on the sound.

So, when I started looking for some 'decent' PuPs for a possble Warmoth build I was amazed at the range of prices vs the (apparent) quality of the PuP. IOW, if I make myself a decent fretless 6, do I spend £!00+ per PuP, or do I buy the supposed same thing (Eg, Wilkinson brand) for 1/4 or 1/8 the price?

What's the difference between them?

Sorry for the silly question...

John

[chuckocaster]

personally, i feel you get what you pay for. as long as you go with a well established brand, there are many of them. this is not to say that you can't get good results with cost effective parts, but it is to say that at the end of the day, when you look at your bass, do you see dollars and cents? or do you see a tool that you make music with? a home built clone will never recoup the cost of the parts, unless you're famous. build the best you can, and build what works for you.

hope that helps, and best of luck in your endeavor.

[Mossyrocks]

Well,

I'm not sure you always get what you think you pay for.. That's up to your taste and what you thought you were after in the first place. Cost doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the sound of a pickup. If it sounds right, it is.

But, I just swapped an 80's Dimarzio Model-P for a Delano. Both great pickups, but the articulation on the Delano is incredible. So in this case, I guess I did get what I paid for.

Is it a classic P-Bass tone? Not sure...But it is a great tone that works for me.

Cheers

[prokfrog]

It's kind of like wine. It's more about "everything else" that goes into it rather than the cost of materials. At the end of the day, the material cost difference between what Bartolini uses vs. the EBAY brand is probably minimal compared to the other cost contributors. It's moreso a matter of HOW it was made, and designed is where the cost is coming from.

[Fajah]

Generally speaking, on certain pieces of equipment, I believe you do get what you pay for to some degree. Amps/cabs probably fall into this category more than any other component. With basses, a more expensive bass is typically built from better quality woods and parts, and you can physically see and compare the quality and workmanship. We also have the luxury of being able to try amps, cabs, and basses out before committing to the purchase.

I don't think strings fall into this category for I haven't met anyone that can say that a $50 set of strings is better than a $25 set. Although you can't walk in to a store, open a pack of strings and try them before you buy, at least for a reasonable amount of money you can experiment over time.

IMO, pickups not only don't fall into the "get what you pay for" category, but are the most difficult to make a purchasing decision on. Just from personal experience, I was forced to replace the pickups in SX jazz bass because they were out of phase. Tone wise, they were just fine. So I decided to go with original Fender jazz pickups and they didn't sound any better to me than the stock SX jazz pups even though they were more expensive. Recently, I converted my Douglas from active to passive. I ended up installing a set of EMG Select jazz pickups because I couldn't justify buying a set of pickups that cost as much as the entire bass. Opinions here on TB (which I value) were split, so I took a $55 gamble and it happened to work out. I'm very happy with them.

I think you just have to set your budget based in your own set of criteria, so some research here on TB on the particular type and brand in question, pull the trigger and hope for the best.

[joeyl]

the question is not silly, you are
differences between cheap and expensive pickups:

I have used really cheap pickups back in the day before you could get them online and shop around. They sounded OK, but usually the tone was uneven, probably due to the magnets not chosen carefully, uneven winding and such, the leads solder looked like they were soldered cold, big blob of grayish looking solder, and moving the leads would cause sound drop and they eventually broke off, and I had to re-solder them. Also some of them were weak, like weak enough where you had to raise them very close to the strings to get a decent output

more expensive pickups, I'm talking 100-200 dollar range for a set of J pickups for example will have none of that, you may not like their sound but it will be pretty consistent from string to string and pickup to pickup

[Beefbass]

Here's my 2 cents;

I have 3 Fender basses. The PBass deluxe has a Nordstrand pickup set in it. The 2 MIM jazzes have DiMarzio's-Ultrajazz for the fretted, Model J's for the fretless.

My Peavey Millenium BXP4 has the stock pickups that came with the bass. The bass is made in Indonesia. I don't know if the pickups are too or not. It is strung with TI jazz flats.

Going thru the same amp-Fender Bassman250/210-The "cheap" Millenium (it was 199.00 off the rack at the local store)sounds as good, if not BETTER than the other 3. I use it all the time, and I've gotten nothing but compliments on it's sound! One pro even asked if it was custom built!!

Now, thats not to say the others aren't good, they are-compared to what was stock in those basses. I will just say, that in the case of the Peavey, to my ears, they got it right. I thought about swapping them at first, but I'm not going to.

They may be a little buzzy if you don't put both volume knobs the same way, but it's actually not too bad, and I usually keep them set the same anyway. I actually don't like the sound of a Fender jazz with both pickups set the same, but I like this one. They also are very fat, with a great output.

I guess it's not where, but who builds them that matters. If they sound right to you, I say leave them alone.

[Beefbass]

I'm sorry, what I sould have said was, maybe it is, maybe it's not, depends upon the particular pickups. The only bad thing is, there's no way to try them, until you install them, then use them.

[Greevus]

i recently started using stock passives in two washburn taurus basses, and i was a dedicated EMG active player for 20 years. the EMGs are def louder and have that signature tone, BUT when i adjust my amp settings with the passives they sound maybe BETTER. a lot of guys come into the jam room and say 'wow, what kind of bass is that? are those expensive pickups?'. i am nearly influenced to change them due to being a tone geek like everyone else on here. however, after buying hundreds of dollars worth of replacement EMGs, i am not convinced it was worth it. i even swapped out an old Dimarzio P from the '80s with a new EMG active and it wasn't as rich sounding. not a knock on EMGs, i love them. i have them in maybe 8 basses, but my point is that it doesn't guarantee better. i have learned through time that all guitars are different, even the same models. pickups and amps are similar too. when you get a tone you like, stick with it. i always love when i go to a gig and one bass player has the ginormous rig with tons of effects/units, preamps, handmade/carved everything, and then the other bassist is playing a Squier through a Peavey. It seems like the Squier/Peavey guys almost always sound and play better for some reason.

[JazznFunk]

I know a lot of my fellow Lakland players who play 44 and 55-01 basses and buy them specifically to mod the bass by replacing the pickups and preamp. That said, I liked the tone right off the bat that the stock Korean-made Bartolini MK-1 pickups and pre had, and have never seen any reason to change them. I've recorded with my array of 44 and 55-01 basses live and in the studio, and they all are very present, punchy, and articulate. I've heard much more expensive pickups/basses that disappear in a mix immediately... these do not. To each their own though. I like the cheap stuff I guess!

[capnsandwich]

There's more to your overall tone than just pickups or the "price" of pickups IMO. You may have a certain tone in mind. What does it take to get that tone? I had a Tobias Toby Pro that I modded out with a set of Bartolini xxM45c quad coil soap bar pickups. The output on those were amazing. They had beef, fatness, even tone, and were great for the full sounding low end that people like. I, however, fell in love with a different tone while I was waiting for my pickups to be custom made (which takes months from Bartolini) and when I got them I just wasn't as happy as when I first ordered them. I paid over $200 for the set but I wasn't happy with their tone. Some people would have been but in my case I thought they weren't worth the price. Now that I look back, being older and wiser, I see that they WERE worth the price but just didn't have the tone I wanted. They were great pickups for what they were for. I'm a fan of Bartolini pickups but also a fan of EMG, which is what I use in my main bass.

Also, you may find that a particular set of pickups don't work for your particular bass or set up. If you have your bass set up with stainless steel strings and really low action then EMG 40 J's may be the pickups for you, but if you have a fretless with an ebony fretboard then a set of Nordstrand Fat Stacks may be what you want. It's not how much a particular pickup costs, it's what they can do for your tone. EMG's IMO, are really bright and punchy, where Nordstrand pickups tend to have a rounded high end but a very pronounced low and low mid range tone. Your bass also has other variables that come into play, like body wood, fretboard wood, scale length, active preamps, bridges, etc. All of these will have an effect on overall tone. The pickup just picks up the vibrations from the strings.

Hope this makes sense.

[Bassamatic]

Two of the most amazing sounding basses I have played were SX! The pickups had a great sound.

Perhaps what makes replacement pickups much more expensive is the quantity that are made. For sure Fender and SX, etc. are cranking pickups out in huge numbers. However, when you are making boutique replacements, you are maybe making 100 or even 1000 at a time, so the cost goes up - way up.

Of course this is in addition to using better materials, but probably the main cause of the price difference.