Maybe found a decent Gibson mudbucker replacement?

[Doner Designs]

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[Doner Designs]

I ordered a Gotoh to replace the Artec on my P bass. Upon inspection it only has one magnet on each side rather than the usual two per side. The pickup works, but the output is lower than what I would expect from a mudbucker. There is a place where two additional magnets would fit and seems to be some residue suggesting maybe they were once there.

Does anyone know whether that is a manufacturing defect or if it was designed that way??

The string spacing on the pole pieces is slightly closer than on the Artec but hopefully will not impact the sound much.

[Doner Designs]

After full install the Gotoh sounds good. Must be designed with one magnet per side.

[WaskoDS]

That looks so rad, any sound clips?

[Doner Designs]

Originally Posted by WaskoDS

That looks so rad, any sound clips?

Thanks dude. Just finished it a bit ago today. Maybe I can get my son the techno genius to do some clips.

Each pickup sounds as you would expect and they blend better than I expected.

Its a bit of a hack job - my first try with a router - but I really like how it looks and sounds.

It's my favorite cheap bass.

[Doner Designs]

We finally got around to recording sound clips of our triple pickup Air Force Bass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vABSxGrZdPg

[top028]

can you measure the dc resistance on the gotoh pups for me? I wonder if they are "under" wound. Maybe like the one in my italia I think its around 16k in series instead of 30 I have to find that notebook.

[Niff]

for those trying to order the Artec Sidewinder on ebay, the ebay supplier is currently out of stock and will be up and running again in 2 weeks. I just bought an epi EB-0 (and replacement pots, wiring and caps) and all I need is the Artec! I am getting rather impatient, heh.

[SGD Lutherie]

Originally Posted by Doner Designs

After full install the Gotoh sounds good. Must be designed with one magnet per side.

All those mudbuckers are wound the same. Some of the Gibsons I have seen only had two magnets, like the one that was in my old EB-2DC.

[Doner Designs]

David keeps saying that the tone is more from the construction than the positioning of the pickup. I was a skeptic but get it now after adding a third pickup to my M2500. The far neck is a little deeper sounding than the middle pickup, but nothing close to sounding like a mudbucker. Same was true on an Allen Woody bass that I owned for a couple months before trading it for a Mustang.

[Meddle]

Just bumping this up to date. I ordered a pair of Artec sidewinders last week. They came from Hong Kong. The seller is Edenguitarparts on Ebay if you wish to take a gander.

Both pickups came with the magnets incorrectly configured. Both pickups had one pair of magnets facing North - North and one pair facing South-South (pointing in the way on one side, pointing out the way on the other side). At least they were consistent with their goofing, and spraying one side of the magnet with white paint helped a lot.

I'm not sure about the internal wiring but Artec (credit where it is grudgingly due) put a lot of wire between each pickup bobbin, so you can split the cables and rewire if necessary. I might wire in coil taps at some point as these pickups will be going in a Jazz bass and I would quite like to get *some* of the original tone some of the time.

However, these pickups cost me £36 if you include shipping and took just over a week to ship. When I asked Eden guitars as to when I might receive my pickups, they offered me the tracking number without asking for the additional $2 they usually charge for such information. Anything to keep feedback positive I wager, as they are flooding the place with cheap guitar parts that no doubt need some (in)expert work to get them to function fully.