A point of view from eastern Europe ... [electronics]
 

Continuation from the topic:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/poi...39/index2.html
But this time I'm gonna uncover the electronics used at Defil basses !

The eldest pickups used in Defil Lotos:


Made under Hagstrom license, like Samba & Lotos guitar (the similiarities are now clear). Specification is similiar to those installed in Hagstrom: the magnet is not on the bottom, but coated with the wire, inside the plastic cover. The additional cover with poles on the top is an addition to make it look nicer. Guitar pickups had nearly the same specification, except the fact those have 4 not 6 poles.

Most used Defil pickups, by nearly whole time of production:

The look inside:

And technically its just bigger, and stronger pickup presented upper in this thread. Anyway due to its strenght and size the sounding was different. Also the metal cover is an addiction to make it look nicer (if you took the cover off, the sounding was even more clean, but looked ugly). The coloured inside is an addition, to make it look nicer, but thats the only thing that I HATE in Defils ! Sometimes it sucks, imagine a sunburst bass with black pickguard, and suddenly a blue pickup. For better imagination:

Those pickups were later avaiable in plastic cover, but except that, the construction and a bit differrent sounding, it was exactly the same pup.


Late 60's and the 70's is a time, when also big pickups were avaiable. Their construction was more Fender like - the magnet was placed at the bottom, the poles could have been regulated

Construction is absolutely THE SAME as DarkStar pickups (but years earlier, strange huh ?)

And so, the sounding was different than standart Defil pu's. There was also a guitar version of the pickups avaiable.

The 80's was the time of humbuckers. This model was marked as "S560" The same model was produced both for guitar and bass:

This one's has a nickel cover, but later due to budget cuts the pickups were only painted using black paint.
The back:

W/out cover:

The last photo shows that the pickup was just a joined 2 well known single coils (and even the construction was a stacked humbucker, not a standart one). Anyway the sounding was very different. I own a bass with these pickups, and its very very nice. Like a MM mixed with Precision.

While next guitar humbucker was invented "S570" inspired by DiMarzio DP100 (and some people says that its even better, because of less middle channel), the next bass pickup was marked as "S580" and was a Precision lookalike.

Dont have a higher res. pic, but I think its clear how it looked like. All poles could have been regulated.
The sounding was really great, as I wrote in another thread, and to me it was also inspired by DiMarzio pickups. Very strong signal. Last pickups produced for Defil basses. Later PRESTO pickups were designed only for new guitars.


The pots arent that interesting, so I'll only show the changes. It started from usual:

then the sliding ones:

thru the full pot plates:

to actually finish like it was on the beginning ... Simple pots with simple schemes.

The outputs were changed at early 80's from DIN to standart Jack output.

And this is actually pretty everything about the electronics used in Defil basses.
Custom made basses often used Defil standart or S580 pickups. The first one because of their popularity, and were easy to get, second one because of a P-bass lookalike, and THEY ARE JUST GREAT !

The beginning of 90's was actually the end of Defil electronics. Most custom made basses used a PB or JB pickups made in small manufactures, to be later replaced with imported ones.