SimS Custom Retrofit Pickups

[morebassbaby]

Not sure if anybody has posted anything about this or not, or if you guys are familiar with Enfield Basses, the bass company owned by Martin Sims...or their pretty awesome Pickup switching system co-designed by John East, but they allow you to go from a Split P, jazz single coil, or parallel dual coil in one pickup enclosure. Up until now you could only get these pickups on one of the UK basses. I guess they just released these for our basses! (Of course it does involve sending your bass to them to do the retrofit. Very tempting. I just emailed SimS asking for pricing and details. If I find out more i'll post here.

Check out the YouTube video at the London Bass show http://youtu.be/YG88o8DPZhw

Or if your curious about Enfield basses with these home grown pickups www.enfieldguitars.com

Never gotten to play one, but I sure would like too. Their Wal-like resemblance is nice too!

[mjac28]

That is super cool I wish they would just sell the system so I wouldn't have to ship my bass across the pond.

[morebassbaby]

Yeah I'm with you, but honestly I'm surprised their making it available to the public at all. I figured they would just keep this stuff as proprietary electronics on their own basses. I'm waiting to see prices quotes before I get too excited!

[mjac28]

That would be sick in a bass I never heard of it thanks for sharing it.

[eee]

Cool idea, but that website is a PITA to get around. They didn't sell me on it because it was too hard to find out about it!

[thebassbuilder]

That is a pickup I have wanted to design for years now. I am glad to see someone has done it. It makes so much since to have something like this. Thanks for the post. I will say the basses look like a Wal and the same for the bridge. But it looks good regardless. I want to see the pricing on these. I wonder if it is the pickup only or pickup and electronics?

[morebassbaby]

That's one thing I did ask in the email was if it was required to use the John east preamp that is in the enfield basses to make it all work, or if you can just use a passive setup or preamp of your choice. We'll just have to see.

[thebassbuilder]

Cool. Keep us posted.

[morebassbaby]

Alright so Martin responded so here y'all go. Save up your pennies :-) it's expensive but about what i expected for something like this. My handy little currency converter puts this at $934.96 for pickups and installation and you'd still have to ship it there and back. This was for a 5 string quote though, you might get off slightly cheaper for a 4 string. Here's the email.

"Hi Luke,
Good to hear from you.
Yes we offer both 4 & 5 string versions.
We do offer a full fitting sevice & are looking for luthiers around the world to become authorised installers.
The pickups will work as any other pickup with a pre amp or passive. The battery is just for the L.E.Ds.
The pickups are designed to be fitted to any bass.
19mm string spacing is fine.
The 5 string pickups cost £185.00 each & we charge £125.00 for fitting each pickup.
I'm not sure how much shipping will be.
Thank you for you interest we are very exited about this project.
Kind regards.
Martin.

[mjac28]

That sounds about right I would love to put it in my Treker five string.

[jim777]

Originally Posted by morebassbaby

Alright so Martin responded so here y'all go. Save up your pennies :-) it's expensive but about what i expected for something like this. My handy little currency converter puts this at $934.96 for pickups and installation and you'd still have to ship it there and back. This was for a 5 string quote though, you might get off slightly cheaper for a 4 string. Here's the email.

"Hi Luke,
Good to hear from you.
Yes we offer both 4 & 5 string versions.
We do offer a full fitting sevice & are looking for luthiers around the world to become authorised installers.
The pickups will work as any other pickup with a pre amp or passive. The battery is just for the L.E.Ds.
The pickups are designed to be fitted to any bass.
19mm string spacing is fine.
The 5 string pickups cost £185.00 each & we charge £125.00 for fitting each pickup.
I'm not sure how much shipping will be.
Thank you for you interest we are very exited about this project.
Kind regards.
Martin.

I think you miscalculated here, as that big slab is a single pickup and not two I'm getting about $470 from XE.com today, which doesn't seem too bad for a pair of pickups high quality pickups (basically) and an East preamp. Might be more easily accomplished as well if you just sent them a Warmoth body rather than a whole bass. Hmmmm........

[morebassbaby]

Nope, the Enfield basses use one enclosure for the pickups. The SimS retrofit pickups are essentially the same thing but put in as two pickups. (See the end of the video for when they play a Sims retrofit bass)

[morebassbaby]

I don't know if this will show up, but this is the bass with the retrofit pickups in it.