soapbar is a humbucker, or something else?

[ILLINOX]

oh ok, so its the same idea that i saw where a guy rigged a reed switch to a calculator equal button

[MPU]

Yes, just easier to do.

[Smilodon]

You can make a counter by wiring a hall sensor to a calculator. Just be aware that most cheap calculators are very slow. If you spin too fast it could skip counts.

[ILLINOX]

how would you make a blade pickup?

[Epitaph04]

Hmm interesting. I've noticed that Warwick Thumb 4 and 5ers have single coil J style pups, but the broadneck and 6er variants have "soapbar" pups. A guy on the WW forum said theyre actually split coils underneath the soapbar. How exactly would that look like? Would it literally look like a P bass split coil underneath that, somehow?

[Stealth]

Originally Posted by ILLINOX

how would you make a blade pickup?

It'd look something like this:

Originally Posted by Epitaph04

Hmm interesting. I've noticed that Warwick Thumb 4 and 5ers have single coil J style pups, but the broadneck and 6er variants have "soapbar" pups. A guy on the WW forum said theyre actually split coils underneath the soapbar. How exactly would that look like? Would it literally look like a P bass split coil underneath that, somehow?

Actually, it would look exactly like that. Here's a Nordstrand NJ4SV.



Their Big Splits are built similarly, and those are fat-sounding soapbars.

[Epitaph04]

Ah okay that makes sense...so the soapbars in this case are humbuckers then.

[ILLINOX]

great photos, Stealth.

So with the blade, you could tuck that inside a soapbar pack, or veneer "box" and call her finished?

very nice

and i'm sorry, maybe somebody said so, but what would a blade pickup sound like?

[Stealth]

Originally Posted by Epitaph04

Ah okay that makes sense...so the soapbars in this case are humbuckers then.

Exactly. Soapbars on the outside, humbuckers on the inside.

Originally Posted by ILLINOX

So with the blade, you could tuck that inside a soapbar pack, or veneer "box" and call her finished?

Exactly right, you could. You'd have a bladed soapbar pickup.

Again, as I stated in the first reply to the OP, the soapbar is just the name for a casing that's not shaped like:

• A single-coil Precision pickup
• A "tetris-block" split-coil Precision pickup
• A Jazz pickup
• A MusicMan pickup
• A guitar-like humbucker (such as EMG-HB pickups which look like guitar pickups, but were used on jazzes)
• Gibson EB-0 and EB-3 pickups
• Hammon DarkStars
• ...

It's a vague definition because there are so many formats, but the pickups that have a unique shape are listed above, most of the rest just get called soapbars. The best showcase of soapbar pickups is located on Bartolini's site.

Originally Posted by ILLINOX

and i'm sorry, maybe somebody said so, but what would a blade pickup sound like?

As for the bladed pickups, it depends. Bladed pickups are somewhat smoother if you use a lot of string bending as the pickup never really falls out of the magnetic field (it's more even above the blade than above a row of pole-pieces). I don't do a lot of bending so I don't notice it.

Because the blades are thinner and thus sense a narrower area of the string, they have a more focused sound with slightly more highs. Finally, sidewinder pickups can be made (SGD from here on Talkbass makes them, in fact) that have the full sound of a mudbucker yet sense a very thin area because they use a blade, giving them a bit of clarity a regular mudbucker doesn't have.

[ILLINOX]

also, whats meant by a quad-coil? benefits?

[Stealth]

This is a quad-coil.



In theory, you can wire that up to have only the neck-most jazz (EAn-DGn), the bridge-most jazz (EAb-DGb), every coil active like in a MusicMan (EAb-DGb-EAn-DGn), even wired so it acts like a P (EAn-DGb) or reverse-P (EAb-DGn). And each combination can be series or parallel (the humbucker has 8 combinations total, because you can combine the coils in that many ways ways). I'm not counting out-of-phase combinations here because they're just silly on a bass.

[ILLINOX]

wow... wow... wow...

but only in theory? and only active?

[Stealth]

I said "in theory" because the coils in the quadcoil are rather narrow - you can get a good Jazz sound out of it, and you can definitely get a classic MusicMan sound out of it, but I'm really not sure if the P and reverse P would have the "fatness" associated with them, as the coils are way narrower than the Precision ones.

There's no need for an active circuit here - the switching can all be done passively.