Testing pickups without actually putting them in the bass

[Oreomeister365]

So, say your bass does not have very standard sized pickup routes, and you want to test out some new differently sized ones before changing your bass forever to fit them. If you used some clamps and the wire coming from the pup was long enough, what about locking the bass a set distance from the pickup on the other side of the strings instead? I mean, it should sound pretty close to the same right?

[4StringTheorist]

Should give you a pretty good approximation, yeah.

When the pickups are mounted in the instrument, the wood they are mounted on will resonate, moving them in relation to the strings, which will get picked up just like the string moving in relation to the pickups.

So there is an effect there that will be missing. But the amplitude of the vibrations of the string relative to the pickups is much bigger than the pickups relative to the string. So you'll get a very good idea of the tone.