Single string pickups

[charlie monroe]

Although the rails thing is cool, I wouldn't get hung up on moving the pickups laterally.

I have seen PilotJones work out the most complicated scale equations you can think of. He knows loads about physics. And he's in your thread already. If you told him the scale length, gauge of strings and value of the pick up, he could probably tell you within a thou where to drop those babies.

What might be more important is pickup height.

Lots of bass pickups were furnished with adjustable pole pieces, because the manufacturers were unable or unwilling to balance multiple strings in one pickup. You have the challenge of balancing 6 pickups. YMMV as i don't know if guitars are as sensitive to pickup height as bass.

[TheCatalyst]

Originally Posted by JehuJava

That sounds like a routing nightmare with cables.

+1

[pilotjones]

The bass with the swinging pickup is the vViper, made by Spalt.

There is no mathematically perfect place for a pickup. Certain positions will accentuate certain overtones, while killing others. And it all changes with each fretted string tone. The best guides are the tones of existing basses, taking their pickup positions into consideration. The general bass <--> treble trends of effects of movement towards or away from the bridge are both theoretically and empirically supported. You can check the "pickup response applet" that is referenced in the stickies.

There is a difficulty to be encountered with staggered single pickups, that you can't get the exact same position (and tone) from adjacent strings. Just as the way a P bass gets a different tone from the E and A than from the D and G.

[Triad]

I think that making 6 coils (each one adjustable in height) could be nice. I always wanted to make something like that with wooden covers but it would be a pain to adjust the height for each round wooden cover, expecially 'cause they should be pretty small if you want to avoid the staggered thing. Not more than 15mm each. No room for screws if you don't put them right into the magnet itself

[MortallyWounded]

Originally Posted by miiitch

one step further:

make these pickups movable along a rail!
i would definitely get these (as long as they aren´t ridiculously expensive).

I stumbled upon this thread looking for manufacturers of single-string pickups, because I want to do just this. My goal is to locate each pickup in that particular string's "sweet spot" and allow them to be adjustable in two axis (height and distance from bridge saddle) so that the sound can be tailored for different action/gauge/intonations.

Then, each individual pickup would have its own adjustable tone and volume trim pots, located inside the body cavity, to be adjusted for each string upon setup. Once you've got your new strings set up the way you want them, tweaking of the position and trims of each pickup can produce a more balanced output in terms of harmonics, output level, and tonal qualities.

If you want to get extremely weird though, the pole pieces could further be adjusted. Modular magnets to tailor the sound even further simply by changing each magnet for different strength.

And lastly, each string should probably have it's own unique wind pattern, number of turns, and possibly even gauge of wire. Heck, the coils themselves could even be modular, possibly in a plug-and-play breadboard bed system.

On second thought, maybe I'll just buy a new EMG HZ set and call it a day. I don't even think I could make all those adjustments before the strings got worn out.

[Triad]

You could do this: make a wooden shell big enough (big like two humbuckers+a ramp), put in that cover the coils glued on small metal bases (threaded). On the side of the ramp toward the bridge you can place screws like the ones used on the Fender style bridges to set the octaves and use them to move the coils back and forth. You could do this on both sides (neck and bridge) to get two adjustable coils under each string. And of course the whole shell can be adjusted in height.

[funnyfingers]

Comparing this to piezo saddles for midi, you could use a midi output. You could then combine them into a normal 1/4" in in a box. Also the midi out should work with a midi controller to make it so the E and the A really sound like a bass.