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alternative Jack Casady epiphone pick up

#23
I have the Jack Casady Bass too. Just got it in December. I like it, not in love with it, but I really like it.
I went to see Hot Tuna in NJ 2 weeks ago and got to meet and shake Jack's hand. He was great.
I talked to his bass tech before the show in front of the stage. He said Jack plays the Epi bass "right out of the box". His PREFERRED STRINGS: are Dean Markley "Blue Steel" strings, round wound. Medium Light. Gauges: E-105; A-80; D-65; G-45.
I ask if Jack's bass is "fixed up" he said the sound is all in Jack's Fingers.
 
#26
Get some Rotosound 66 steels on there and take the money you are willing to throw at that bass and spend it on a Sansamp bassdriver d.i. pedal. You will be in clank heaven. Plus if you do ever want to sell that bass, it will still be worth something and you get to use that cool pedal on your next bass too.
 
#27
I also was feeling how you were about the jack casady bass, I thought that the pickup was not amplifying the acoustic tone, in other words it was imparting too much of it's own sound and not enough treble for me.

I ended up putting a Gibson Les Paul Triumph or Victory bass Pickup in it. they are rare, but if you can find it, it transformed the sound for me, I think it's a dual coil with 3 taps on it. 1st one sounds like a J, second like a P, and third A darker fatter P. The pickup is low impedence so it has a wide bandwidth and lower output, but I got a shure transformer from Musicians friend and plug that into the amp side, and it roars with it.

It might be hard to find, but I also think that the G&L might be a good fit too, although that pickup has a lot of output and is very aggressive.

I would skip the TV Jones stuff. I bought 2 pair of thundertrons for my G6072 and while they are higher output than stock filtertrons, they are still too low to overdrive my Walkabout. I think they are overpriced.

You might also want to wait for the CS pickups from Hanson, if they are Chisonics then they will sound similar to Dark stars. But if they come in a musicman casing, then that will suck! I want to put one in the neck of my Reverend PJ.

Well keep us informed about the progress, or if you sold the bass and good luck.:bassist:

Regards!
 
#29
kurosawa said:
SGD?
Click to expand...

OK, a few thoughts on the JC pickup. I actually had one here to study for a while.

The Casady bass is a reproduction of a Les Paul Signature bass, but the pickup is different. The original pickup was designed by Bill Lawrence, and is very different from the Les Paul triumph pickups.

The Triumph and Recording pickups were stacked humbuckers with multiple taps. The Triumph pickups were wound with 32 gauge wire. The Recording guitar was wound with heavier 24 gauge wire. They probably used the thinner wire on the bass pickups to be able to fit more winds.

The Les Paul Signature pickup were conventional humbuckers and used common 42 gauge wire, but used fewer turns of wire. Instead of the pickup being tapped, the transformer is.

So what Jack did was to go with the heavy 24 gauge wire on his model. Larger wire gives more lows and highs and the mids are more scooped sounding. he also added a second magnet that goes 3/4 of the way across under the treble strings. The Casady pickup measures 23 Ohms. Not Kilohm.

epi_jack_casady_pu.jpg


Now if you were asking about replacements; I don't have anything in the exact size, but I do have soapbars and humbucker sized pickups. Some people use the neck pickup from the ND3 Neo set because it sounds like a Hagstrom Bi-Sonic Pickup. It has a very similar tone, but is a humbucker.

I am winding some custom Triumph pickups. There is an eBay store that sells the shells and mounting rings. These will have the taps and everything and be as close to the original as I can get.

Gibson_LP_Recording_PU.jpg
 
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#30
You really get to me! That's awesome, doing one bass. Long time ago, Pyramid made some E strings for me in 2 custom gauges. My order was for 2 strings in each gauge. They set up their machines to make me 2 pairs of strings. Just blew me away. But anyway, yeah I remember that LP bass, couldn't afford it at the time, then they went away. Sounded great.
 
#31
kurosawa said:
You really get to me! That's awesome, doing one bass. Long time ago, Pyramid made some E strings for me in 2 custom gauges. My order was for 2 strings in each gauge. They set up their machines to make me 2 pairs of strings. Just blew me away. But anyway, yeah I remember that LP bass, couldn't afford it at the time, then they went away. Sounded great.
Click to expand...

Wow, they did that for a few strings? Very cool.

I do one-off pickups from time to time. I like doing it, as it creative, but they often take a while to finish because I had to fit the R&D in-between filling regular orders, and often have to make custom parts by hand. I still have some custom I'm finishing up for people.

Here's a pretty cool one I did not too long ago:

DSC01416.jpg
 
#32
spendidfender said:
I have the Jack Casady Bass too. Just got it in December. I like it, not in love with it, but I really like it.
I went to see Hot Tuna in NJ 2 weeks ago and got to meet and shake Jack's hand. He was great.
I talked to his bass tech before the show in front of the stage. He said Jack plays the Epi bass "right out of the box". His PREFERRED STRINGS: are Dean Markley "Blue Steel" strings, round wound. Medium Light. Gauges: E-105; A-80; D-65; G-45.
I ask if Jack's bass is "fixed up" he said the sound is all in Jack's Fingers.
Click to expand...

+1 on the Blue Steels. Flats (TI or Chromes) were dull as anything on mine but the bright Blues really work! Punchy or warm with minor tweaks of the impedance and tone control.
 
#33
You know, that Jack casady bass pickup looks a lot like my old one, it was first spray painted silver then flat black, and that gibson pickup looks familiar too, it's the pair to the one I have in my bass, were these sent to you by a guy from the low lands?

I never got to ask him what he used them for.

Regards!
 
#34
Calexia13 said:
You know, that Jack casady bass pickup looks a lot like my old one, it was first spray painted silver then flat black, and that gibson pickup looks familiar too, it's the pair to the one I have in my bass, were these sent to you by a guy from the low lands?

I never got to ask him what he used them for.

Regards!
Click to expand...

I think you are right, the Epi pickup was painted like that, and he also sent me a Triumph pickup to check out. He's from Sweden.

The Triumph pickup in the photo is just the empty shell.
 
#35
SGD Lutherie said:
So what Jack did was to go with the heavy 24 gauge wire on his model. Larger wire gives more lows and highs and the mids are more scooped sounding. he also added a second magnet that goes 3/4 of the way across under the treble strings. The Casady pickup measures 23 Ohms. Not Kilohm.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this -- very interesting.

I've been following threads about the JC for years, and the (very) few complaints I've ever seen regarding the tone have usually been that it is too midrange-y -- i.e., just the opposite of "scooped." I've had one for several years myself, and have always thought that the richness of the mids was its greatest strength. I also remember reading an interview with Jack in which he noted that he wanted the pickup to be super-sensitive to the subtle variations in plucking technique and hand position that characterize his own playing. So is it that second magnet that brings out all those lush mids, while the primary magnet is mainly responsible for the lows and highs?
 
#36
Lobster11 said:
Thanks for this -- very interesting.

I've been following threads about the JC for years, and the (very) few complaints I've ever seen regarding the tone have usually been that it is too midrange-y -- i.e., just the opposite of "scooped." I've had one for several years myself, and have always thought that the richness of the mids was its greatest strength. I also remember reading an interview with Jack in which he noted that he wanted the pickup to be super-sensitive to the subtle variations in plucking technique and hand position that characterize his own playing. So is it that second magnet that brings out all those lush mids, while the primary magnet is mainly responsible for the lows and highs?
Click to expand...

I haven't played one of these pickups, but was just generalizing about how heavy wire sounds.

I believe that there are three magnets. Each coil has a magnet acting as a blade, and then there is the third magnet on the bottom, set up the way a usual humbucker's magnet is.

The original LP Sig pickup had the two blade magnets.
 
#37
Call me Crazy but i have been reading about a change of the Bridge may make all the difference in the world with this Bass.I just got the Silverburst Model and I like the sound I get from the pickup.With that said Its still missing something.So i have read about changing out that 3 pointer(Kinda Crappy anyway)to a Hipshot Supertone Bridge will make all the difference .We will see.I should get the new bridge in next week.I'll post a review of it when it arrives.
 
#38
DaSnowman said:
Call me Crazy but i have been reading about a change of the Bridge may make all the difference in the world with this Bass.I just got the Silverburst Model and I like the sound I get from the pickup.With that said Its still missing something.So i have read about changing out that 3 pointer(Kinda Crappy anyway)to a Hipshot Supertone Bridge will make all the difference .We will see.I should get the new bridge in next week.I'll post a review of it when it arrives.
Click to expand...

The aluminum Hipshot bridges sound very nice. I replaced the heavy zinc bridges on my basses with aluminum Type As, and it really opened up the tone. One of my basses very kind of dark, and now it has a sort of acoustic guitar like top end, and a nice warm bottom. The mids are very nice too.
 

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