Anyone ever add a 2nd single coil to an early-style P-Bass? If so, how does it sound?
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Anyone ever do this to a P-Bass?
- Thread starter mcontour
- Start date
I made split P+reverse P, and it's the best combo for me.
Two single coil P pickups should also be great, I might do that someday.
Two single coil P pickups should also be great, I might do that someday.
Had a chance to play one of these once. It was a beautiful thing. Nice and fat sounding. Much thicker than a typical J. Instant GAS. Thinking of converting a cheap J to add SCPB pickups.
Contour Bass '54
Contour Bass '54
Chris Squire had a '70 Tele bass set up like this.
Supposedly he used it on Lucky Seven, but l'm not sure.
I can't really tell you what it sounded like, as any bass Chris plays sounds like Chris!
Supposedly he used it on Lucky Seven, but l'm not sure.
I can't really tell you what it sounded like, as any bass Chris plays sounds like Chris!
Except the Jazz bass has the paired pole pieces for each string, so the attack is totally different than what the single-coil Precision PUP sounds like.
Was going to say what TDR1138 said above. I not far and wold love to try one of their basses. They are nice people and are going to do some work for me on a '55 P and '64 T-bird.https://www.talkbass.com/members/tdr1138.91313/
DeTemple does one.
Here's Lee Sklar demoing it.
Here's Lee Sklar demoing it.
Well, it took a few weeks, but I put together my version. See the picture below.
Here are the details:
Final result?
The two pickup configuration does the trick for me...I get that old school thump but first few frets on the E string sound very articulate....not muddy. And to resolve the debate...it sounds nothing like a Jazz bass. Much more raw. Not a lot of mid. not a lot of growl.
The bass is a bit on the heavy side for me, but it will still get some use.
Here are the details:
- Allparts body, pre-finished as shown, and routed for one pickup, control cavity, string-thru holes.
- Fender Road worn Mike Dirnt neck with tuners
- Two Seymour Duncan custom shop P-Stack pickups, wound to Dusty Hill specs
- Hand tooled leather pickguard
- Two Fender bass control pots with S1 switches. Can activate either/both pickups independently
- Fender American Deluxe bridge, string-through, with 3 screws
- D'Addario Chrome Flats
- Dunlop strap locks
- Fender reproduction bridge cover, which hides some very compliant foam under the strings.
- The neck would not fit in the neck pocket because Allparts oversprayed the finish into the neck pocket. I had to do some fine dremel work to clean that up.
- Had to make the 1st pickup hole deeper to accommodate the taller Duncan pickup. To do this, I had to make a routing template. I started with a standard template for a Telecaster bridge pickup (Stewmac again) and did a lot of dremel and file work to expand it to the size needed for the Duncan pickup.
- Had to hit Home Depot to buy an inexpensive router as my trusty B&D router from the 80's would not spin any longer.
- Bought a fancy roller bearing router bit (Stewmac again) to do the routing.
- Was able to use the template, router, and bit for the 2nd pickup hole as well. With GREAT LUCK....Allparts ran a wire routing channel from the center of the 1st pickup hole to the control cavity, and the route for the 2nd pickup just clipped into it. As a result, I was able to use the same channel to bring the wires from both pickups into the control cavity.
- Used a black sharpie to black-out the pickup cavities...super easy and looks nice.
- Had to do some exacto knife modification to the leather pickguard to fit. I messed up a bit where it hits the control plate. I may end up buying a new one to get it right.
- The fret ends on the MIM neck were very sharp and stuck out too much for my comfort. Back to Stewmac for the fret end file to knock the frets down to the fretboard, and then their special file to round off the fret ends. It took me one or two frets to get the proper "push, tilt, and rotate" motion with the file to get the fret ends rounded off without scraping the fretboard.
Final result?
The two pickup configuration does the trick for me...I get that old school thump but first few frets on the E string sound very articulate....not muddy. And to resolve the debate...it sounds nothing like a Jazz bass. Much more raw. Not a lot of mid. not a lot of growl.
The bass is a bit on the heavy side for me, but it will still get some use.
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This is such a cool bass. Congratulations. I’m considering eventually doing something similar. May I ask, how did you decide on the rear pickup placement? And what does it sound like?
