Are there only 3 sounds with 2 pick ups or am I missing something?

[hwystar]

I bought a Fender varitone switchplate for my j-bass and got some great sounds, all with turn of a knob, you can see it on youtube, www.vimeo.com/1053204, got mine from rawsound, its worth a look at.

 

[Nickthebass]

I've got a variety of J type basses and the more I listen to them the more I find that there are only 3 pick up settings

1) Bridge solo

2) Neck solo

3) 50:50 split

There seems to be almost no tonal difference between a slight bias and soloing one pickup or the other.

I noticed this with both the pan pot on my Sadowsky and the dual volume controls on my Squire J.

Am I missing something or do I just need to invest in better pots?

Firstly, thanks all for chipping in...but having read the posts and reread my question I should have been more clear.

I meant to say "aside from hand position and eq'ing are there more than 3 sounds"?

The only EQ I use on my amp is a bump at approx 100Hz(ish) to give a little more thickness to bridge pickup. I'm trying to remove the need for this so that I know when DI'd that the desk is getting the sound in my head.

I used to think that I was getting lots of shades of tone with the pick up blends when playing live. However, I spent some time last night listening at home and the more I listened to my basses the more convinced I became that I wasn't really hearing any shading between the 3 basic tones.

There doesn't seem to be a sweet spot for my right hand to get that extra little bump and opening the tone knob up is going to be affecting the wrong frequencies.

Has anyone here got an Audere pre-amp (reviewed in a recent Bass Player)? The review talks about "active blending" and this giving lots of unheard tones between the three basic sounds.

 

[Meddle]

My favorite setting on my j-bass derivative is to have the neck pickup on 10, the bridge pickup between 6 and 9 and the tone on 8.

With some high mids boosted and a pick I found I could play Yes songs nicely. I find with jazz pickups you get a certain compression (?) with both pickups on. Things smooth out nicely but you get that tone. Turning down or meddling with the bridge pickup can find a real sweet spot on my bass atleast.

So no its not 100%, 0% its all about dem blends!

 

[mongo2]

For each setting along the continuum of variations available with 2 pickups and 2 volumes in parallel there are a huge range of tones available by simply varying your attack and plucking position.

Then there's the tone control to add to the mix (pun intended).

 

[dabbler]

Firstly, thanks all for chipping in...but having read the posts and reread my question I should have been more clear.

I meant to say "aside from hand position and eq'ing are there more than 3 sounds"?

The only EQ I use on my amp is a bump at approx 100Hz(ish) to give a little more thickness to bridge pickup. I'm trying to remove the need for this so that I know when DI'd that the desk is getting the sound in my head.

I used to think that I was getting lots of shades of tone with the pick up blends when playing live. However, I spent some time last night listening at home and the more I listened to my basses the more convinced I became that I wasn't really hearing any shading between the 3 basic tones.

There doesn't seem to be a sweet spot for my right hand to get that extra little bump and opening the tone knob up is going to be affecting the wrong frequencies.

Has anyone here got an Audere pre-amp (reviewed in a recent Bass Player)? The review talks about "active blending" and this giving lots of unheard tones between the three basic sounds.

Hmmm, I need to ask you what are the relative volumes of your pups soloed.

On my basses where the volumes are balanced, my favorite tone is neck pup full on and slightly reducing the bridge pup. And, in fact, while rolling the bridge pup off while listening to a sustained note I can clearly hear the tonal changes (this actually helps me find that sweet spot I like when I change basses.

There are definitely more than 3 tones.

 

[Nickthebass]

Hmmm, I need to ask you what are the relative volumes of your pups soloed.

On my basses where the volumes are balanced, my favorite tone is neck pup full on and slightly reducing the bridge pup. And, in fact, while rolling the bridge pup off while listening to a sustained note I can clearly hear the tonal changes (this actually helps me find that sweet spot I like when I change basses.

There are definitely more than 3 tones.

I tried this experiment again with a 3rd J type and I think the issue with one instrument might just be cheap pots. However I still can't really hear much of a difference using the pan pot on my Sadowsky.

Considering getting the Sadowsky modified to V/V/Treble/Bass.

Thanks for chipping in all

 

[FunkMetalBass]

I think that there is a bit more difference in subtlety in the 75/25 and 25/75 splits too, but anything else is really kind of moot. If I could figure out a way to devise a 5-way pickup switch to have these as possible blend settings, I'd just use a switch.

 

[JamcoPasamerson]

Of course there's more than 3 sounds, it's all about your hands!

+1

 

[Mayers]

this is why I love active bass

 

[A440Hz]

My favorite is to slightly roll off the neck pickup with the p/up pan knob..I notice quite a bit of difference in this setting compared to both p/ups full on. So that would make 4 sounds for me..and that doesn't factor in what can be done with an active preamp.

The Roscoe Beck bass (the V for sure; not sure if the IV has exactly the same guts) has a little tweak that's very cool. It has a blade switch for pickup selection instead of Vol-Vol or blend, so there's no "in-between" sounds like you're describing---except, that there's a push-pull that puts in a resistor on one of the pickups, which backs off its output for a pseudo-blend. Very cool. I might do this on a future build.

 

[bassbenj]

There is a 4th sound available with series wiring and humbucking Js allow more variety but otherwise yeah that's pretty much it.

Which is why I've wired all my passive vol/vol basses to replace the second volume with a rotary switch. Neck only, Both series, both parallel, bridge only. Love it! So much handier than trying to balance two volume controls on the fly.

And this is nothing new given that Leo figured out the same thing. My G&Ls = pickup selector (1, both, 2) plus series parallel-switch. Works for me.