Bartolini Soapbars - Original Quads or 2J Squared? Or Classic Bass Soapbars?

I too am interested in everyone’s experience/personal opinion with these pickups.

 

Bump

 

Reviving this as I, five, am interested.

For a while I was planning to check into Nordstrand Zen Blade pups but recently realized the Bartolini tone (possibly the P25CBC set) may be what Im looking for in this particular bass. Plus they're direct fit, no drilling or anything, unlike the Nordys.

 

I'm going to try the Bartolini soapbar Jazz pickups in my Surine 5. It's got CBC P4's at the moment wired in parallel but I want a little less bottom and a little more sizzle on the top so I'm going to try the split jazz windings, keep you posted.

 

The differences are shown on Bartolini website:


Original Quads


2J Squared

The Original Quads could be split just like Bart's Original Soapbar series (north coils only or south coils) with 2 additional split options: P split coil and reverse-P split coil.

While the 2J Squared will only be split neck side or bridge side which each side of the split would act like an inline jazz split coil, so each split would always be hum cancelling.

 

I can’t give much technical info regarding the Bartolinis that I have in my 6-string basses. The blue Roscoe has their custom wound Barts, which I’ve been told are from Bartolini’s “Classic Bass Series”. The Ristola with the bubinga top has Bartolini’s “Original Series Quad Coils”, and they’re Deep Tone models.

Each bass has what I consider to be Bartolini’s “Signature” tone, but there’s a noticeable difference in tone between them. And surprisingly, to me, the Original Series Quad Coils in my Ristola have a rawer, more aggressive tone.

So if anyone has any questions, I’m happy to pass along what I hear from each of these basses.

 

I’ll see what I can do about posting some soundclips.

 

As far as the series' go, the Original Series are the typical Bartolini sound. Very mid-range heavy, darker sounding pickups. The Classic Series are their more modern sounding pickups, more lows/highs. I have the Original Quad bright (xxP25cx) pickups in my Tobias Classic V as a replacement for the radius'd stock ones that wore out, def the OG Tobias/Bartolini sound paired with a quad buffer and TCT pre. My main player (MTD Beast 5) has the Classic Series CBJD3 pickups in it, probably the closest thing Bartolini makes to 70's Fender/Marcus Miller sounding j pickups. Still has that signature Bartolini low mid growl, but also has the spank people expect out of 70's Fender pickups.