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Bass Pickup selections.

B

Bass builder

Jan 5, 2009
11
0
N.S.W AUS
#1
Soon enough this year i'll be building 2 neck through basses. 1 For me and the other for my sister. I have NO idea about bass pickups, I don't know what are good and what aren't. All I know is that I want MY pickups to be very 'rumble own the house', loud, clear and to be able to keep up with the high gain guitar and also to be able to mellow up a bit and start to be funky when need it. I have been looking at Seymour Duncan MM style 5 string pups and some of the tone circuits.

My sister is undecided about what she wants her pickups to sound like though, but it's pretty much the opposite to me. Search Ben Folds Five - "The Last Polka" in youtube. Thats the sort of thing she wants her bass to sound like. I was looking at J bass style pickups for her.

If you guys could help me find what i'm looking for i'd appreciate that lots.

Edit: I should probably say that I don't even play bass at the moment, I'm just diving into it because I can build and carve it up then learn bass. Should be easy enough, I've played guitar for 2 and a half years now and have built 1 already.
 
#2
just browsing through the song (could only find the live version) and the bass in question is apparently a Les Paul Special Bass. This bass has two alnico humbuckers.

if your after a particular tone, this is a good place to start i reckon. the bassist is known to use a fender jazz bass too.
 
#3
I was talking to my sister a little while ago and she said she would like the bass to have a jazzy tone. Thats all that was said, she knows little of pickups and uses the tone and stuff on the amp to find her settings. I was looking at this for her:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/basslines/cutting-edge-1/ajb2asb_2band_s/

Although these pickups are for a fretless, they sound just right for what she needs.
The fact that the bassist for Ben Folds band had two humbuckers kind of throws me from this idea though.
 
#4
You might want to read through the reviews section .

For Jazz style, Duncan, Delano ,DiMarzio, Nordstrand, Bartolini all make good units.
If you get the 4 conductor HB type you can use either a push//pull or mini switch to get a variety of sounds. (series/parallel/single) add a nice on board pre-amp and you have a versatile set up. ( Bart NTBT / MTMB , Delano Sonar,Aguilar OBP-2/3,Nordstrand, John East)

I use DiMarzio Stacks in my Jazz Fretless , plenty of power and still can be mellow when needed.

For MM style , the same folks .. you might want to check out the Delano MC 5 HY ,Bart MM5CBC, Nordstrand MM5.4
 

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