• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Bass pickup tantrum... *** how about some standards?

#22
Since when did guitars have only two pickups sizes?
Strat pickups are different to Tele pickups. Both are single coil though. Not sure about Jaguar pickups.
P90s are single coil but wider.
Then there's PAF-type Humbuckers with two coils.
Mini humbuckers are smaller but still have two coils.
Jazzmasters have those big wide pickups.
Charlie Christian pickups.
DeArmond made a bunch of different pickups.
Kay had those kleenex box pickups, and speedbumps.
Teisco gold foils are wider than a humbucker, but narrower than a P90.
Not to mention all the weird varieties of pickups Teisco/Kawai/EKO, etc. used.
Danelectro lipstick tube pickups.
Hayman single coils are rectangular and wouldn't fit on a Strat.
Rickenbackers
Gretsch pickups
Hofner
Even Tele pickups are pretty unique shapes.
....

A lot more than just two.
And that's a good thing.

8e04daee364192cc58c8697a20ed9b11.jpg

fw1b.jpg

eko+kadett+guitarz.jpg

2013-09-13_15-46-20_zps724da552.gif
 
#23
Tantrum suits this thread well. I liken in to a child that throws a fit because you won't buy them a toy. In spite of having the answer and the supporting reasons, they still continues to blast the general public with a fit.
 
#24
DanAdams said:
OK. electric guitars have two basic sizes for pickups. single coil and double coil.
2 pickup sizes! hooray! and as a bonus they are the exact same width.

Even if you don't count 5, 6, or more string basses, there are about a qua-zillion different pickup sizes for 4 string electric basses. grrrr.

Yeah sure, maybe I bring it on myself by collecting oddball broken basses, but sheesh, I give up.
Click to expand...

What about P90s?
 
#27
Hello, I also have the RB760 - what I actually did was buid a preamp that individually buffers the PUs and then mixes them. Its the preamp by Albert Kreuzer Invalid Link Removed. Sounds really good.



For a long time I had two barts jazz pickups (the now discontinues 94Js with quad coils) and I made a custom pickguard for it to cover the holes - looked actually quite good.


Putting in regular Jazz and P - Pus into the Ibanez casings is what Helmut Hattler did with his 760 - he has alembics in his (unless he repurpused those in one of his newer basses)
 
#28
DanAdams said:
I understand that it's my own fault for loving old oddballs, and perhaps I'm living in a bubble, but all the brands I'm into use their own crazy sizes every time a bass model changed, but their lines of guitars always used standard pickups.
Click to expand...

If you collected oddball guitars from the "lawsuit" eras like the cheapo Japanese/Russian/etc ones, you'd have an even worse problem than basses. Those guitars never seem to have two pickups the same.
 
#29
DanAdams said:
OK. electric guitars have two basic sizes for pickups. single coil and double coil.
2 pickup sizes! hooray! and as a bonus they are the exact same width.

Even if you don't count 5, 6, or more string basses, there are about a qua-zillion different pickup sizes for 4 string electric basses. grrrr.

Yeah sure, maybe I bring it on myself by collecting oddball broken basses, but sheesh, I give up.
Click to expand...
Incorrect. Guitars have WAY more than just 2 pickup sizes.

What an odd tantrum... You, sir, worry about some very interesting things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tbz
#30
I started playing guitar in the 70's and have changed literally hundreds of guitar pickups, and they are really easy to swap. Almost every guitar has strat sized singles or humbuckers, and they are all the same size. As was mentioned earlier, some humbuckers are F spaced (for the fender bridge width that is) but that only refers to the placement of the pole pieces. The F spaced and non F spaced humbuckers are identically sized. All the mini humbuckers are the same size, and all the P 90's are the same size. That may seem like a lot of sizes, but you know what you have so you just replace like with like. It isn't like having a 5 string bass with soapbars and trying to determine if they are EMG or Bartolini sized soaps; which, by the way, is the only size question I've ever had regarding bass pickups. And I did just leave the stockers because of it ;)

Part of the fun of trying different pickups is research though, so I would think at the end of the day the issue is more availability than one of "which do I choose".
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Steve-Mo and DanAdams
#34
gln1955 said:
So, there should be engineering constaints put on pickup builders just because some random person down the road may want to mod his bass. What kind of sense does that make?
Click to expand...

Pickup builders aren't building the basses, so in a way they aren't necessarily the issue as much as the builders. If you make an outstanding pickup that is oddly shaped, like the Delano XTender for example, you are likely only going to sell that to OEMs. You're not going to get any of the action DiMarzio gets selling replacement P and J bass pickups, as just an off the top of my head example. I would have to guess there are pickup manufacturers who do close to 20% of their business as straight replacements, rather than OEM sales.

And I personally don't mind oddballs at all, but it's a business decision from the manufacturing side. I believe those weird looking Q tuners were standard sizes, so some companies keep the "standard size" thing very much in mind when designing their products.
 
#35
Call Seymour duncan's custom shop. They love odd projects that's how I get replacement pups for a friends Gibson grabber and my carvin lb50.
Really helpful and affordable. I used them years ago but I can't imagine things being too different
 
#36
DanAdams said:
OK. electric guitars have two basic sizes for pickups. single coil and double coil.
2 pickup sizes! hooray! and as a bonus they are the exact same width.

Even if you don't count 5, 6, or more string basses, there are about a qua-zillion different pickup sizes for 4 string electric basses. grrrr.

Yeah sure, maybe I bring it on myself by collecting oddball broken basses, but sheesh, I give up.
Click to expand...
To be fair - there are really a lot more sizes than that in guitar even after most were pushed out by the spare parts revolution - the most common are strat and Gibson size humbucker
tele pickups (both are different)
Gibson/Epiphone/MIJ import strat-ish pickups (a differen size again),
P90,
lipstick
Gretsch humbuckers
Dearmond style pickups (single coil Gretsch and Ric style pickups)
Mini-humbuckers
ALL are different enough not to drop in to the two common sizes and there are at least 4 different widths I there.

But the reason for the perception is that guitars did go the way of "parting out" long before basses so a lot of the variation got forced out so companies could use off the shelf stuff whereas basses continued on foir a long time before getting a significant number of after market parts.
Also, for some reason, when it comes to this kind of stuff guitarists are more conservative as a group and stick to variations of he big 4 (stat, HB, Tele, P90) a lot more consistently than bass players have historically done.
 
#38
DanAdams said:
Yes, I have project basses with pickup problems. If my pickups worked I wouldn't need new pickups....I've been to pickup manufacturer's websites, there are more bass sizes than guitar sizes, but still not my sizes.
Click to expand...
I've been in this position myself.

Pickup rings.

Get whatever pickups you want. If they are larger than the existing routs, have them routed more to fit.

If they are smaller (either dimension), get pickup rings made to cover the gaps.

Done.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DanAdams

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back