Before / After — The I-Reversed-My-P-Pickup Thread

[Ricky Rioli]

I had three P basses. One still is one, one now has J pickups, and my LB-100 is now a Reverse P.

Before, with a trad Fralin pickup —

After, with a G&L MFD pickup, the positions of the two halves swapped around —

If I had kept the Fralin pickup I would have left the E+A half in its regular position, only moving the D+G half from one side to it to the other.

———

Please share your before / after photos — and it would be great to hear which way of reversing the pickup you chose and why etc.

 

[Spidey2112]

Screw the pickups... the tone is in that color and finish! What's the official name for that particular color?

 

[Ricky Rioli]

Screw the pickups... the tone is in that color and finish! What's the official name for that particular color?

Hang about, isn't it you who reversed the split on a SB-2?

The finish is Ruby Red Metallic. Under studio lights, it normally looks much lighter. Here, under Northern English skies, it's much more black-adjacent

 

[birminghambass]

I did this once on a Fender PJ. I didn't find a huge difference with the P soloed. However, it was a big difference when running both picks full up.

 

[bassdude51]

I bought this body from a TalkBass member 15 or more years ago. The E & A coil back one, D & G up one. Sound difference compared to a regular P Bass? Ha! About a hair above "the same". But, it looks "cool", doesn't it?

 

[blakelock]

1. incredible look
2. i assume this gives the P a bit more honk/cut ?? can you describe the sound diff?

 

[TrevorOfDoom]

I live by the "half reverse" Pbass pickup.
Leave the E&A where it is and move the D&G closer to the neck. Sounds more balanced to my ears.
I first converted my Roger Waters Sig, and since then i've had a couple built like that from the start.

 

[SC Bassboy]

I prefer the reverse P configuration. It does seem to help with the boominess, which is even more pronounced on a 5 string P.

 

[Thunderthumbs73]

I know pickup placement as to where a pickup senses string vibration has an effect on tone, but my feeling or gut is that it's a very slight difference, and perhaps even might go so far as to say if you didn't know the pickup was was a reversed P, your ear would be none the wiser?

 

[jdjk7]

1. incredible look
2. i assume this gives the P a bit more honk/cut ?? can you describe the sound diff?

Generally, it gives the E and A a little more cut and the E and G a little more body. Though, as others have alluded to, there are debates about exactly where to place the reversed pickup, which will affect how it sounds vs the normal configuration.

Personally, I think that the reversed P doesn't make quite as much sense in a single pickup configuration like a P bass. Rather, I think you could go either way and it would not be a huge difference. Where I think the reverse P shines noticeably is in PJ configurations, or P+some other bridge pickup. I find the D and G strings on PJs tend to get a little lost in the sauce when you have the bridge coil and the D+G coil closer to the bridge, and I think the reverse P gives the higher strings enough body to be heard better in a mix.

 

[Ricky Rioli]

2. i assume this gives the P a bit more honk/cut ?? can you describe the sound diff?

Swapping in the MFD pickup makes more of a tonal difference than the reversing, to be honest. It makes such a fat forward sound that the classic P tone is smothered.

The big advantage, as far as I'm concerned *for this bass* is that it eliminates the disappointing drop in tonal depth when going from the A string to the D string on a regular P.

I've another P, and on that bass I want the depth of the E and the brightness of the G that you get with a regular P — and so there the difference between the A and the D is a price is worth paying.

I live by the "half reverse" Pbass pickup.
Leave the E&A where it is and move the D&G closer to the neck. Sounds more balanced to my ears.
I first converted my Roger Waters Sig, and since then i've had a couple built like that from the start.

If I had been keeping the trad alnico Fralin I would have done the same — the E+A sounded great, why would I want to undermine that? And so on.

But I was worried that the MFD in that position would sound muddied. On the SB-1 and SB-2, which have these split MFD pickups, the pickup is positioned slightly closer to the bridge than on a regular P, for the same reason. If St Leo thought his MFD sounded too much in his trad P position, I wasn't going to ignore that!

 

[Ricky Rioli]

Hang about, isn't it you who reversed the split on a SB-2?

Apologies - it was @bonin in the boneyard who reversed the split on his SB-2 four and a half years ago:

It's actually a lefty, but I flipped the photo .... trying to spot a reverse on a lefty requires mental gymnastics.

 

[micguy]

Here's a double P:

Yes, it looks a bit different, but under the covers, those pickups are reversed P's - designed by Dingwall, made by Nordstrand, with about half the offset that a normal split P has, and (unlike a lot of 5 string pickups) completely hum cancelling. The BEA "half" of the pickup has its pole pieces the same distance from the bridge that a normal P has, the DG "half" is further out. I prefer that to just flipping the halves of the pickup - better fundamentals down low. The bridge pickup by itself? I hate bridge pickups by themselves, so that's not available with my switching scheme - the two modes the switch selects are neck only (P territory), and both pickups (J territory).

 

[Lefty Joe]

I was just considering getting a cheap P-type, never having had one ... and wondered how much difference it made, if the pickup was more trebly on the low vs high strings. Shoulda guessed the answer would be not really any. Easy to get obsessed on tech details, but playing style does plenty more to change tone.

 

[Ostie]

For very little difference made, it's not worth it to me to make the switch.

 

[DrBnz]

But isn't the total change about the equivalent of moving the tone knob an 1/8th of a turn.

 

[Ricky Rioli]

But isn't the total change about the equivalent of moving the tone knob an 1/8th of a turn.

You going to turn that knob every time you move from the A string to the D string?

 

[Steve_nw]

I had three P basses. One still is one, one now has J pickups, and my LB-100 is now a Reverse P.

Love it!
Do you make your own pickguards or have them made?

 

[Ricky Rioli]

Love it!
Do you make your own pickguards or have them made?

The best tech we have here in York is excellent, but he hates cutting pickguards. So this pg was made by a UK ebay seller called earlpilanz. I sent him the original factory pg, and asked for it in parchment but with the pickup hole reversed.

 

[Spidey2112]

Hang about, isn't it you who reversed the split on a SB-2?

The finish is Ruby Red Metallic. Under studio lights, it normally looks much lighter. Here, under Northern English skies, it's much more black-adjacent

Not I, said the spider to the Riol-eye.

I do have an SB-2T in Spanish Copper Metallic, though.