Best Jazz pickups for stoner/doom metal?

[Danny McGinn]

My experience with anything tuned below D is to make sure the mids are bumped, or you end up with a boomy mess. It's why Ric 4003's sound so good through driven tube amps. Be careful with 'hot' pickups because they often lose mids and end up scooped (see Duncan Quarter Pounders).

Another option would be to wire your pickups in series, or at least with a series/parallel switch. Bumps mids, adds clarity at lower registers, and sounds great pushing tubes hard. Even if you pay a tech to do it, it should still be way cheaper than new pickups, and will have a greater effect on tone.

All that said, to me, the secret to a satisfying heavy doom tone is power tube distortion. Were it me, I'd ditch those guitar pedals, get a cheap tube amp of some description (Traynor YBA-200 can be fantastic for doom if you figure out the tone stack, and I paid $350 for mine used at a store), and dime the volume knob, adjusting gain to taste. With that much distortion, the finer points of different pickups won't matter much anyway.

Of course, lots of players have figured out great tones with cheapo gear that nobody else wanted (Boss FZ-2 fuzz and Electric Wizard, anyone?), so whatever, just experiment...

What about a peavy tube head? What would you recommend for a 400 watt cab?

 

[monsterthompson]

Do research into the truckfighters bassist setup. That should help you out

I do like that album

 

[BrianVengeance]

Put Model J's in my Jazz. They bring out the gnarl. Also wired pull pots on the volumes to split the coils and on the tone to switch series / parallel. Great sounding pups.

 

[Ric5]

IF YOU PLAY METAL ... THEN YOU HAVE TO PLAY AN IBANEZ ACTIVE 5 STRING BASS

 

[BassLife77]

I agree about wiring in series for extra balls. I put a series/parallel switch in mine

 

[AshInAmsterdam]

It doesn't answer your question but I too am in the early days of my first doom/ stoner band.

I play my Mexican Precision with flatwound chromes (50-105) through any combination of - home made tube screamer (bass modded), a home made nasty fuzz, a big muff pi, and a boss phaser. With a bass wah. All into my Markbass Nano, and it sounds fierce. I have to turn the bass knob down to 9o'clock to avoid killing everyone in the room.

Guitarist, who is far more knowledgable in said genre than I, loves it.

 

[somebrains]

You guys were the target market for this head:

 

[TonyP-]

Agreed the Dimarzio Model J are
The best for a thicker tone and yet still sound like a J.

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

Hi-Fi isn't what you should care about - use your stock pickups and take that money, get a new pedal (which is, in the end, MUCH more fun!)

 

[nsop]

+1 Dimarzio Model J

 

[Novarocker]

I'm in the same boat of those stressing the series switch/push pull and messing with your mids. I've only tested one out but it will definitely get you there.

Also have you tried soloing the neck pickup? That's what I did and in the mix it's hard to tell whether it's a p or not. The neck gives you more low mids which is where all the beef is. Between that and some eq tweaks you should be good.

 

[40Hz]

I was going to suggest incorporating a suboctave plus an SFT pedal somewhere in your signal chain. But if you're already tuning down I'd guess it wouldn't be able to track very well.

 

[bass40hz]

I would try a bass specific fuzz or at least a fuzz with a blend knob. Idiotbox blower box is killer for fuzz and Darkglass B3K is cool for svt style dirt/grind.

I learned long ago that cheap effects sound, well cheap...and yes I am talking about Boss, Digitech, EHX. (Just my opinion)

Your MIM jazz is solid...no need to worry about that.

+1 on the B3K, I used a ton of OD/Fuzz/Distortion pedals and the B3K was the one....until I went back to a Tech21 RBI last week, you can get old school SVT 8x10 midrange grunt to super scooped modern hi-fi full out grind, dirt, etc...and everything in between. Go B3K if you want a pedal, but if you can do a rack mount go RBI.

 

[morgan138]

I use model Js (playing a jazz bass in a doom/crust band in C standard) like everyone is saying. But really, just the neck one. Not my favorite tone for cleans, but I think it sounds the best with distortion. If I'm in the studio or playing clean a lot I might use a bit of bridge as well...

EDIT: my basic distortion is Supercollider -> ODB, switching out the fuzz for a flanger here and there.

 

[Maureen M]

I play a Mexican jazz in drop C, love it. I lucked out and the stock pickups are fine.
I did get a MIM P later on and those pickups were terrible. I replaced them with quarter pounders. It sounds good now but I still prefer the Jazz bass by far for the doom we play.

Maybe mess with pedals/eq more before new pickups or amp? I went through a lot of pedals ... I should probably sell some off lol

 

[morgan138]

My experience with anything tuned below D is to make sure the mids are bumped, or you end up with a boomy mess. It's why Ric 4003's sound so good through driven tube amps.

Off topic I guess, but when I tried to set up my Ric in C I couldn't get the lowest string to intonate...even with the saddle all the way back, it was sharp. Was that just a strings/neck/??? fluke on my end?

 

[morgan138]

What about a peavy tube head? What would you recommend for a 400 watt cab?

A 400 watt Eden should be fine, just make sure you don't go totally nuts with the low bass. What Peavey did you have in mind? They haven't made a ton of tube bass heads that I can think of...

 

[Treebeard]

I'm going to have to recommend the EMG jv-52 set. I just put some in my jazz and they just sound like great metal. Slap tone is GREAT too if you're into that.

 

[Frenchy-Lefty]

By far Delano JMVC's. Will turn your Jazz Bass into a metal beast.

 

[primusfan1989]

Dimarzio Model J