Bisonic neck pickup in a PJ bass

[Morningside]

Howdy,

I have a basic electronics question:

I have an American Performer Mustang bass with a Mustang-style pickup in the neck position and a Jazz pickup in the bridge position. I like the Jazz pickup, but I'm not as big a fan of the neck pickup.

Can I simply replace the Mustang pickup with a Bisonic pickup in the neck position and keep the existing Jazz bridge pickup? Or would it be better to replace both so that I can ensure the two pickups work well together? I imagine Curtis Novak could create a two-pickup set that would include a Bisonic for the neck and a drop-in replacement for the Jazz at the bridge, but I'd like to save the cash if possible.

In particular, I'm wondering if there could be issues with the output of the two pickups being significantly different. I've owned other basses with Bisonic pickups, and they've been a bit hotter than a Fender single-coil (louder, quicker to distort).

Thanks!

 

[sunbeast]

The two pickups will likely play together fine in general, though it would be worth finding out the magnet polarity of your J pickup so that you can get a Bisonic with reversed magnet polarity from the J- this will give some humcancelling effect when both pickups are engaged. If you have the same magnet polarity on both pickups then the single-coil hum will be additive rather than cancelling between the pickups.

You are correct that the Bisonic will almost certainly have a much higher output than the Jazz pickup. It’s tough to find a passive bridge position J pickup that can compete output-wise with even a typical P pickup, and Bisonics can be much higher in output than a P. Maybe something like a neodymium magnet J pickup or some ceramic models (like a Delano FE/M2) are your best bet if you need balanced output, but you will exchange the tone you currently like for higher output in most cases (those Delanos are great though!). Your best bet if you want to retain your current J pickup tone is to add some sort of active/powered buffer option that offers gain adjustment for the two pickups that won’t also affect the tone (like the Bartolini AGDB-918)- any passive volume attenuation option will also strongly affect the tone of the Bisonic.

 

[sikamikanico]

Not much to add. You can ask Curtis for his take. Or, you could consider just adding some neo magnets on the bottom of the J to juice it up?? Never done that, and it might be stupid, but I think I’ve read about experiments like that before…