i recently bought an obscure Jolana Iris bass that came with no pickups and no pickguard.I made a pickguard and the problem is that jolana basses have a really short scale length (around 30 inches) and the string spacing is narrow at 15mm so i cant use conventional bass pickups,and a guitar pickup aligns almost perfectly with the strings.
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Can i put guitar pickups on bass?
- Thread starter MladenB
- Start date
Yeah, that works, it's been done a time or three. Also, blade style pickups would work well for this I believe. I dunno if you're on a budget or anything but I've heard the TV Jones Thunderblade is pretty spectacular.
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Welcome to TalkBass!
Yes. I have used EMG and EMG selects and a couple of others on bass and, as of this morning, the sun is still coming up and the earth Earth is still rotating.
The Bronco uses a guitar pup.
I did a mod, converting a Bronco into a Musicmaster, and wanted a 4 pole MM pup.
John Benson custom pickups made me one.
You might check with him and let him know about the 15mm spacing.
I believe he makes pickguards now as well if yours didn't come out right.
https://www.bensoncustom.com/
057912
I did a mod, converting a Bronco into a Musicmaster, and wanted a 4 pole MM pup.
John Benson custom pickups made me one.
You might check with him and let him know about the 15mm spacing.
I believe he makes pickguards now as well if yours didn't come out right.
https://www.bensoncustom.com/
057912
Im from Serbia so shipping is a big problem if i order anything from brand name suppliers i have to pay a 40 dollar tax onto the the price plus shipping,bu i got some strat hotrail humbuckers for the bass from aliexpress.But thans for the information
Thanks for the link but i like to tinker and develop my craft,if you can call it that XD
You might be interested in this Invalid Link Removed, where Jolana guitars pop up regurarly, sometimes for a good price, more often for absurd prices. They start to be collector's dream around here. I had Iris with very peculiar E string, which was roundwound flooded in some epoxy/silicone plastic, making the string to be something like 5mm thick and playing very silently (the rest of the strings were flatwounds playing normally). Then I had Diamant Bass with a very short scale which actually had a interesting thick retro bass sound I never heard elsewhere. I remember them with sarcastic sentimentality. Enjoy your Jolanas
Here's an idea, you could build your own and make sure it has 15mm spacing yourself...
No joke. Pickups are actually fairly simple to make. The hardest part is finding something to wind them with. This video is super cool and gives you a pretty great picture of how to make pickups. Who knows, it could turn out really well this way.
You can, and depending on the particular design of the pickups it even ought to work great, though you could also just get some bass pickups that uses blades instead of individual poles.
OMG
Amazing how two people can look at the same thing and come to such different conclusions. Funny, I was just thinking the other night about maybe trying to wind my own for the "mudbucker" position on my SG bass. Welp, that little fantasy is firmly over! Good thing I saw that video before I got any deeper into it though, lol
I mean, it's obviously not impossible, but that kind of thing just isn't in my wheelhouse
Yes, you can use guitar pickup for bass, for the most part.
Don't worry too much about the poles/magnets being directly under the strings; depending on the design of the pickup there will be no problem if they are slightly off of being exactly under the strings.
You can check out the Gibson S-1 and the Gibson Grabber G-3 bass. They both use the same Bill Lawrence stock. Really groovy pickups. I'm getting ready to do a Jazz Bass style 6 string guitar, but I'll be using the Silver Lace Sensor P-J bass pickups with an extra J in the neck. The P pickups will go in the bridge to simulate the slant of the Strat pickup.
Guitar pickups will work on a bass. The major difference between the two pickup types are the polepieces (number and spacing). Blade styles eliminate the need to worry about that. An underwound single coil guitar pickup may not produce a strong enough signal to deliver a full, hearty bass sound. Humbuckers will work fine.
