Combining Alnico and Ceramic

[carbon5127]

Hello everyone! I'm planning to upgrade my pickups. Currently, I have a 5 string bass with Dual-precision pickups (yep, modified). I bought a cheap pickup and routed a hole for it on bridge position. I already replaced my stock pickup on the neck position with Wilkinson ceramic pickups (m-series). I'm planning on replacing the bridge pickup with another Wilkinson ceramic but I'm also thinking of trying out an Alnico V pickup although the one that I found online has lower resistance (9k). The Wilkinson pickup btw is around 11k resistance when not installed. Can anyone give me thoughts about this? Should I buy another Wilkinson Pickups for the bridge position which will make both pickups almost same resistance, or should I buy the Alnico pickup even though it has lower resistance? TIA

PS: I'm pretty much on the budget side about this project.

 

[dwizum]

Pickups don't care what the magnet is made out of - it's totally fine to mix pickups with different types of magnets.

In terms of mixing the specific pickups you're mentioning - it really depends on what your goals are. Resistance isn't really the best way to measure output, but in general a lower-resistance alnico pickup will likely be lower output than a higher resistance ceramic pickup. In general, pickups in a bridge position will have a lower signal since there's less string movement near the bridge. If you put a lower output pickup near the bridge, it'll just emphasize the lower output compared to the neck pickup. If you want the bridge pickup just to add some color to the neck pickup, that might be fine. But if you want to solo the bridge pickup, you might want to stick with something higher output.

 

[carbon5127]

Pickups don't care what the magnet is made out of - it's totally fine to mix pickups with different types of magnets.

In terms of mixing the specific pickups you're mentioning - it really depends on what your goals are. Resistance isn't really the best way to measure output, but in general a lower-resistance alnico pickup will likely be lower output than a higher resistance ceramic pickup. In general, pickups in a bridge position will have a lower signal since there's less string movement near the bridge. If you put a lower output pickup near the bridge, it'll just emphasize the lower output compared to the neck pickup. If you want the bridge pickup just to add some color to the neck pickup, that might be fine. But if you want to solo the bridge pickup, you might want to stick with something higher output.

Thanks! I forgot to mention the bridge pickup installed right now is only about 8.8k in resistance and is also ceramic. So far, i'm not really satisfied with it soloed so I think I'll shoot with the Wilkinson instead.