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Considering Upgrading Jazz Pickups, NJ4SV possibly

#62
Nedmundo said:
I have the five string version, NJ5FS, and I think that's a reasonable categorization. They don't have the warm, chewy texture I associate with vintage tone. They have a little modern "sheen," but it's passive J-bass tone nonetheless. And I really don't think you lose much going noiseless. There's a little less "air" and "sparkle" in the high end.
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I'm still struggling to hear these examples in my head. I have lots of examples in my head where I say "that's the tone I'm looking for" but sometimes I can't say whether its vintage or modern. Can you give me an example of some bands that don't have the warm texture and rather has a little modern sheen but not too much?
 
#63
I think the TB'er recording of Nordstrands in the link you posted is a pretty good example. Those were side-by-side humbuckers, but he had them in single coil mode for the recording, so it sounds closer to a Jazz bass. I listen to rock almost exclusively, much of which is still dominated by more vintage-voiced basses, so I'm having trouble thinking of good examples.
 
#64
walknbluez said:
I'm still struggling to hear these examples in my head. I have lots of examples in my head where I say "that's the tone I'm looking for" but sometimes I can't say whether its vintage or modern. Can you give me an example of some bands that don't have the warm texture and rather has a little modern sheen but not too much?
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IMO when it comes to Jazz bass tones, modern vs. vintage is a load of hog wash. ;) It depended on what strings and amp/DI/whatever in the recording process. And what style of music and tone you wanted. Basses don't get one sound. You are supposed to come up with your tone, not someone else's from some old recording. That was their tone.

Most of the old vintage bass tracks were done on P basses. Jazz basses were not as common or popular.

Listen to some vintage recordings of Jazz basses, like early ELP or King Crimson with Greg Lake. Here's a sample of Knife Edge by ELP from 1970.

Link Removed

Then we can take the great Dennis Dunaway from the Alice Copper group.

Here's a track from the 1972 album School's Out:

Link Removed

Both sound very "modern" to me. Of course they were both playing with a pick, but so did Joe Osborn on all those old tracks he recorded. But he was using flats and only the neck pickup.

Now if you stick some flats on the Jazz, or in this case Labella nylon tape wounds, you get a chunkier tone such as on this 1971 Sly & The Family Stone track:

Link Removed

Still very bright though. And hollow sounding.

How about another classic from 1973:

Link Removed

Of course that's Anthony Jackson, also playing with a pick.

A couple of more vintage examples would be Glass Onion and Helter Skelter by the Beatles. Also a very bright cutting tone.

This is what a vintage Jazz bass sounds like. Pretty damn "modern" if you ask me. Leo designed them to be bright, and they had a bridge (treble) pickup to be brighter than the P bass. This must have been something players were asking for at the time.

Progressive players like these wanted the bass to sound different than the old days. So they were modern in their day.

You really can't listen to old recordings and expect to get that exact sound unless you know everything that went into getting it.

Here's a good Link Removed with flats and a string mute... ;) Still a bit brighter than people expect it to be. Sounds like he plucked pretty hard with that "claw".

Personally I'll be happy when the vintage fad is over. :D Things do go in cycles though.
 
#65
SGD Lutherie said:
IMO when it comes to Jazz bass tones, modern vs. vintage is a load of hog wash. ;) It depended on what strings and amp/DI/whatever in the recording process. And what style of music and tone you wanted. Basses don't get one sound. You are supposed to come up with your tone, not someone else's from some old recording. That was their tone.

Most of the old vintage bass tracks were done on P basses. Jazz basses were not as common or popular.

Listen to some vintage recordings of Jazz basses, like early ELP or King Crimson with Greg Lake. Here's a sample of Knife Edge by ELP from 1970.

Link Removed

Then we can take the great Dennis Dunaway from the Alice Copper group.

Here's a track from the 1972 album School's Out:

Link Removed

Both sound very "modern" to me. Of course they were both playing with a pick, but so did Joe Osborn on all those old tracks he recorded. But he was using flats and only the neck pickup.

Now if you stick some flats on the Jazz, or in this case Labella nylon tape wounds, you get a chunkier tone such as on this 1971 Sly & The Family Stone track:

Link Removed

Still very bright though. And hollow sounding.

How about another classic from 1973:

Link Removed

Of course that's Anthony Jackson, also playing with a pick.

A couple of more vintage examples would be Glass Onion and Helter Skelter by the Beatles. Also a very bright cutting tone.

This is what a vintage Jazz bass sounds like. Pretty damn "modern" if you ask me. Leo designed them to be bright, and they had a bridge (treble) pickup to be brighter than the P bass. This must have been something players were asking for at the time.

Progressive players like these wanted the bass to sound different than the old days. So they were modern in their day.

You really can't listen to old recordings and expect to get that exact sound unless you know everything that went into getting it.

Here's a good Link Removed with flats and a string mute... ;) Still a bit brighter than people expect it to be. Sounds like he plucked pretty hard with that "claw".

Personally I'll be happy when the vintage fad is over. :D Things do go in cycles though.
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I really liked the Blue Turk tone.

I realize I need to come up with my own tone but when it comes to pickups, there is obviously a difference in tones right? And when trying to choose, I sort of need a reference point which will point me in the right direction, no?

I'm really just looking for a tone that is clean and tight but I wouldn't say modern sounding. The tone in my head, the one where I say "that sounds good" is Guy Pratt's when he plays on Pink Floyd's "Division Bell". He usually plays a Jazz with rounds. I'm sure he has compression and such but it's really just a nice, clean tone.

To the OP, I didn't mean to hijack this thread, but it does seem relevent to your original post.

Here is Guy Pratt:



I wouldn't call that modern but it doesn't sound vintage or old school to me either, does it?
 
#68
Hey, I'm afraid I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion, but I'd like to say thanks to SGD_Lutherie and Nedmundo for the explanations and audio links.

I have a Jazz clone with NJ4SE, but I never really thought about what vintage Jazz bass pups sound like - I always thought of the NJ4SE as having a modern sound with rounds.

Thanks - I learned some good stuff here!
 
#70
I totally love the deconstruction of "vintage" and "modern" here. It's modified my use of these terms in my tone vocabulary from here on out.

I wonder how much time and effort has been spent altering onboard electronics chasing tone elements that were caused by classic amplification rather than the instrument itself.

Oh, and in some online wandering inspired by this whole discussion, I found a great physics-based discussion of the tone effects of pickup position and sensing window, using linear superposition no less!

The same site has an applet that lets you play around with adding pickups to an instrument to view the resultant response, complete with tweakable position, polarity, output, window, and more!
 
#72
4StringTheorist said:
I think that's a great way of putting it. They truly are great pickups, I hope that I hadn't accidentally indicated otherwise when mentioning my plans to sell mine.

I swapped out a set of EMG-JVs for the Nordstrands, and it was truly a delightful change. :)
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I was researching what Guy Pratt uses and someone here on tb said his Jazz bass "Betsy" has EMG's. Then I remembered your post above and how you thought changing them out was better. I guess you just never know until you do it for yourself. And as you said, the amplification and cabs probably have a bigger effect on tone.
 
#73
SGD Lutherie said:
Rounds are modern sounding, flats are vintage.
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KingRazor said:
The terms "vintage" and "modern" don't mean anything to me. The terms "bright" and "warm" make much more sense.
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I don't see this in black and white terms. To me, if I use the term modern, I mean all aspects of the sound. The static tonal quality is only part of it; there's definition (when more than one note is played, for example), dynamic response and tonal consistency.

These qualities are what I consider if I'm trying to evaluate a pickup, but it's very UNmusical to do so without factoring in strings, playing style and amplification.
 
#74
walknbluez said:
I was researching what Guy Pratt uses and someone here on tb said his Jazz bass "Betsy" has EMG's. Then I remembered your post above and how you thought changing them out was better. I guess you just never know until you do it for yourself. And as you said, the amplification and cabs probably have a bigger effect on tone.
Click to expand...

Don't compare my experience too closely to Guy Pratt's, as the Link Removed are very atypical for active EMGs. They are EMG's "vintage jazz" pickup. That's the "JV" part.

The Nord NJ4SVs are quite a bit brighter sounding than the EMG-JVs. Bet you wouldn't have expected that based only on EMG's brand repuatation, huh? ;)
 
#75
4StringTheorist said:
Don't compare my experience too closely to Guy Pratt's, as the Link Removed are very atypical for active EMGs. They are EMG's "vintage jazz" pickup. That's the "JV" part.

The Nord NJ4SVs are quite a bit brighter sounding than the EMG-JVs. Bet you wouldn't have expected that based only on EMG's brad repuatation, huh? ;)
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I don't know much about EMG's so I didn't even realize they had a bad rep. But the facct that the NJ4SV's are quite brighter throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing for me since I'm not sure I like "too" bright. I'm always trying to tame treble on my EQ now as it is.

Are there any examples of prominent players who use NJ4SV's?
 
#76
walknbluez said:
I don't know much about EMG's so I didn't even realize they had a bad rep. But the facct that the NJ4SV's are quite brighter throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing for me since I'm not sure I like "too" bright. I'm always trying to tame treble on my EQ now as it is.

Are there any examples of prominent players who use NJ4SV's?
Click to expand...

I wasn't saying that EMGs have a bad reputation at all! What I was alluding to is that the EMG-JV pickups don't fit the stereotype for active EMG tone, which would definitely include the word "bright." The EMG-JVs are rather dark sounding as J pickups go.

I was speaking comparatively about the Nord NJ4SV and the EMG-JV. The Nords are brighter than the dark-ish EMGs. I doubt that the NJ4SVs would be too bright for you.
 
#77
4StringTheorist said:
I wasn't saying that EMGs have a bad reputation at all! What I was alluding to is that the EMG-JV pickups don't fit the stereotype for active EMG tone, which would definitely include the word "bright." The EMG-JVs are rather dark sounding as J pickups go.

I was speaking comparatively about the Nord NJ4SV and the EMG-JV. The Nords are brighter than the dark-ish EMGs. I doubt that the NJ4SVs would be too bright for you.
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So the EMG-JVs are active pups? Is the NJ4 pickup darker than the NJ4SV's?
 
#79
To me, "vintage" and "modern" tones exist along a continuum, which is defined by more than brightness or whether the bass wears rounds or flats. (Flats will always move a bass toward the vintage end though.) For example, even vintage-voiced J-type pickups, when run through some active electronics, can produce a more "modern" tone, with smoother highs, and perhaps deeper lows.

In addition, some pickups, through different voicing, take J-bass tone in a non-vintage direction, which I'd call modern. This can be "scooped" tone, with reduced mids and boosted bass relative to vintage pickups. DiMarzio's Ultra Jazz are an example. On DiMarzio's site, they rate the Ultra Jazz as:

Treble 6
Mids 5
Bass 7

By contrast, the vintage-voiced Area J has more mids and less bass, with the following ratings:

Treble 6
Mids 5.5
Bass 5

I've never tried these pickups, but have read descriptions of them, including those on DiMarzio's site. Many describe the Ultra Jazz as "modern," and I think of scooped tone generally as more modern, perhaps because it's often produced with active electronics.

Of the J-type basses I've tried, I'd place Sadowskies at the modern end of the spectrum, especially if you start boosting the EQ. They're in the J-bass family for sure, but if you play one back-to-back with a passive, vintage-voiced Jazz, the difference is readily apparent. The Sadowsky has deeper, smoother lows, and a "sheen" to the high end that I associate with modern tone. (At least that's the impression I got when I tried them, but it's been a couple of years, and I know using the VTC will produce more "vintage" tones.) Something like a Pedulla Rapture JJ is slightly closer to what I'd call "vintage." The Bartolini pickups are warm, but the active circuit imparts a slightly modern slant to the tone.

IMO, it's similar on the P-bass side, where relatively reduced mids and boosted bass and treble are associated with a more "modern" sound, as exemplified by the Duncan Quarter Pounder. The MFD split-coil in my G&L SB-2 is similar, with deeper, more powerful lows than any vintage P-bass.
 
#80
Nedmundo said:
On DiMarzio's site, they rate the Ultra Jazz as:
Treble 6
Mids 5
Bass 7

By contrast, the vintage-voiced Area J has more mids and less bass, with the following ratings:
Treble 6
Mids 5.5
Bass 5
Click to expand...

Hopefully this is isn't too far off-topic, but I'd love to hear from anybody who has heard (and can compare) the Ultrajazz and and Area J pickups. I've got Ultrajazz pickups in my Lull J and Dimarzio's ratings of the two sets are similar enough that I don't know if I should bother trying the Area J's. The UJ neck is pretty nice, though a bit more mids would be nice. The UJ bridge is underwhelming, kinda polite, but I don't have much to compare them to.
 

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