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Delano SBC-HE/S-4

Gabe7539

Gabe7539

Supporting Member
Jan 18, 2016
243
266
#1
I've seen a couple of videos demonstrating these pickups on basses by "blasius" and "maruszczyk". The Delanos seem to have a really thick midrange. I've also been researching Bartolini dual-coil pickups, these also sound really nice, but seem to have more low-end. Couple of questions:
1. Has anyone tried the Delanos, and what experience did you have?
2. Would it make sense to try for the best of both worlds with the Delano quad-coil in the middleish/sweet spot position and the Bartolini dual-coil fairly close to the neck? I think then I could split the Delano to get an optional P-bass sound, or put in a parallel/series switch or something like that.
This video shows a similar arrangement with the Delano SBC and JBC
 
#2
@Gabe7539 What did you do?
I am exactly at the same point, I don't know if Delano or Bartolini would match my tastes...
The video you have posted is the sound I've been looking for... but my bass pickups actually are 36mm W 100mm L
I've been hearing the SBC HE S 4 and I don't like as much as the video you've posted... They have a lot of mids

Thank you!
 
#3
I've own one of the MTD Kingston Z6 model basses. And during that time I upgraded from the stocked electronics to the Delano 6string soapbar pickups and the Aguilar OBP-3. Man! What tone increasement an range the pickups delivered. Still in usage right today every church service. Guys in my church band won't let me get rid of it. They say with the pickups it's truly an MTD being still a low budget one. Sounds like a beast, but tamed by the Angels of the preamp lol.
 
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#4
The Delano’s are just about my favorite pickup. I have a quad coil neck (lives in P setting) and dual coil bridge (lives in series setting) And it rocks. I’ve had that set up in 3 different basses and it just works great. Not super vintage sounding but not too sterile or modern either.
 
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#6
Many demo videos are poorly done. The best of them will run the audio straight into an uncolored audio interface, with no effects or processing. The rest of them are tainted by preamp settings, effects, or (worst of all) a microphone picking up speaker coloration and room modes.

Even the best video demos are still somewhat hampered by the extreme compression in most video codecs.

Best to get a pure audio WAV file, or an MP3 or M4A at a very high bitrate.

I have a pair of the Delano SBCs, and I remember liking them very much, with beefy mids, tight lows, and airy highs. But it’s been a long time since they’ve been installed in anything, and those adjectives I just used are hopelessly subjective anyway.
 
#8
thisSNsucks said:
The Delano’s are just about my favorite pickup. I have a quad coil neck (lives in P setting) and dual coil bridge (lives in series setting) And it rocks. I’ve had that set up in 3 different basses and it just works great. Not super vintage sounding but not too sterile or modern either.
Click to expand...
How does quad coil compares to the dual one? And does it sounds like a P in split coil setting? Or is it somewhat different?
Was thinking for some time about getting a quad coil (for noiseless humbucker and split coil combos mostly), but I'm still not sure if it's worth to get a semi custom one with in-line coils (instead of P ones). I think they're wired the same way, so they should sound almost identical too..
 
#10
Hi, what is reverse split mode? I just re-installed SBC 5 HE/S-4 E into my roasted swamp ash bass, and wired them with parallel/single/series switches on each pickup, using the diagram on page 9 of the delano installation manual. They are hooked up to a 2-band sonar. On the neck I used the front coil as the single, and the bridge I used the rear, because using a magnet I found that they are north-south opposites. That wasn't in the manual, unless you look at the diagrams for splitting to either coil.

When I plugged it in I found that pickup height really makes a BIG difference. Almost concluded that I messed up until I set the height. I use Optima Gold rounds on it for now.

I am terrible with impressions or adjectives. For comparison of German stuff, I have an Ash bass, with Bassculture pickups and Glockenklang 3 band pickup with Thomastik flats. My impression? These basses sound different from eachother, but duh!. And I always think whatever bass I am playing sounds better than any bass that I am not playing. I bet I could play them in an "uncolored audio interface" if that just means plugging directly into USB interface into a DAW program.
 
#12
That is not how I wired it, because "jazz plus parallel" is two options, and the delano manual wiring I used has three options. They call it "series/single coil/parallel" and they further define the series as "series(cross coils in series)". The wiring schemes called "P or reverse P" that you are referring to I can't be sure. There is another wiring they call single coil further called "reversed(cross coils in series)" in an asterisk. They don't use "P or reverse P" or "jazz".

The manual is available online from delano.de, so how I wired it can be seen. Whether that is what other people refer to I sure would like to know because until this week I never heard people say "cross coils in series" and I would like to know how to refer to the wiring in ways that people actually use.
 
#17
JES said:
Thanks. That sound ominous, though! Care to share more? I know about pickup placement and all that, but is there something else you had in mind?
Click to expand...

The P tone is mostly due to the pickup placement on the body, but also is a product of the short, fat coils surrounding AlNiCo rod magnets. Tall, skinny coils tend to have a more focused tone, and different magnetic architectures affect both tone and dynamic response.
 
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#18
I realise this is a thread from last year but it seemed like the most appropriate place to post this, having just received a pair of Delano SBC pickups in the mail.

As much as I like the sound of Delano pickups, the documentation they provide is awful! A quad-coil pickup may be versatile - as they point out at length on their website - but it ultimately has set number of possibilities:
  1. hum-cancelling row ("single coil" that isn't single) 1 - no series/parallel needed for either of these
  2. hum-cancelling row ("single coil" that isn't single) 2 - the rows are 18mm apart which is a little more than 60s/70s on a jazz but in theory switching between these could *almost* give you this effect
  3. cross-coils in series ("p-bass mode")
  4. cross-coils in parallel
  5. reverse cross coils in series ("reverse-P" mode)
  6. reverse cross coils in parallel
  7. all four coils at once in series ("series humbucker" mode)
  8. all four coils at once in parallel ("parallel humbucker" mode)
Quad-coils-01.png


Why not just have a wiring code for each, as far as which colour wires to join or send to hot or ground, instead of assuming the configurations that players will want?

I can reverse-engineer it myself but it's a waste of time.

(Edit: actually...I may e-mail them this diagram and ask for the wiring for each. If they respond I'll post it here and hopefully it will help others.)
 
Last edited:
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#19
Hi, thanks for the inspiration!

I have a bass with dual Delano's SBC HE/S-4, each pickup initial with standard parallel / series coil switching. I tested the connections of the pickup and modified the neck pickup by replacing the jumpers with a 4 wire pickup cable and a 3 way mini toggle switch. This now gives me switching possibilities of parallel, single coil and p-bass split coil. This configuration works fine for me.

Delano-schakeling-SBC-HE-S-4-v2.png
 
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#20
Bassjames said:
Hi, thanks for the inspiration!

I have a bass with dual Delano's SBC HE/S-4, each pickup initial with standard parallel / series coil switching. I tested the connections of the pickup and modified the neck pickup by replacing the jumpers with a 4 wire pickup cable and a 3 way mini toggle switch. This now gives me switching possibilities of parallel, single coil and p-bass split coil. This configuration works fine for me.

Delano-schakeling-SBC-HE-S-4-v2.png
Click to expand...
That's a great idea! I wondered whether those jumpers might need to be altered. Thanks for sharing this - it looks invaluable!
 

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