Not so much as using AI to strengthen your opinion and waste a few liters of water while doing it 
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Different brand PU in one bass.
- Thread starter owjeej
- Start date
Not for a single coil pickups. The pole pieces are flipped top to bottom or toward the strings and away from the strings. When looking at Jazz bass pickups that are installed in a bass, you are looking at the N poles in one pickup and the S poles in the other pickup.
I couldn’t find a diagram for two Jazz pickups, but either the bridge + middle or the neck + middle in the diagram below can represent the two pickups in a Jazz bass.
The reverse winding alone without flipping the magnets will cause signal cancellation (out of phase). Flipping the magnets alone without reversing the winding will cause signal cancellation (out of phase). Reversing both mags and winding won’t cancel the signal (in phase), but it will cause the induced 60Hz current to flow in opposite directions (out of phase) in each wire coil in each pickup, which makes the induced current cancel out.
The hum you hear in a solo’d jazz pickup is induced 60Hz current flowing in the pickup coil. A single coil won’t hum if it’s inside a Faraday cage (theoretically, I’ve never tried it), but the amp and its AC power source would have to be outside the cage.
Open “A” string on a bass tuned to standard pitch is 55Hz and the B note in the same octave is ~61.7, so the 60Hz induced AC current flow doesn’t much blend with anything…
Vintage bass police…
No A.I. here! This one is a straight-up collision of Photoshoppery and Film-Geekery!Not so much as using AI to strengthen your opinion and waste a few liters of water while doing it
It depends on the pickup manufacturer's wiring and what they call the "hot" lead in relation to the orientation of the magnet polarity and the winding phase. If the pickups are four-lead pickups, then you may have to experiment with the wiring to find the solution for the pickups to work together. Two examples from my experiences:
1) my custom fanned-fret bass https://www.talkbass.com/threads/a-different-custom-p-style-bass.755914/ : I have a Rickenbacker HB in the "P" position and a Seymour Duncan UltraJazz in the bridge position. I had to try all four leads of the SD in order to find the coil and magnet polarity configuration that kept both humbucking and proper phase relationship to the Rickenbacker (yes, it was the fourth lead, indicating the UltraJazz was wired completely a$$-backwards to the Rickenbacker). A PITA, but it worked great and I recorded a national PBS special with that bass.
2) my cheap Mitchell (GC brand) travel bass: I have a Nordy Mustang pickup in the P-Mustang position and a Seymour Duncan Stack 5 neck pickup in the bridge position. Because both of these manufacturers build their pickups to be "drop-in" to a Fender setup, they did just that: dropped in and wired up traditional P-J wiring according to each pickup's recommended "hot" lead with no issues.
1) my custom fanned-fret bass https://www.talkbass.com/threads/a-different-custom-p-style-bass.755914/ : I have a Rickenbacker HB in the "P" position and a Seymour Duncan UltraJazz in the bridge position. I had to try all four leads of the SD in order to find the coil and magnet polarity configuration that kept both humbucking and proper phase relationship to the Rickenbacker (yes, it was the fourth lead, indicating the UltraJazz was wired completely a$$-backwards to the Rickenbacker). A PITA, but it worked great and I recorded a national PBS special with that bass.
2) my cheap Mitchell (GC brand) travel bass: I have a Nordy Mustang pickup in the P-Mustang position and a Seymour Duncan Stack 5 neck pickup in the bridge position. Because both of these manufacturers build their pickups to be "drop-in" to a Fender setup, they did just that: dropped in and wired up traditional P-J wiring according to each pickup's recommended "hot" lead with no issues.
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One time many years ago I was messing with all sorts of Jazz pickups in my 5-string. I wound up using a Fender Marcus Miller bridge pickup with a Duncan SJ-5 neck pickup (from the 67/70 set) and they sounded fine together…like a Jazz bass should.
It’s been a month since I started this thread and the project is finished.
Two weeks ago I got the chance to buy back an old bass that I had upgraded with boutique electronics (a Lollar 60s J-bass set and Ary’s Custom harness).
That gave me the opportunity to compare the Lollar set with the Fralin/Lollar combination.
I had also bought a second-hand Emerson Custom harness, but unfortunately it seems to have been lost during shipping.
Installation was easy. When I first did standard wiring, the pickups where out of phase. Reversing the hot/ground om the neck pickup solved that.
In the end I’m very happy with the result. The Fralin in the bridge position sounds exactly the way I want it to, and together with the tone control I can dial in sounds that are exactly what I (and many others) look for in a solo jazz bridge pickup.
The neck pickup is the Lollar. It sounds thick, full, and punchy. I was never really a fan of a solo neck pickup on a Jazz Bass, but this tone is really nice and very usable.
Both pickups combined deliver a great Jazz Bass sound. But the real strength of this setup is in the solo tones.
Funny enough, I also installed the full Lollar set in the same bass, and both the bridge and neck tones didn’t work as well for me as the Fralin/Lollar combination. So the Lollar set is now up for sale
Two weeks ago I got the chance to buy back an old bass that I had upgraded with boutique electronics (a Lollar 60s J-bass set and Ary’s Custom harness).
That gave me the opportunity to compare the Lollar set with the Fralin/Lollar combination.
I had also bought a second-hand Emerson Custom harness, but unfortunately it seems to have been lost during shipping.
Installation was easy. When I first did standard wiring, the pickups where out of phase. Reversing the hot/ground om the neck pickup solved that.
In the end I’m very happy with the result. The Fralin in the bridge position sounds exactly the way I want it to, and together with the tone control I can dial in sounds that are exactly what I (and many others) look for in a solo jazz bridge pickup.
The neck pickup is the Lollar. It sounds thick, full, and punchy. I was never really a fan of a solo neck pickup on a Jazz Bass, but this tone is really nice and very usable.
Both pickups combined deliver a great Jazz Bass sound. But the real strength of this setup is in the solo tones.
Funny enough, I also installed the full Lollar set in the same bass, and both the bridge and neck tones didn’t work as well for me as the Fralin/Lollar combination. So the Lollar set is now up for sale
