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Does anybody else...

Feb 24, 2009
844
17
...use only the neck pick up?Obviously the Precision owners don't have much choice,but on all my 3 basses (they all have two pick ups) i just can't seem to like the tone of the bridge pick up and always end up using the neck pick up alone (one bass has a P pick up in the neck position,one a J pick up and one has a humbucker).I always read about blending the bridge pick up in,or getting a J pick up in the bridge position for "versatility" but it just doesn't seem to work that way for me,and I don't recall anybody stating the same thing...so am I alone with this thoughts?
 
I've owned and then sold 2 p/j fenders / franken basses, and I still have another 1 of them. I never use the J pickup. I probably should / could, but I love the P sound so much I gravitate back to it...

I roll a little J off...then a little more...then a little more...then before you know it, the J volume knob is off, and I feel a LITTLE BIT DUMB for shelling out the 100 bucks for the fralin J...

No shame in whatever sounds good to you. Neck only here.
 
When I play Jazzes, I prefer to dime the neck pickup, and back off the bridge pickup a bit. Not totally off, but probably off about 10 - 15%. Of course for certain songs, I'll favor the bridge pickup; but generally it's the neck pup.
 
All 8 of my basses have dual pickups and on most of them I favor the neck pickup. My SX P/J is the most extreme example. The J can put out so much noise when I have the treble wide open that I often shut that pickup down completely. Oh the joys of a true single-coil passive pickup!
 
Sorry, I'm in the exact opposite situation.
I always play on just the bridge pickup, because I never liked the sound I got if there was any amount of neck pickup blended in.

Do whatever works for you and don't worry about if it's a common practice or not.

Very few people (AFAIK) are doing what I do with the bridge pickup, but I don't care, because that's how I get my tone.

In the same vein, if you get your tone by soloing the neck pickup, it won't matter how many people do the same, that's how you get your tone.
 
It depends.... since I'm into and use Ibanez basses, I usualy tend to do the same thing with each for the particular song (since Ibby basses don't vary much in tone between different models).

Funk, classical -- neck pickup. The placement of pickups on an Ibby mean that the neck pickup gives a funky yet fluid sound when just on the neck. It brings out the bottom mids in other words.

Rock, blues, jazz, most music played in a band setting -- both pickups. Again, the placement isn't like other basses. With both it cuts the mids and you can hear the bass and treble. It's almost like the pickups cancel each other's mids. So I get this deep tone where I hear each fret.

Soloing, lead, etc. -- bridge. Ibby basses tend to have the bright high mids inside the bridge pickup. So for lead it's full on bridge

I never blend.... doesn't really seem different than just going full on or both. For this reason, I have a 3-way switch in my fretless Ibby
 
when i had a jazz, i'd use the neck pu alone now and then, but it just missed for me what i liked about the precision pickup. close but no cigar. but on my pj's i use only the neck most of the time.