That's a pretty lazy answer from Fender. They *should* know what kind of pickups are mounted in your bass...
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Fender Player Series bass has the wrong pickup
- Thread starter ThingsAbove
- Start date
That's a pretty lazy answer from Fender. They *should* know what kind of pickups are mounted in your bass...
Sounds like a lot of hassle for pickups that are not worth that much anyway.
I think it's more likely that Fender uses any pickup from a pool of pickups at their disposal (as they've historically done to use up old stocks of various components)... and this bass is from a batch that got the ceramic ones.
At first I thought it would be GC making up some specs, as I've caught them and other retailers sometimes doing that (not for sinister reasons, just badly informed and not caring enough as whoever was inputting the info just wanted to finish that job and move on). But it looks like Fender confirmed they have Alnico 5 in their specs list...
I don't see the big deal, quite frankly, whether ceramic or alnico they won't use expensive pickups on that bass, so their value would be similar. Did it sound good? Great! Oh, it didn't? Then take it back and move on. Magnet material is far from being a guarantee of sound quality.
That's the bottom line here. I have a player series jazz - could care less what materials are used to make the pickups. Sounds like a jazz, plays like a jazz and I love everything about this bass. If I didn't, I'd return it and find one I liked.
Did I mention how I love the build quality on mine and how light it is? Alnico5 or ceramic, it's still a keeper, and I got it $100 off.
Fender website does not specify alnico magnets, it says "
- One Player Series split-coil Precision Bass® middle pickup "
Yep. I have the jazz bass variant and the pickups were the only weak spot. The construction was fantastic and wiring was clean with no misdrilled holes under the pickguard. It was the cleanest MIM i had seen.
The pure vintage 74s were the replacement and sound incredible. But the original pickups had to go.
My opinion is that ceramic pickups are inferior, but that's just my opinion which means nothing to anyone besides me. My opinion is subject to change with time, new information and bribes.
Now, regarding the use of a pick. I use a pick, but then I'm actually a guitar player.
There seems to be a lot of assumptions about what exactly is going on here, based on pretty limited info, IMO.
First, this chat between "Justin" and the OP.......is Justin up to speed on this particular model?
Then....
This seems like a good question, is it possible that the OP's pickup actually is alnico, or do the pics confirm that it isn't? I'm clueless, but surely someone around should know.
First, this chat between "Justin" and the OP.......is Justin up to speed on this particular model?
Then....
This seems like a good question, is it possible that the OP's pickup actually is alnico, or do the pics confirm that it isn't? I'm clueless, but surely someone around should know.
Frankie Fender said:
Unfortunately not. The DC resistance really only gives you one piece of a puzzle, and you need a few more pieces to understand the puzzle. The DC resistance of a pickup is often quoted as a proxy for output, but even this is faulty logic. DC resistance of a pickup is dictated by the number of turns of wire in the pickup and the gauge of that wire. Many pickup winders including the big names, and the boutique builders who should know better, will say something like "this is a hot pickup with a DC resistance of 14 k" or "wound to pure vintage specs with a cool 7 k ohms", but this is meaningless.
Ceramic pickups are traditionally 'hotter' in that they have a higher output. This might be due to early adopters like Dimarzio who were purposefully winding hotter pickups to overdrive tube amps. It might also be because some pickup manufacturers take conventional pickup designs (like these Fender P bass pickups) and glue a couple of ceramic bars to the bottom without adjusting the rest of the pickup design accordingly. The cheapest no-name Ebay pickups are typically ceramic-powered as well.
In the back of my mind I'm reminded of the fact that some well designed, well voiced pickups are powered with ceramic mags and sound great. Beyond that, some people describe ceramic pickups as though they were describing ceramic cookware; cold, brittle, harsh... I think the very name 'ceramic' is burned into some minds long before any tone reaches any ears.
One thing that isn't being addressed in this thread is: do these pickups sound ok? If so, who cares what magnets are glued to the back of them? Alnico isn't gold standard. I imagine Fender used them 60 years ago because they were cheap to source, plentiful and could be cut up and machined by unskilled labor.
The pics don't confirm it for me. I just sold a set of circa 2011 MIM Fender Standard P bass pickups, and the poles were magnetic; there was no magnet glued to the back. Conversely by Guild BS-1 pickups in my Starfire are powered by a chunky alnico bar.
I used to mess around a lot with pickups (I used to glue the two halves of a stripped Dimarzio Model J pickup into an empty MM-style humbucker pickup shell, or transplant the guts of an Epiphone Thunderbird pickup into another empty MM-style pickup shell. I have some left over neodymium rods busily sticking to each other in a parts drawer (safely away from anything else). I'm tempted to drill out a cheap P bass pickup and stick the rods in, though it might be too much magnet! I boosted the output of my MIJ Mustang bass by epoxying neodymium button magnets to the back of the four stock pickup poles. It made the bass brighter sounding, and with a higher output.
If all else fails with OP's pickups, he could prise off the bar magnets, push out the rods and buy some alnico rods to replace them.
Hmm. Let's see...
Maple board, gloss...check.
Olympic White...check.
White guard...check.
Cream Dimarzio...check.
Threaded saddle bent plate bridge...check.
I like it!
Ah. The Left hand doesn't know what the Right is doing, then. No mention of "alnico" here: Invalid Link Removed
Would this thread exist is a Standard model was purchased but was later found to have a Player model pickup?
One of my basses has Hammon Darkstars. Recently one of the big magnet bars fell off, had to glue it back on. Pretty sure the DS bars are alnico.
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folks with webshots, gotta date those things. the internet is not a static environment.
i suspect the website/i.t. side and the production side mis-communicated. not as uncommon as one might think in a large corporation. looks like most folks inside the corp. are not yet aware there is an issue.
this is some bad juju.
once upon a time. long, long ago, my father and uncle is a small hick town caught a mistake in the pontiac dealer parts master catalog. korea was involved, as well as germany, and the u.s.a. it took some deep south texans to expose the matter. g.m./pontiac thanked them for their attention to detail and quickly moved to resolve the situation.
schtuff happens. someone has to be the 1st to find it.
I shared image of Ocean Turquoise pups on the Official Precision Bass Club thread page a few weeks ago and pointed out the same thing. It was the sole disappointment in an otherwise fabulous instrument, but to be honest I wasn't expecting them to be A5 anyway despite the sales lit, pretty much basing that off the images people were posting of theirs. Those ceramic pups can be spotted pretty easily because of the shiny SS poles that are just rolled slugs, so I knew when I ripped it out I'd find a poor man's Dimarzio. I would have been happy to have A5's, but had already budgeted for some Duncan's anyway.
FWIW, there's also two different neck styles floating around. One features the black MIM Std neck logo, the other is the (better looking, IMO) Player logo that sort of mimics the US models, but in gold. In any case, I got mine for a great price and it has exceeded my expectations in every way.
FWIW, there's also two different neck styles floating around. One features the black MIM Std neck logo, the other is the (better looking, IMO) Player logo that sort of mimics the US models, but in gold. In any case, I got mine for a great price and it has exceeded my expectations in every way.
