Fodera pickups, to swap out or not.

I don't think any PJ will sound like a MM. Seems to me you'll be spending money chasing a tone that isn't in the wheelhouse of the instrument. And I have yet to find a passive setup that is as punchy as my PJ/Pope but that's my personal bias. I did play a Sterling for a number of years and liked it, but I'm a PJ guy now.

You should sell your PJ Monarch to me

 

U're a Musicman lover. Nothing wrong with that.

If you want to check yourself. Use the new instrument only on a new song. A song that needs the P or J elements... Then see if you like the instrument better...

 

Both mine are PJs, and not on the swap block. I think my next build might be a DC. You should probably ping Jason and ask him what he thinks about a pup swap. He owns enough Monarchs (and has played everything) so he's likely got an opinion. The problem though is that one person's "compressed" is another person's "focused" so it can be tough.

 

a pickup swap is cheap and easy. by all means, if you like way the bass feels, swap those suckers out. theres no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. those fodera's with emgs sound like a bass with emg's. youll definitely get some punch and grit going to a standard fender style pickup. i had aero duals,nordstrand big splits and duncan duals in my fodera i owned for almost a decade. it sounded very different with each set of pickups and it would have been silly to sell it just because of the tone. i ended selling it for playability issues, but i loved the tone of it with the duncan duals.

 

You might wanna try bartolini's...

But with a Fodera... I think I'd look at the instrument as a whole... If it aint your taste.... sell....move on...

Wait.... I see u use EMG....What you need to do is turn the volume or other pots somewhat down... Then all of a sudden you'll hear a different instrument.

My Dean Q edge 6 can go from cold modern to Jazz to Musicman.... And allmost like a P with a bottom.... It took me 6 years to find that...

 

I'd start by not eq'ing them basically the same. I'm not a big fans of EMGs in general but I've played a couple of older PJ Monarchs with EMGs that killed. Start flat, turn the amp and the bass up... and possibly go back to stainless. DR Fat Beams are usually pretty lively with a nice feel and big output.

It probably won't sound exactly like a Stingray but, barring it having a Mahogany-ish body, it should punch pretty well. And at the most it'll cost you the price of a set of strings.

 

Bartolini pickups are usually my first port of call for pickups...if ACG don't do something suitable!

That said, I think the 'quest for tone' is a dangerous game to play, and with a Fodera it seems quite futile. I will echo what has already been said and say that rather than messing around with the Fodera, why not cash it in and get a new bass?

In all likelihood, you'll end up with a bass you like and a chunk of change in your pocket. I don't think any amount of fettling is going to have a P/J setup bass imitating a MM position bass.

 

It's difficult for me to weigh in here because any number of things could be going on. However, some thoughts...

1. Check and make sure that your batteries are fresh. I know that it sounds obvious, but I cannot tell you how many basses we have had back into the shop with "bad sounding" EMG's that merely needed new batteries.

2. As nostatic mentioned, an EMG P/J Monarch is never going to sound like a Music Man. They are just very, very different beasts (which is cool IMHO).

3. Make sure that you set-up is dialed-in. We generally set-up EMG pups fairly close to the strings (at least on the Bridge pup). Make sure that your P-pup is lower than the bridge pup or the sound can lose its cut and bite. The exact ratio between the pup heights is personal preference, but 99% of the time we set the bridge pup much closer to the strings than the p-pup. In the shop we do this by turning the pan-pot all the way to one extreme or the other and setting the pup heights so that the bridge pup sounds slightly louder (volume-wise) than the p-pup. When blended together, this setting tends to provide the most well-balanced sound.

4. If you swap out the EMG pups on one of our P/J Monarchs to any other pups, you are going to want to make sure that your bridge pup is hum-canceling (which brings its own set of issues). You will get a bit more "dirt" and "bite" from the more vintage-stye pups but whether or not it suits your tastes is impossible to tell.

5. Since you live near the shop, why not pay us a visit and let us have a look at the bass to make sure everything is cool with it before deciding what to do. I can also bring a couple of my Monarchs in for you to try with different pups so that you can hear other possibilities.

I hope that this helps and makes sense.

Kindest regards,

J

 

I've been thinking about doing the same thing to my Monarch. Did you ever get the Fralins in? That's exactly what I was thinking about doing with mine.

On another note, does your Monarch have a bridge ground wire? Mine also has EMGs and it doesn't have a hole drilled from the bridge to the cavity for the wire.


Thanks

Michael

 

Are we getting trolled here?

Who buys a Fodera and nickels and dimes over $200 on pickups??

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I actually have the same bass as you I believe, a Fodera Monarch New Standard with the same body woods and everything. I put a new Pope Flexcore preamp in mine. I love the way it sounds through a modern amp. Going through my Trace and NV215 it sounds just killer, but I'm probably going to have to let go of that rig for financial reasons. That leaves me with my SVT and NV610. My passive P-bass sounds amazing through that setup, but the Fodera with EMGs sounds choked off and overly compressed.

I was hoping to install some more vintage like pickups and run it passive when need be. I've been thinking Fralins, but they are uber expensive for a PJ set. I love Nordy pickups, but I'm not a fan of their p-pickup. I found it to be way to scooped and modern sounding for my tastes. Maybe I'll try the DiMarzios. They are really, really cheap.


Thanks,

Michael