How to make the pickup slide?

[wildboar]

I've seen some pictures of basses with sliding pickups and am interested in making a bass with a sliding pickup. Any advice or instructions on the best way to do this?

 

[RSBBass]

Take a look at the Westone Rail.

 

[Hopkins]

The way Gibson did it on the grabber is probably the simplest way I have seen. The pickup is mounted into a piece of pick guard material that slides back in forth in a channel and is sandwiched between the bottom of the channel and the pick guard. It has a couple strips of felt on either side for friction.

 

[wildboar]

Thanks for the ideas! The Gibson Grabber version looks like the easiest one to implement but I wonder how hard it is to get the pickup to stay in place and to get the height adjustment right. I wasn't planning on having a pick guard but I suppose I could route out part of the body and put a thin piece of wood on top.

 

[xaxxat]

Gibson used felt strips to provide tension on the slide.

 

[Hopkins]

xaxxat, posted much nicer pictures than I did, the pickup mounts from the top like a regular guitar humbucker.

I suppose you could do something similar that mounts from the back of the bass and not do a pick guard.

 

[xaxxat]

Dan Armstrong London bass:

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

When I first saw a Grabber, I thought that was a GREAT idea.

Then I played / heard one and went "uh... meh". I still think the idea isn't bad, it's just that Gibson basses from that era were... well, let's just saw that they weren't so popular (I don't want to offend any Gibsonistas here!)

 

[wildboar]

Thanks for all the great pictures! It seems like there has to be some little gear or pulley mechanism that I could use and adjust with a knob. It seems like there has to be something used for photography or telescopes or firearms that I could stick in there.

 

[xaxxat]

Doug Wilkes' "Answer" guitar:

 

[JIO]

This Answer guitar as illustrated is a really purposeful design. (stable rails/pu's, easily moveable on the fly, actual noticeable variance of tones) I have the feeling a system like that would always work better for a guitar over a bass. (more dynamic, noticeable difference in tone) And the 2 singles split but humbucking is also a great idea. The only way I would go to the trouble of implementing a sliding pu bass would be to follow the Answer path. The Gibson Grabber is just too narrow a distance to really make any difference and doesn't look stable over the long haul.

There is a more recent bass that is demo'd by Guy Pratt (I think) that has a sliding single pu that looked good but I think the 2 singles is the way to go. Think a J setting, a MM setting, and a big spread (bridge & neck hugging) and the ability to dial your tone anywhere in between - that would be worth the trouble and actually be a useable instrument instead of a novelty.

 

[wildboar]

Thanks for all the replies. I think for now I'm not going to make the pickup slide. I really want to get this thing built and it would make it all take longer. But I might consider it again after I've had a chance to play with it for a while. I do like the whole switch idea. I used to have a fretless fender jazz bass. I took out all the knobs and put switches in so that I could switch from series and parallel and put them in and out of phase with each other. The out of phase sound reminded me a little bit of a Hofner. The tone I got when running them in phase in series was incredible. Those little pots seem to suck some of the tone out of the sound even when you turn them up all the way.

 

[MarkA]

The topic of sliding pickups came up in another thread and I posted these videos there:

Warwick custom for Guy Pratt, with two sliding pickups:


Wood & Tronics sliding pickup system:


I'd forgotten, too, that Mike Pope has a sliding pickup in his signature Fodera.


TBer DirtPoorRobbins posted a nice demo in the Fodera thread of the Mike Pope sliding pickup system -- I just happened on that today, actually. It's the vid that reminded me of the Mike Pope vid.