I hate the terms "back" and "front" pickup.

[Nakoatron]

The pedantic nature of this site rears its ugly head again

 

[Canadian APII]

Every time I watch a video or read a discussion about pickups that use front and back, I get very irritated. I have to keep watching till they either point to it or reference it by the control knobs. Why do I have to be a detective to understand which they mean?
C'mon! There is a neck, middle, and bridge for position reference.

There. Whew!

Never heard that.

 

[mrjim123]

I am affronted and taken aback by a lot of things, but now when it comes to pickups.

 

[Dragan]

And there are replies and comments in this topic..mine included.

 

[HaphAsSard]

I grew up in Italy: no cardinal directions anywhere.

Esatto. Italy is hilly, and streets and roads meander according to the terrain (but also to ancient property limits, and even deliberate design by mediaeval city planners, who would sometimes forgo grids for continuously-curving streets, so as to gradually reveal the future housefronts to the passer-by, as well as grant them a modicum of daylight). In other words, it doesn't take much to lose your north, so we manage by other means.
Names for cardinal points themselves in Romance languages are borrowings from Old English; somehow, to this day the average Iosephus seems to care about whence winds blow (certainly - and strangely enough - more than his northerly cousin Blow) rather than where moss grows on tree trunks.

Back on-topic -
you guys do what you want, but I'm not gonna call that there a "bridge pickup":

 

[scott sinner]

you guys do what you want, but I'm not gonna call that there a "bridge pickup":
View attachment 4593945

neck and neckier pickups.

 

[Yogi Bear]

Growing up it was common to call the neck pickup Agnes and the bridge Stan.

In the case of 3 pickups the middle pickup was always Herb McGee.

all this front/back - neck/bridge is too confusing.

 

[cataract]

Wow. Only on TalkBass amirite lol

 

[12BitSlab]

The one that annoys me is people calling a kick drum a bass drum. Maybe because I was a band geek in high school and bass drums are played with your hands and a kick drum is played with your feet. But I don’t completely flip out about it or anything. It’s more so just goofy to me. It’s like these days there are 9 string guitars that range wise go lower than a standard tuned 4 string bass. I don’t call it a bass just because it goes into that range.

I’ve been playing since 1967 and I have never seen a drummer kick a drum. I’ve seen them step on a pedal that in turn causes a mallet to hit a drum.

Perhaps a more accurate name would be a “pedal drum”.

Of course if we name drums based on the way they are struck wouldn’t we have ride stick drums and floor stick drums? Then what about snare drums? That name doesn’t describe how they are struck. Rather, the name describes an added component that changes the sound of what ostensively is a floor stick drum.

BTW, is it a drum set, a drum kit, a trap set, or something else?

This is starting to sound like Computer Science. That is, there are only two difficult things in CS - maintaining cache coherency and naming things.

 

[skortch]

The drummer in my band is trying to come up with a new original song. The guitarist and myself have developed some chords and melodies to go with his drum part. In trying to direct the music the drummer keeps saying up the neck to mean toward the nut; I've pointed out that up the neck really means toward higher pitched notes on any given string, so toward the body or bridge...

Anyhoo, yeah, I prefer bridge and neck over front or back or right or left or aft or port or leeward or upslope or downwind or...?

 

[tminus10]

Every time I watch a video or read a discussion about pickups that use front and back, I get very irritated. I have to keep watching till they either point to it or reference it by the control knobs. Why do I have to be a detective to understand which they mean?
C'mon! There is a neck, middle, and bridge for position reference.

There. Whew!

I don't get it. Is it really that hard to figure out what they're talking about detective?

 

[Ric5]

I hate the terms "back" and "front" pickup.

Get a 3 pickup bass

 

[TyBo]

Esatto. Italy is hilly, and streets and roads meander according to the terrain (but also to ancient property limits, and even deliberate design by mediaeval city planners, who would sometimes forgo grids for continuously-curving streets, so as to gradually reveal the future housefronts to the passer-by, as well as grant them a modicum of daylight). In other words, it doesn't take much to lose your north, so we manage by other means.
Names for cardinal points themselves in Romance languages are borrowings from Old English; somehow, to this day the average Iosephus seems to care about whence winds blow (certainly - and strangely enough - more than his northerly cousin Blow) rather than where moss grows on tree trunks.

Back on-topic -
you guys do what you want, but I'm not gonna call that there a "bridge pickup":
View attachment 4593945

Yeah ... but it's not really at the "front" either. I know! It's the 2nd neck pickup!

 

[jdjk7]

Once you determined which pickup they were referring to when they said “front”, did you find someone later that was referring to the opposite pickup when they said “”front”? If so, I can relate to the frustration. If all people, you-tubers, etc. you know who have used the term “front” or “back” were always in agreement on which pickup they were referring to, your detective days are over.

This is exactly why I don't like "front" or "back" either. When people say "front" or "back" for, say, a J bass, the neck pickup could be the front because it's closest to the player, or the bridge pickup could be the front because people perceive "front" as more "up front", and people associate the treble-ness with frontedness.

 

[jdjk7]

Sweet, can we bag on people who call connectors on the back of effects boxes “top jacks” next?

But... that actually makes sense. The side with all the controls could be the front. The side opposite that (facing the floor) would naturally be the back. The side perpendicular to those sides, aligned upward in the orientation of the expected usage of the tool, would be the top... thus, top jacks.

 

[jdjk7]

As I look down at my Bass, one pickup is on the left, and the other is on my right.
If you’re looking at my Bass, my left pickup is on your right, and my right pickup is on your left. Now that’s really confusing.

Nope. I’m just going to stick with front and back pickup.

The confusion about my left vs your left is exactly why mariners use aft, fore, port, and starboard, which are the same for everyone regardless of perspective or orientation... so why not refer to pickups by their position relative to other features on the instrument... i.e. neck, middle, bridge?

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Every time I watch a video or read a discussion about pickups that use front and back, I get very irritated. I have to keep watching till they either point to it or reference it by the control knobs. Why do I have to be a detective to understand which they mean?
C'mon! There is a neck, middle, and bridge for position reference.

There. Whew!

Front, back, middle, works for everything. There has never been a pickup in any neck. As far as I know. And if the back pickup is in the stingray position, it's not at the bridge.

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

it's good we don't use the old obscure naming as 'bass pickup' and 'treble pickup' or 'rhythm pickup' and 'treble pickup' again.

oh, wait, Hofner still uses the bass/treble notation, just googled for 'rhythm pickup' and 'treble pickup' and was surpised how widely it's still used.

Nope, we still refer to them as bass and treble. It's just two halves of the same pickup. Or, sides of the headstock tuners sit on.

 

[Passinwind]

But... that actually makes sense. The side with all the controls could be the front. The side opposite that (facing the floor) would naturally be the back. The side perpendicular to those sides, aligned upward in the orientation of the expected usage of the tool, would be the top... thus, top jacks.

Nope.

 

[Les Fret]

That's exactly my gripe. I don't want to have to figure it out..... every time.

It’s easy:
back=bridge
front=neck

That’s all there is to it. There are more important things to worry about.