Installing 5 pickups into 1 bass

Others will come along with more wiring knowledge, but I’ll just say that I would make sure I have a way to take these pickups out of the signal completely with a pickup selector. Maybe multiple pickup selectors for convenience.

 

Anything is possible. First you have to wonder why you'd do that. What's the goal ?

 

Yes, it’s possible. If the different pickups have different resistance values, then combining them could be a bit of a problem. But just using switches to run one at a time would work well.

 

Sounds like a lot of magnetic pull on the strings!

 

It's a good experiment, you only forget to add a piezo pickup into the bridge.

I had a PJ with piezo in the bridge. Then I found that the piezzo doesn't add much and took it out. Then later I found I don't really like the J and took it out too. I find it quite likely that you will find the differences between the pickups are not as big as you think. I'd use some beaten body, perhaps even buy a cheap parts body for experimenting, so you won't be sorry later.

 

Yeah they oughta pull pretty hard on the strings. Could be some tuning/sustain issues.

Here's the thing. It's all about value. If you have a bass body you don't value, go for it. If tue money it would cost to get the pickups doesn't hurt you financially, go for it.

If this is your only bass, and you're all but broke, don't do it.

Mods should be fun. If there's no risk, and only potential reward, have fun with it.

 

Check out Guns n' Guitars on youtube. This post reminded me of a video of his I had seen.

He makes basses with all kinds of pickups in them. Combining ric pickups and jazz pickups, p90s and humbuckers, etc, maybe not quite as many pickups as your thinking, but definitely along similar lines.




Edit: I actually don't see a bass with guitar pickups in it now. My memory was off. But still, it's good watchin'.

 

Stop the talking and start the wiring!
I'd consider blends maybe to overcome the incredible diversity of pups outputs and resistance.

 

I'm enough of a novice that I'd probably make a template for the routering then make a bass out of a 2x4/2x6 or a junk body first if only to get the routering and wiring done right.

 

With that much extra weight in the body you definitely won't have to worry about neck dive.

 

Lakland Burning Earth (the Derek Smalls bass!)

 

5 you say... Hmmm...

 

This is a very real concern - pickups closer to the neck, and with more magnetic pull can give you strange (not good strange, bad strange) sounds from notes higher up on the lower strings. You don't see a lot of folks with 4 or 5 pickups on their basses (3 is actually pretty rare). There is a reason for this - the utility of an added pickup often doesn't make up for the shortcomings that come with adding it.

Getting them all to play nicely with each other is another concern - for example, MM pickups are usually much lower impedance than P's or J's - if you turn on the MM and a P pickup, you won't hear much of the P if they're wired in parallel. I've built a bunch of 2 pickup basses - even getting 2 to work together in a manner that makes the thing more usable than 1 pickup in the right spot is sometimes a challenge. When you start putting magnetic things next to each other, the interactions are also kinda unpredictable - more than 3 pickups means they're gonna be almost on top of each other, which may or may not cause issues.

This is not to say that you won't learn something from this - you will. It's just that you may learn about a bunch of things that don't work, which is likely to be disappointing. If I were you, I'd start with a physical design where you have a pickguard covering the entire area between the neck and bridge. That way, if/when you decide that a certain pickup and/or location doesn't work for you, you can make a new pickguard, and cover the "oops".

 

Too crowded. Those many pickups will not have enough real estate to be in their sweet spot. Sure you could add a rotary switch to engage selected pickups or combinations, but so what? I suggest find another more practical project.

 

I have thought about all of these things in many ways in the last 45+ years that I have been playing and tinkering with electric instruments. For guitar, I always seem to gravitate back towards a simple neck-both-bridge setup, and on bass, on stage, to one pickup in the P position, with only occasional use of a J bridge pickup blended in a little bit to flavor the tone or articulation.

To get an educated ear, I suggest spending time at a sympathetic music store that will let you try all of the basses that have the pickups you are thinking about to see what their real tone in their original instrument will sound like. You may prefer to purchase (I suggest used) versions of the basses that have the particular pickups under discussion depending on the feel and the rest of the construction synergy and ergonomics that make each of these basses what they are. From experience, if you put all the pickups on one bass, you will have more of a difference of tone from the difference of mounting position, not from the different kind of pickups. For example, I have a Rickenbacker HB-1 in the "DG" position of a custom P-style bass. Does the bass sound like a Rickenbacker? No. It sounds like a P-bass with a little more edge on the EA strings due to the pickup being a little closer to the bridge.