I don't think Fender has their own foam factory with a proprietary formula.
Tone foam, my man, and as we established in that capacitor thread, vintage tone foam is always better!
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Installing P Bass pickups correctly
- Thread starter Ron Berenato
- Start date
Tone foam, my man, and as we established in that capacitor thread, vintage tone foam is always better!
Another way to do it is to slide a little surgical tubing on the screw to act as a spring, that’s my preferred method. Not that there’s anything wrong with the foam. I believe best bass gear and stewmac both sell small lengths of tubing for this purpose.
See if you have an old foam mousepad kicking around. I can remember when they actually wanted good money for those...before people started giving them away.
Agree, I always use the foam packing. I bought a set of screws with springs on Amazon but the packaging foam worked better.
My two cents, before thinking about what to use first check your fretboard curvature, to determine pickup orientation.
You can measure the distance from the top of each string to the bottom of the pickup cavity and from there, estimate the amount of foam, flip-flops or tubing you will need. Remember: The most important thing to get balanced output, is to keep the bottom of each string to pickup poles distance as even as possible.
You can measure the distance from the top of each string to the bottom of the pickup cavity and from there, estimate the amount of foam, flip-flops or tubing you will need. Remember: The most important thing to get balanced output, is to keep the bottom of each string to pickup poles distance as even as possible.
D
This is good advice. A lot of cheap P-bass clones come with the pickups adjusted parallell to the surface of the pickguard. If you only have experience with cheaper P-basses it's easy to make this mistake. The pickup needs to be slanted downwards under the outer strings for an even balance across the strings. This of course means than when the action is set correctly the pickups will more or less follow the radius of the fingerboard. The pickups will have a steeper angle with a 7.25" fingerboard than with 9.5" or 12". Use your ears. This isn't an exact science and the perfect position will depend on the strings, the pickup in question and your style of playing.
I've even seen Squier CVs manufacturer by Cort/Samick come with the pickups adjusted parallell to the pickguard. I can understand why the cheapest Chinese knockoffs come like this but I would expect better from an official Fender product made by experienced manufacturers like Cort/Samick. Very poor.
I recently installed the ashtray covers in my P bass and I looked up the recommended drill bit size for the screws. So if you know the size of the screws you can find out the right size for the pilot holes. It should help you avoid problems.
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Your comments are correct, probably these manufacturers don't have the expertise to address this, plus having flat pickups is considered more visually pleasing?
I'm not sure anyone does, based on my experience. Even the Lulls have (had, anyway) fairly unsubstantial foam under the pups. My Stingrays have some kind of spring system under that massive MM pup that always supports the pup height. I've looked under one aa few years ago. I remember the springs under there, but not much else.
StewMac sells foam with springs in it and cut to the shape for the bass it's going it (long single for Jazz, humbucker size, even a 2-piece for P bass use. Along with the usual StewMac price, of course. They seem to work pretty well. I've used the StewMac pieces in several basses (Not the Stingrays, of course...
).
Undoubtedly true. But they probably get someone to manufacture it to their specifications. And FWIW, their foam works very well. Better than sponges, flip-flops, packaging foam, etc. It has just the right amount of give and lasts pretty long. And it's not really very expensive. Best Bass Gear foam is cheaper and also very good, however.
Nope. They have always used 3M black weather stripping.
I cut strips out of a cheap mouse pad to use as pickup shims. Inexpensive and effective.
DiMarzio sells Bass pickup height screws. I only use these and always use new ones. They are kind of expensive and hard to find sometimes but they are a bit larger in diameter and the shank directly under the head is not threaded. And for sponges I have used cut up mouse pad material if nothing else is around. Used soft rubber hose a few times too.
Turnaround
Commercial User
This method won't give even string-to-string balance. The magnetic flux is less dense on the outer strings (E and G) because the A and D strings have a field that is supported on both sides by the magnets of the E and G string respectively. The E and G strings have no additional outer edge support. So use your ears, not a ruler, to set the string-to-string balance.
And the E (or B) and the G are presenting vastly different masses to the magnetic fields.
Without a doubt, pickup set up is completely subjective and if it sounds good to you, is good enough.
However, using distance is a quick, simple way to set up P-bass pickups which allow tilting. I sincerely doubt the human ear is more accurate than a Fluke meter -which is the proper method to measure pickup electrical output across all strings-.
Relative to the magnet flux density comment and E and G string not having additional outer support is not the way conventional pickups work. The idea of a vibrating string cutting magnetic field lines to generate current is not correct.
The pickup magnets function is to magnetize the strings, so they generate an electrical signal when vibrating over the coils, which extend way beyond the poles to provide "edge support".
Turnaround
Commercial User
The electrical impulses in the coils are caused by a disturbance in the magnetic field that surrounds the coils. Something that is not ferrous will not disturb the magnetic field, whereas something that is ferrous will, magnetized or not. The more intense the magnetic field, the more disturbance.
Turnaround
Commercial User
Indeed, which would suggest that the pickup should be closer to the G string than any other string, the E string (or B) the furthest away. But it doesn't work out so well like that. You will most often see staggered pole pieces on guitars where the G string pole is the one furthest away from the string. That doesn't follow the fingerboard radius. Same is true on many basses, where the G string is hot if the pickup is at the same distance as the other strings.
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