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Is this possible?

M

melkinsbass

Mar 11, 2009
209
0
Terre Haute, Indiana
www.ellusionmusic.com
#1
Forgive me if this has already been asked; I did a search and didn't find anything. I had an idea for something similar to the Stu Hamm Urge bass, but instead of single coil J's, dual coil J-buckers. I would like it so that each pickup could be used independently of each other or in any combination of each other. Also, I would like the Jazz buckers to be coil tapped. Is this even feasible? Would wiring it to a preamp be an issue? Would it even fit on a bass? I don't know much about wiring, so excuse my ignorance. Thanks.
Matt
 
#8
I'd like to have something like to have something like a SD Phase II NYC soapbar or similar in the neck and bridge position and a p-bass pickup in-between the two. It would be used with an Audere 3 band pre. I think I would only need a single volume. Each pickup would be able to be used independently of each other or any combination (bridge pup and neck pup, P and bridge, neck pup and P, both bridge and neck coil tapped, etc.)
Someone told me it would be easiest to just have to single coil J's in the bridge and two in neck position with the humbucker between and have an on/off toggle for each pickup. Not sure. I don't know if a pickup selector switch could be wired to do what I want (I've only had limited experiences with 3-way and 5-way guitar selector switches.:help:) Thanks for your help.
 
#9
melkinsbass said:
I'd like to have something like to have something like a SD Phase II NYC soapbar or similar in the neck and bridge position and a p-bass pickup in-between the two. It would be used with an Audere 3 band pre. I think I would only need a single volume. Each pickup would be able to be used independently of each other or any combination (bridge pup and neck pup, P and bridge, neck pup and P, both bridge and neck coil tapped, etc.)
Someone told me it would be easiest to just have to single coil J's in the bridge and two in neck position with the humbucker between and have an on/off toggle for each pickup. Not sure. I don't know if a pickup selector switch could be wired to do what I want (I've only had limited experiences with 3-way and 5-way guitar selector switches.:help:) Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

I would go with with on/off mini toggles for each pickup, into a master volume.
If you want to get into series/parallel or single coil/humbucker switching, you can use push/pull pots for that.
 
#11
it could be done, but i submit that there's a reason you never see basses with a "wall of pickup coils" like that unless it's from somebody's garage: it usually doesn't sound that good.

one wide pickup right next to another wide pickup means a lot of cancellation of higher frequencies and an indistinct tone when they're both on.

by the same token, switching from one to the other yields less-than-dramatic differences because they're close enough to read a similar area of string.

each pickup adds more magnet pull, dragging down the string vibration.

finally, all those coils on at the same time load each other in the circuit, causing loss (volume loss in parallel or treble loss in series) unless each one is run through its own preamp and then summed down the line.

it's a case of more equaling less in the end.
 
#12
walterw said:
one wide pickup right next to another wide pickup means a lot of cancellation of higher frequencies and an indistinct tone when they're both on.
Click to expand...

It was my understanding that the waves would constructively interfere, rather than destructively (cancel). Is there a phase issue I'm missing here?
The rest of what you said makes sense to me, though.
 
#13
M0ses said:
It was my understanding that the waves would constructively interfere, rather than destructively (cancel). Is there a phase issue I'm missing here?
Click to expand...
certain waves would add, while other ones would subtract.

anything small enough to have both its crest and its trough over the "expanse" of pickups would suffer, i'd think.
 
#14
M0ses said:
It was my understanding that the waves would constructively interfere, rather than destructively (cancel). Is there a phase issue I'm missing here?
The rest of what you said makes sense to me, though.
Click to expand...

If you had identical pickups all sensing the same bit of the string, you'd get pure constructive interference. Since you can't get two pickups to occupy the same space at the same time, you're stuck with pickups in different locations.

Pickups sensing different places on the string will sense different ratios of each member of the harmonic series of the string. (Amplitude max of the fundamental is at the 12th fret, amplitude max for the next harmonic is midway between 0-12 and 12-bridge, etc.)

Since you're blending two pickups with different harmonic mixtures (and very slight timing differences, which will also be different for the different harmonics!) of the same source signal, you're going to get comb filtering.

Technically, you get this effect with any side-by-side dual coil pickup! Two different narrow windows of the pickup are being sensed, and the output of the pickup is the superposition of these signals, and will display comb filtering effects.*​

The more pickups you add into the pile, the more complex the filtering effect is going to be.

Take care!

*​ - For the truly geeky, the fact that even the narrowest pickup is still sensing a non-zero width of the string means that the frequency response of the pickup isn't "true" in the sense of being free of any harmonic superposition effects. Piezos at the bridge are your best bet if you want to head in the radical purist direction, there. Of course, someone who was a philosophical stickler of that magnitude on tone purity would likely eschew amplification or recording at all. It all distorts the harmonic content of the string anyway. Shoot... so does the air the string is vibrating in! Ahhhh!!!
 

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