Kent Armstrong...any good?

Very very good custom pickups in my honest opinion.

 

Kent makes pickups for Ken Smith, Celinder and a whole host of others. He is super easy to work with too.

 

I use Aaron Armstrong Kent's son for all my pickups,they are excellent.

 

Brian Barrett told me once that Kent Armstrong made some of the best jazz bass pickups you could buy. I recently purchased a set off TB and I must concur. Fantastic

 

Keep in mind that the hand made Kent Armstrong pickups are not the same as the Korean made pickups that WD sells.

 

Yes, my judgement is based on custom made ones. I've not tried the WD Music imports.

 

Thanks for that clairification; was not blown away by the WD units; sounded OK but not incredible; then again dealer cost is very low

 

Actually, the price of the custom Kent Armstrongs i've had made were still cheaper than Bartolini's. I was considering Bart Quad coils for my Schecter Studio5 and at the urging of Brian Barrett I went with custom Kent Armstrongs. I was wildly impressed with them and pleased with the price to boot. Enough so that i've had a custom Jazz/Musicman set made for another bass and was impressed with those also.

 

I have installed the WD's version in my new custom jazz and.....I can say WOW! I was extremely surprised at the tightness and the tone!

 

I have tried both Kent Armstrong customs and the WD version. The WD's were decent pickups (athough a bit noisy), but they are nowhere near the custom Armstrongs

 

Don't laugh.

Wishnevsky uses Kent Armstrong pickups in his basses, I can only assume he uses the WD Soapbars. I played a couple of Thunderitter's Wishbasses at a recent DC GTG and was extremely impressed by the tone of those basses. They really sounded like a million bucks!!!!

 

Their Vintage Hot P bass pickup is fantastic and does exactly what it says. Some real low end thump and good definition on these and they're very cheap. Anyone with a MIM Precision should consider these as replacement pickups and for the price you really can't go wrong.

 

My Adler came with Kent Armstrongs. Some of the best sounding pups I've used in 30 years of playing. They really reproduce everything the bass has to offer.

 

I put a KA HBMN1 Musicman style pup in my Dan Armstrong AMB1 bass and love it. Unlike the Duncan SMB4D the Armstrong is very consistent all the way up the neck with thick mids, clear highs and growling lows. I use it with the series parallel switch and with 13.5k output, it works well in passive mode. I contacted Kent Armstrong himself about the pickup thinking maybe I'd just have him make me new one and here was his reply:

Dear Mike this PU looks like one of my Korean ones and to be truthfull it is as good as any thing I can hand make as my partner does a great job !!! I can build you one if you so wish !!!! Kent Armstrong

I'm okay with that at least for the time being...

 

Just in case anyone was not aware of it... Kent makes Ken Smith's pickups too.

 

After reading all the positive replies, I think I'm going to go ahead and have Brian order me a custom set for my BTB. I'm having an Aguilar OPB-3 preamp installed right now, hopefully the pickups won't take too long to make. Quick question for anyone, how much do KA's normally cost? I was quoted a price, $250. Does that sound right to anyone? (I'm not complaining, I know that some pickups cost way more, I just want to know).

thanks!

 

I must concur...had a wish with a KA soap installed...loved the pickup...(didn't love the bass...bass went away last year)

If I were to do a custom bass, I would seriously consider installing a pair of KA soaps in it. A lot of soaps I've tried had a sorta compressed and middly sound to them...the KA's have a nice even "clean" sound about them.

 

Were the KA soaps good for blues and rock? What do you think of a P in neck position and a MM in the bridge? Or would the soaps be better?

 

His son Aaron makes replacement pickups for Aria basses. Im very happy with those.