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Double Bass Looking for a pickup that can be taken on and off multiple basses

#41
Cheap student (plywood?) basses might not work well with contact mics. The sealing that is needed for an Ischell is too risky for a student, a sealed one like the AKG 411 or a piezo-based one like the Ehrlund would be better. (You won't like the risk of a dropped magnet inside the bass with the MSP.)
But there is still the problem of the right placement.
If you can get one cheap, you can try it, but I would at least have one bridge mounted pickup.
 
#42
+1 for this. You need quick and simple. I use an Ehrlund myself and wouldn't want to deal with that in these situations. I feel the same about microphones in this context- too many variables and possible complications. Expense is another consideration. Simple pickups work well enough and are cheap- the ideal solution.
 
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#44
The Realist Soundclip would definitely work, it hasn't been well reviewed here on Talkbass. Most of the comments
about it have been pretty lukewarm, but I've never used one myself. I haven't followed this threaded in a while
there is the Barcus Berry B 3150 it it's expensive. It can be easily moved from one bass to another easily. I did have one thought though. You could
have a "designated bass" that had a decent setup and pickup for the concerts and have the kids all share the same instrument.
Just a possibility. :)
 
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#45
Ric Vice said:
The Realist Soundclip would definitely work, it hasn't been well reviewed here on Talkbass. Most of the comments
about it have been pretty lukewarm, but I've never used one myself.
Click to expand...
The lukewarm is mainly about the high price and the fact that the more invasive pick ups perform a bit better. When you add "comes off the bass easy" as a requirement it is by far the best out there. Oddly, it is a touch better for arco than pizz, it is the best arco pick up I've tried.
The BB clamp is actually a great pick up through modern amps. It is just not very robust, the cable is thin and needs a funky adapter or you have to solder a 1/4" jack on to it - which I did.
 
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#47
Another bass player and I spent a few days with the Sound Clip, fiddling with the amount of weights to add and trying different mounting locations and tensions. (FYI it was his personal pickup). The frequency response was extremely uneven, which greatly limited gain before feedback. We found the Sound Clip to be essentially unusable with pizz.

The owner of the pickup bought a Fishman Platinum Pro EQ/DI...the original analog one. It did not really seem to help. I ran the Sound Clip into a Countryman Type 85 DI with 10 Meg input impedance. I tried to tune the pickup with the channel strip on a Yamaha LS9-16. This EQ was set up for four bands of parametric and also had a variable HPF. My point: It's a pretty powerful and flexible EQ. Still sounded awful.

For the record I have a lot of experience tuning upright with EQ, and I can make most pickups sound relatively good. Not the Sound Clip. It seem totally resistant to EQ.

The Sound Clip was replaced by an Ehrlund EAP which is probably the best sounding pickup I have ever heard. The owner indicated he would keep the Sound Clip because of how convenient it was to use on different basses. I believe he wound up selling it fairly quickly though. He tried it on multiple basses and reported they all sounded bad.

I do think the Sound Clip would probably be a bit less horrible with arco...but I still would not use it.

Honestly if John Patitucci can't make it sound good...


I do agree that Patitucci is able to fill out the sound a bit in this video, but he's not really amplifying the bass...in other words, he is not really making the bass any louder than it is acoustically. The negative characteristics of this pickup will quickly become much more apparent if you need to actually amplify the bass.

Years ago I tried a Barcus Berry B3150M. I agree the B3150M is somewhat fragile, and from what I remember the results were pretty similar to the sound clip...maybe a touch better but not much. Although I found the results unacceptable, I reserved judgement on the B3150 as I believe it should be used with a 3000A preamp or the updated 3000AE. The pickup has a RCA plug that mates to the preamp. The preamp provides 1/4" output.

At the time when I tried the B3150M, the bass I was using had a Barcus Berry pickup that looked like three pieces of popsicle sticks permanently glued to the bridge. This pickup also required an inline buffer amp. This was one of the best sounding pickups I ever used, so I did not invest too much time in trying to make the B3150 work. I tried the B3150 because the 3.5mm jack on the popsicle pickup was damaged when the buffer fell of the tail piece. The buffer was held to the back of the tailpiece with velcro.
 
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#48
It's a piezo that cost a lot more than the Lifeline. The Realist Sound Clip was designed to be a removable pickup you could
easily take on and off an instrument, apparently it's more difficult to negotiate and set up than the Realist Lifeline which came
just a few years large. Like you, I've never encountered one on a bass anywhere.
 
#52
sean_on_bass said:
I still think a clip on condenser mic would be the easiest and most practical.
Click to expand...

We did do that last summer at Webster Jazz Camp here in St. Louis. I used my Remic Green twice on our final concert once with DB and once with Cello (neither of those students had a pickup of their own)

It sounded great out in the house where I was sitting, in fact it was a much cleaner sound than the amplified pickups that were used on stage. Since I already owned the Remic there was no cost to

the camp. As a solution for someone who intends to make purchases it's probably not cost cost effective as the three clip ons that come to mind are quite expensive (i.e. Remic Green, DPA 4099 Dvote, Neumann MCM 114, ATM 350 or 35. )

I know there's lots of love around here for the Prodipe which along with the Ovid TBone are really inexpensive. Just my take.
 
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