Meteora Bass project - what do you think?

I have more than a dozen brand new really nice Jazz Bass pickups left over from my big Jazz Bass Side-by-side humbucker shootout. (The one that I still haven't got around to editing together for youtube)

And I have boxes and boxes of bass hardware laying around, and now a brand new Starcaster neck on the way. I can't really finalize a drawing until the neck gets here and I can verify the string spacing, but I have been working up some very rough concept sketches.

I'm just wondering what might be the most interesting layout for pickups ( I have lots of them here, mostly "short" neck size).

Two?



Three?


FOUR?


Color probably won't be Fuchsia or Hot Pink, I'm actually leaning towards maybe a Lime Green Metalflake. Really have to wait until the neck gets here, and see what might be a complementary tone. Open to suggestions, of course!


PS: I did ponder the improbable - technically could do it, but this would doubtless sound VERY STRANGE:

 

Well, this post has certainly flown under the radar

I think I have worked out a lot of the details, probably going to make it like this:

I am a huge fan of oversized knobs ( 33mm shown, I might go even larger! ) and the two extra tailpieces would allow this 30 inch scale bass to use either short-scale, medium-scale, or long-scale strings...

Still pondering the angled pup possibility though ( have to check pole pieces, now that I know the string spacing...)

 

Hmmm... come ta think of it - one of these Fender-branded tailpieces might be pretty rad:

 

About twenty years ago I used a 4P3T toggle to do some interesting switching on a three pup bass. I forget the details, but I'm pretty sure one of the settings was all three in series

 

Actually, you'd be amazed at how well that judicious strap button placement can at least partially offset neck dive. And final pup placement will be guided by principles left to us by The Founding Fathers - but cosmetics is a factor too. I mean, it is a Meteora StarCaster, after all...


...and hmm, come to think of it, another viable option might be to use string anchors in place of Machine Heads - and use a headless bass tailpiece-tuner block / bridge set down the other end... Not sure if that would be in keeping with the spirit of Meteora though (would look more like a Kubicki I think!)

 

Sure!! However, my whole idea here is to mate a standard Meteora body with a standard Starcaster bass neck...

But, without further adieu, here is the lz4005 Signature Meteora Starcaster!!
With the strap-button properly placed @ 12th fret for optimum balance, this special limited edition model features a single P-Bass split-coil pickup in the "sweet spot", and boasts unfettered access all the way to the fifteenth fret!

 

I did read that part, but as I mentioned, it kinda kills the "Meteora" concept if I hack the Meteora body shape! Will do my best to make a "spirit-of-Meteora' useful cutaway version for you later tonight after I get through applying today's out-of-band patches to all of our unfortunate (windows) servers.

** Incidentally, the lz4005 signature (Mk.I) has passive volume and tone controls only! (those two extra knobs are for the built in Bluetooth PONG controller set...)