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MIM Pbass pickups: keep or replace?
- Thread starter 123four
- Start date
If you like the tone, stop right there. Do nothing and enjoy playing.
If you don’t like the tone, take the pickup out and look at its construction. If the pickup has a bar magnet at the bottom, then get a pickup with Alnico 5 pole pieces. You can go cheap to be honest. If the pickup has magnetic pole pieces and no bar magnet then grab an EQ pedal and cut/ boost 3-5 dB on sliders, messing around until you’re happy. Then you’re done.
You can try and buy pickups with that EQ curve achieved through pickup design, but it’s going to be hit and miss because EQ pedals can achieve more dramatic tone shifts than pickup manufacturers.
Want to make a real shift in tone? Use a different speaker. The speaker makes the sound and has a huge impact on your tone. That is why I run impulse responses into a FRFR speaker, so I can choose the tone I want through loading different IRs.
If you don’t like the tone, take the pickup out and look at its construction. If the pickup has a bar magnet at the bottom, then get a pickup with Alnico 5 pole pieces. You can go cheap to be honest. If the pickup has magnetic pole pieces and no bar magnet then grab an EQ pedal and cut/ boost 3-5 dB on sliders, messing around until you’re happy. Then you’re done.
You can try and buy pickups with that EQ curve achieved through pickup design, but it’s going to be hit and miss because EQ pedals can achieve more dramatic tone shifts than pickup manufacturers.
Want to make a real shift in tone? Use a different speaker. The speaker makes the sound and has a huge impact on your tone. That is why I run impulse responses into a FRFR speaker, so I can choose the tone I want through loading different IRs.
