About 18 months ago, I started looking around at options to refit my Nashville Tobias Classic 6 string; which is fundamentally a pretty nice bass, weighing in a shade over 9 pounds, having a nice neck profile, and being very resonant and even throughout its registers. As part of the refit, I wanted to get close to the tones I was hearing from Foderas; so, I decided to give the Pope Flexcore a try. For pickups, I wanted to get closer to the single coil open character than the Bart pickups; and decided that exposed poles would be interesting to try.
As I was looking at various options, the Nordstrand shop announced the single coil Big Blade pickups. Those were interesting, because getting the exposed round slug pole types to line up with the string spacing on the Tobias was going to take custom bobbins/winding/etc. After listening to the Big Single vs Fat Stack sound clips, it seemed to me that the Nordstrand folks were doing a very credible job getting their hum cancelling pickups into a similar tonal zone as compared to the single coil designs.
So, I called Carey to ask if hum cancelling Big Blades might be an option. Carey's response was more or less to connect me to Adrian Smith, a bass player and member of the Nordstrand staff, who indeed was playing with some designs along these lines. Adrian agreed to send me a prototype set to evaluate.
Well, the prototype set arrived about a month ago, and the bass went off to Pat Wilkins for refinishing and refitting. Pat, BTW, is an awesome cat. Here is the result:
Here is how I would characterize these pickups: VERY open, VERY even, NOT voiced, NOT scooped. In short, they are a solid platform that is a virtual blank canvas with which to construct your tone. Plenty of heft, but no honk.
I took the bass right away to rehearsal with my current cover band; and it effectively covered all the tones I use, running the gamut from thump to slap to staccato etc. Very clear in the mix.
Big shout out to Carey and Adrian who are very cool cats and were enormously helpful in getting exactly what I was after. Class act. We are fortunate to have them as part of the framework. Thanks, guys!
As I was looking at various options, the Nordstrand shop announced the single coil Big Blade pickups. Those were interesting, because getting the exposed round slug pole types to line up with the string spacing on the Tobias was going to take custom bobbins/winding/etc. After listening to the Big Single vs Fat Stack sound clips, it seemed to me that the Nordstrand folks were doing a very credible job getting their hum cancelling pickups into a similar tonal zone as compared to the single coil designs.
So, I called Carey to ask if hum cancelling Big Blades might be an option. Carey's response was more or less to connect me to Adrian Smith, a bass player and member of the Nordstrand staff, who indeed was playing with some designs along these lines. Adrian agreed to send me a prototype set to evaluate.
Well, the prototype set arrived about a month ago, and the bass went off to Pat Wilkins for refinishing and refitting. Pat, BTW, is an awesome cat. Here is the result:
Here is how I would characterize these pickups: VERY open, VERY even, NOT voiced, NOT scooped. In short, they are a solid platform that is a virtual blank canvas with which to construct your tone. Plenty of heft, but no honk.
I took the bass right away to rehearsal with my current cover band; and it effectively covered all the tones I use, running the gamut from thump to slap to staccato etc. Very clear in the mix.
Big shout out to Carey and Adrian who are very cool cats and were enormously helpful in getting exactly what I was after. Class act. We are fortunate to have them as part of the framework. Thanks, guys!
