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Double Bass pickup for jazz/doubling setup

Jun 18, 2004
13,870
16,971
central coast
nostatic.com
Disclosures
Endorsing Artist: FEA Labs
Am moving back to doubling after a long stint of electric only. I'm not looking to change up my amp rig much as I've got a setup that works really well for BG and I think will be fine for upright. Mainly trying to figure out the best pickup for my application. Here's what I've got to work with:

Bass: Shen SB190 carved top/sides, laminate flatback
Amps: Monique tube preamp/Demeter Minnie power amp in Baer ML112 cab. Puma 900 backup amp, also just got a Big E 4x6 cab.

Variety of pedals but likely won't use those for upright. I do have an fDeck Series 3 available.

Music is jazz, though I could see maybe using upright drifting into some of the more soul/funk side of things. Mostly pizz though I'm digging arco (but have a *lot* of 'shedding to do before it is public). Arco is probably loud enough without much amplification for my gigs so mostly worried about getting pizz amplified well.

I put a KK Bass Max on and am somewhat underwhelmed though I haven't done a lot of eq tweaking. Ideally I want the bass to sound like itself. I'm not a big fan of boomy lows or super thick low-mids. I like defined mids (the Baer is a mid-present cab, no tweeter, instead it has a 12" and 6").

Seems like my candidates would be:

KK Double Big Twin
Gage Realist
Fishman Full Circle
Rev Solo

Any pushes/nudges one way or another given the gear and the goals?
 
I seem to be one of a select few who likes the Realist Soundclip. For near-as-dammit-to-a-mic tone the Ehrlund gets much props. There has recently been a large price increase, although the Gollihur boys have intimated that they can be flexible on that score.

Far be it from me, but I would be looking more towards my Puma/Big E rig for DB than the Jules Monique/Baer. I believe the former is Mike Arnopol's current setup.

In any case, that's some very nice shizz you got there, man.
 
For me on my bass with my hands and for what I'm trying to do musically, the Full Circle ended my pickup search. All of the "Nachbar Chronicles" cuts on my website's soundclips page are live recordings where it was being used. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to let me focus on making music instead of futzing with gear.