Double Bass pickup for Kay

[walterw]

i've only done a handful of gigs with it but i'm happy with a K&K bassmax in my '54 C-1 (yep @Steven Ayres you should have it in your files)

the placement in the E-side wing/foot gap makes for a lot of output and a deep fundamental, cool for rootsier rock stuff through a big bass amp. that probably means less of the "wood tone" from the bass itself in the mix, and no idea on arco because i don't do that, but for my crude pizz stylings it works

i found that a foam wedge up under the tailpiece reduced feedback quite a bit without changing the pickup output, and i run it through an old fishman dual parametric EQ which lets me tightly notch out two feedback frequencies as well as flip overall polarity, two things that help a whole lot for increasing volume before feedback

from there it's into a sansamp Q-strip pedal for main EQ preamping and DI out

 

[EWest]

I play my '61 Kay Jazzmaster in a local jazz big band. I haven't tried many pickups on it, but I'm very happy with my current set-up, which is a Realist Lifeline straight into an AI Clarus SL. The EQ and HPF on the Clarus work so well that I've given up using a preamp.

 

[dfp]

Interesting that of all the examples of folks using the Realist in this thread, everyone is referencing the copper foil version, and one even uses it in conjunction with a thin layer of cork, which makes me wonder why no love for the wood encased element version of Realist (which might eliminate the need for the cork layer)? I did the foil version back in the day, like many I found the lumps inside the foil deformed my bass top and the tonal response degraded over time… so the wood version would seem to have improved on the original concept… full disclosure I just ordered the wood version after many years of wondering about it, can’t wait to try it! On a laminate top!

 

[Earl]

Interesting that of all the examples of folks using the Realist in this thread, everyone is referencing the copper foil version, and one even uses it in conjunction with a thin layer of cork, which makes me wonder why no love for the wood encased element version of Realist (which might eliminate the need for the cork layer)? I did the foil version back in the day, like many I found the lumps inside the foil deformed my bass top and the tonal response degraded over time… so the wood version would seem to have improved on the original concept… full disclosure I just ordered the wood version after many years of wondering about it, can’t wait to try it! On a laminate top!

The foil one no longer has the two lumps.

 

[dfp]

The foil one no longer has the two lumps.

Interesting, what are they using in the foil version now?