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Pickup locations

#2
There are no fixed rules for pickup position, and yes, position does matter. According to some, pickup position matters more than type of pickup.

When I was building my last bass, I put another bass on the workbench that had the same strings I was going to use for my new bass. Then I held the pickup for the new bass just above the strings of the old bass. That way I could test the electronics, and choose a position for the pickup.
 
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#3
Here are some common pickup placements in ratio form and distance from a 34" scale nut. I stole this from someone on here I do not remember who.
file-7.jpg

file-8.jpg


But personally I kind of just eyeball it or it ends up where it ends up because I'm using a body that already has a pickup route and the neck isn't supposed to go with the body.
 
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#4
It matters, yes. But how much depends on what you're trying to get out of it. There's a million different ways to achieve a desired effect. The first thing you need to do is define the effect you're looking for.

That being said, it's a fairly crude assumption to say "the closer to the bridge, the more 'treble-y' the pickup will sound, and the closer to the neck the more 'bass-y' it will sound." But, that assumption also has a lot of truth in it.
What I do is, I look at other production basses that have a specific tone and I think about what I want out of what I'm building. I then place the pickups in the general location of said production bass. If you're looking for a P Bass sound, then go with the P Bass location. If you're looking for a Musicman sound, go with that location. And so on. Do you need to be exact? Well, if you're an engineer, then yes. Otherwise, I like to say "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good." Get it as close as you can, however you need to go about that.
But my advice is to look at production basses that have a tone you desire and model it after that...roughly.
 
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#5
All good advice given. While samples and demo's on youtube and the like can vary, (effects, recording quality etc.) they're still worth checking out. Try and listen to basses with pickups you are thinking of using, recorded with as little added effects as possible, that gives you a base line. It's pretty easy to find demos of most common pickup types and brands, so you can certainly hear examples of pickups in their usual places and some where particular pickups are mounted in different to "normal" positions. Music Man pickups closer to the bridge, or P bass pickups near the bridge, or closer to the neck, etc.

Also where you place pickups in relation to each other can be worth considering. Take a Warwick Thumb bass for example, they have a very specific and recognizable sound. Sure, partly due to the dense woods used, their construction, hardware and pickup types, but their pickup placement plays a big part in how they sound too. Then there's the traditional placements for Stingray, Jazz bass and precision bass pickups, which contribute significantly to their sounds. But then Lee Sklar's P bass, with two P pickups mounted one in front and one in back, of where the traditional placement is, didn't stop Lee using it on over 2,500 recorded tracks.

Leo Fender continued making pickups and experimenting his whole working life. He had a test bed made up so he could move pickups around under a set of strings and see what sounded the best (to his ear) in what positions. Have some fun and play around a bit if you want. I know there's some clips on line where people demonstrate test beds they've made and show pickups being moved around.

Here's a few illustrations I've always found useful references regarding pickup positions.

pickup location 2.jpg
2500ee2dc5be1c0fe8898d9a317e4862.jpg
PickupLocations_zps2ce3d2bc.png
pickup_comparison_zps9ffdefd6.jpg
 
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#7
Here's an old post of mine from 2018, describing my "rules" of pickup placement:

Most of us established (as in grey-haired) Luthiers have gone through the process of messing with pickup positions. When I got into designing and building my own pickups about 15 years ago, like everyone else, I built a bench mule and spent some time experimenting with moving the pickup up and down the body. The results were underwhelming.

Summary:
Take one particular pickup and mount it right in the middle of the body. Set the bass Tone controls wide open, and the amp's EQ controls all on 5. That's the "natural" sound of that pickup, when used with that combination of strings, the bass frame, and the amp.

Now, if you slide the pickup toward the bridge, the change in the sound is all in the bottom end of the EQ. It's just as if you had reached over to the amp and turned the Bass knob down from 5 to 4 to 3. It's not increasing the Treble, it's moderately cutting down the Bass. That's the only thing that's changing in the overall sound of the rig.

Slide the pickup the other way, toward the neck, and you boost the Bass from 5 to 6 to 7. The Treble stays the same; the Bass end of the curve gets louder.

Sliding the pickup doesn't change whether the pickup is muddy or clear, it just subdues it or exaggerates it. If the pickup, by its internal design, is muddy in the bottom end, then sliding it toward the neck will make the muddiness louder and more obvious. Sliding it toward the bridge will make the muddiness quieter. If the pickup's natural sound is very clear and wide range, sliding it toward the neck will boost a clear bottom end. Toward the bridge, it will reduce the bottom end, but still be very clear.

The point is that most of a pickups' tonal characteristic comes from its internal construction; the size and power of the magnetic field, the geometry of the coils, the size and number of turns of wire, etc., etc. None of that changes when you slide it around on the body. All you are doing is moderately adjusting the bottom end of the overall EQ curve.

There are no real "magic sweet spots" in the pickup position. Unless your definition of Magic Sweet Spot is that "the EQ curve sounds just the way I want it right here" or "right here it sounds just like this other bass". Okay. Pickup position is pretty much a linear adjustment. You can slide the pickup where you want it to get the Treble/Bass balance of the EQ where you want it. After you've settled on one position, you can further adjust the EQ balance by reaching over to the amp and turning the Bass knob up or down.

That's what we builders and manufacturers do. We set the pickup position on the body as a final adjustment of the overall EQ balance, for that particular pickup.

A follow-up post:

I notice that no one has yelled "What about the harmonics?" yet. You know, how pickups have to be placed precisely so you can hear the harmonics!! The magic sweet spot locations.

Guitar players and builders go wacko about Harmonics, because they want that screeching dog-whistle high end ringing while they hold a chord, trying to figure out where to go next with the lead. :D And some bass players want screeching harmonics too, so they can do solos too.

And by the way, The Screeching Harmonics could be a good band name.

If you want to, you can use measurement and math to locate your pickups precisely at the right spot to maximize the screeching harmonics....for a particular set of notes and chords. Up or down a step, and you get gentler normal harmonics.

Personally, I don't build my basses to have exaggerated harmonics on particular notes. I make my pickups to have a nice clear high end, but not excessive extra-highs. And I make them fairly wide aperture, so the harmonics are picked up more evenly on all notes. Less high spikes with position. That's intentional. My basses have nice harmonics, but they are gentle, more in the background, even up and down the scale.

I'm sorry if I've offended the Screeching Harmonics believers.
 
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#8
When I built my first bass I wasn't sure where to put the pickup, so I hedged my bets and put it in the middle. I put the centre of the pickup 100mm (4") from the bridge. I was surprised at how good it sounded. Bright and clear but with plenty of bass and most importantly, growl. The pickup was a soapbar, an EMG 40DCX. I tried to reproduce the tone on other basses but never got it until I realised that I was using traditional Jazz or Precision pickup placement.

The 100mm position won't do the Jazz Bridge slap and pop sound but it does a fair impression of a music man if you pluck in the right place. Roll off the tone and pluck nearer the neck and you get a darker tone that's good enough for most things. The Jazz bridge position won't give you much bass, as Bruce describes. You will need to have a neck pickup to blend the tone with.

Pickup placement tone is a sliding scale. Bridge= bright and snappy but without much bass. Middle = best of both. Neck = full and warm but with less treble. Experiment, or find something you like and copy it.
 
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#9
I'd always assumed that while pickup placement to avoid objectionable sound qualities is wise, that more important is where the strings are picked or plucked, and the pickup(s) should then be limited to anywhere that keeps out of the way of main business. If I pluck a string I like the sound near the neck. If I pick it, I like the sound roughly at the same proportion of length to where a bass string is hit by a piano hammer (i.e. close to the bridge). It seems to me that the standard location of a P-bass split pickup is roughly equally between these points of energising the strings.

I have a Status Graphite that puts one of two pickups in what is for me an inconvenient location. A previous and similar Status Graphite bass did not do this. I found it interesting that I could never get the later one to sound as good as the earlier one.

This may have to do with expectations, but it still seems unwise to me to put pickup placement anywhere that might get in the way of playing the instrument, however good it is meant to sound at that point.
 
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#11
Durham52 said:
All good advice given. While samples and demo's on youtube and the like can vary, (effects, recording quality etc.) they're still worth checking out. Try and listen to basses with pickups you are thinking of using, recorded with as little added effects as possible, that gives you a base line. It's pretty easy to find demos of most common pickup types and brands, so you can certainly hear examples of pickups in their usual places and some where particular pickups are mounted in different to "normal" positions. Music Man pickups closer to the bridge, or P bass pickups near the bridge, or closer to the neck, etc.

Also where you place pickups in relation to each other can be worth considering. Take a Warwick Thumb bass for example, they have a very specific and recognizable sound. Sure, partly due to the dense woods used, their construction, hardware and pickup types, but their pickup placement plays a big part in how they sound too. Then there's the traditional placements for Stingray, Jazz bass and precision bass pickups, which contribute significantly to their sounds. But then Lee Sklar's P bass, with two P pickups mounted one in front and one in back, of where the traditional placement is, didn't stop Lee using it on over 2,500 recorded tracks.

Leo Fender continued making pickups and experimenting his whole working life. He had a test bed made up so he could move pickups around under a set of strings and see what sounded the best (to his ear) in what positions. Have some fun and play around a bit if you want. I know there's some clips on line where people demonstrate test beds they've made and show pickups being moved around.

Here's a few illustrations I've always found useful references regarding pickup positions.

View attachment 4854627 View attachment 4854628 View attachment 4854629 View attachment 4854630
Click to expand...

Very cool graphic here, I had never considered how far neckwards the neck pickup on a Rick is compared to other basses but this makes it clear that it's very much an outlier. I wonder how it stacks up against something like an EB0 mudbucker or a Thunderbird.
 
#12
Yrs ago I built a bass. Used jazz pickups and wanted the neck to be a bit thinner and the bridge to be a bit fatter so I move each about 1/2 inch (neck PU toward bridge, bridge PU toward neck). It was fine. I played it for years and it sounded ... fine.

But I started with a known-good configuration (Fender Jazz layout) and tweaked it a bit. With later builds I've tended to just go with the normal Fender locations. It is just easier that way. Not right or wrong, just easier and more predictable.
 
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#14
The idea that there's a sweet spot for pickup placement is somewhat flawed. If the "sweet spot" is 3/4 of the distance from the nut to the bridge on an open string, it will be 3/4 of the distance between the fretted position and the bridge on a fretted note. So play an A on the E string and you need to move the pickup closer to the bridge to find the sweet spot for that note.
 
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#15
It's all about averages, since each note on each string and fret will have a different place where the nodes and anti-nodes propagate. When I wanted to figure out where to put the pickups on my custom fanned fret P-style bass, I simply played several P-basses, different pickups and strings, plucking the strings in different places, and finally doing the math to see if anything else helped. In the end, it was my fingers and ears that determined the pickup placement, which on this particular instrument with narrowed string spacing is a Rickenbacker humbucker placed proportionally in approximately the same place as the "D-G" part of a standard P-pickup. I couldn't decide about the J-bridge pickup, so I put it in between the traditional "60's" and "70's" position. Your mileage will vary. Link:
A Different Custom P-style Bass
 
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#18
Lostgallifreyan said:
I have a Status Graphite that puts one of two pickups in what is for me an inconvenient location. A previous and similar Status Graphite bass did not do this. I found it interesting that I could never get the later one to sound as good as the earlier one.

This may have to do with expectations, but it still seems unwise to me to put pickup placement anywhere that might get in the way of playing the instrument, however good it is meant to sound at that point.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting point that I never considered because I don't normally rest my thumb on the pickup, or dig in hard enough to hit the pickup, or otherwise noticeably touch it. But it would still be important to keep in mind when building for someone else.
 
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#19
Max Bogosity said:
That's an interesting point that I never considered because I don't normally rest my thumb on the pickup, or dig in hard enough to hit the pickup, or otherwise noticeably touch it. But it would still be important to keep in mind when building for someone else.
Click to expand...

It would if they like a Burnel-like noise. :) I do, and I kept colliding with one of the pickups. All good though, that Status could not growl like my Westones do. I think it has a sound that could be excellent for slap bass. That too might result in some interesting collisions, but I'll never know because it's not a playing style I ever use.
 

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