pickup placement

[andre van ham]

Hi guys, i'm going to try and build my first bass. I have read almost every thread in the Luthier's Corner and have been thinking and gathering information on bassbuilding for years now.

At this moment i'm almost finished with my detail plans, i've drawn a template, decided on woods to use, neckwidth, scale etc.

One thing remains, pickup placement. The bass i designed (i actually adapted the SC model Wilser has done...) is going to be a 6-string, 36" scale bass.

I've also got a really nice custommade jazz-bass and i was thinking of using singlecoils (or stacked coils) on my bass. First i thought i'd just take the pickup placement of that jazzbass and use it on my bass. Then i realised that my bass is going to be 36" scale and my jazzbass is 34" scale.

Now, does it make sence to translate the placement of the pickups to the 36" scale or should i take the placement on the jazzbass directly to the new bass?

 

[ehque]

if you want it to sound like a jazz bass, translate.

then you'll pick up overtones that are more similar to the jazz. It isn't compulsory to do this though, but keeping it as it is, you've technically "moved" the pickups closer to the bridge, and that means a brighter sound, maybe?

 

[msherman]

A Jazz bass has the bridge pickup centerline mounted at 1/16 of the open scale length. With a 36" scale, 1/16 of the open scale equates to 2.250" from the G saddle intonation point.

Hope that helps

 

[andre van ham]

thanks for the quick answers guys!

I'm going to use that 1/16 of the scale placement.

 

[pilotjones]

Except for the fact that the bridge placement has varied over the years. It's closer to the bridge on the 70's CBS "slappers," and there may be more to it than that, also.