I was in awe of the Fender Blacktops when I first saw them at the local Fender dealer. So many pole pieces:
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Pickups: Why do some basses have massive pickups, why do some have tiny ones?
- Thread starter Squid-TEGH
- Start date
- Sep 14, 2009
- 903
- 665
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- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: GullanskyLab pickups
Trying to answer in the simplest way possible:
"large" pickups may be usually humbuckers: double coil, fatter sound, lots of basses, sometimes muddy, no hum (as the name suggests); check Gibson, Music Man, and so on;
"thin" pickups may usually be single coil: thinner sound, brighter, sometimes nasal, more hum; check Fender Jazz, Rickenbacker, and so on;
there is also the split coil pickups, like the Fender Precision (two half coils, one each two strings); sound fatter, but not muddy;
Many pickups (Fender J and P) have two pole pieces per string, in order to catch the magnetic fields while the strings vibrates; sometimes they have a single but larger pole piece, like on Music Man; sometimes they have a blade-like shaped single magnet, or incased in a metal tube ("lipstick", see Danelectro), sometimes the pole pieces are made as screw heads.
Sometimes, especially on 80's basses, you find humbucker pickups you can split in single coils;
or two single coils that can be wired in series or parallel (easy modding on Jazz basses); there's a whole world of things.
You will find a lot of accurate and better infos checking in the pickups forums.
Just play as many basses you can (spend some time in instrument shops until they start to hate you...), it's the better way to get accustomed to new sounds.
"large" pickups may be usually humbuckers: double coil, fatter sound, lots of basses, sometimes muddy, no hum (as the name suggests); check Gibson, Music Man, and so on;
"thin" pickups may usually be single coil: thinner sound, brighter, sometimes nasal, more hum; check Fender Jazz, Rickenbacker, and so on;
there is also the split coil pickups, like the Fender Precision (two half coils, one each two strings); sound fatter, but not muddy;
Many pickups (Fender J and P) have two pole pieces per string, in order to catch the magnetic fields while the strings vibrates; sometimes they have a single but larger pole piece, like on Music Man; sometimes they have a blade-like shaped single magnet, or incased in a metal tube ("lipstick", see Danelectro), sometimes the pole pieces are made as screw heads.
Sometimes, especially on 80's basses, you find humbucker pickups you can split in single coils;
or two single coils that can be wired in series or parallel (easy modding on Jazz basses); there's a whole world of things.
You will find a lot of accurate and better infos checking in the pickups forums.
Just play as many basses you can (spend some time in instrument shops until they start to hate you...), it's the better way to get accustomed to new sounds.
Friday night, while I was gigging, a lot of folks in the audience seemed to wonder the same thing about my bass: "why the big humbucker, why only one big humbucker?" Then some lady came to me and asked me "why that big sized humbucker? I like the way it sounds but... Why?" So I went on with some big theory about the bigger the better and such... I brought her home as she was really impressed with my big humbucker.
Joke aside, play what is right for you, no explanation needed. In the end, bass players are the only one worrying about that stuff. Audience wants to be entertained, that's all.
Joke aside, play what is right for you, no explanation needed. In the end, bass players are the only one worrying about that stuff. Audience wants to be entertained, that's all.
Gaolee
Official leathers tester and crash dummy
No one really knows... we have theories but they're wrong, talk to a physicist
In some cases it's a cost saving measure so that the same pickup casing (in some cases the exact same pickup) can be used in different basses. For example, the Bartolini MK1 imported pickups all have the same size (some think they're the same pup) whether appearing on 4, 5 or 6 string instruments.
