Raised A & D Poles

To help match the radius of the fretboard. All the strings will be at the same distance from the face of the pole pieces.

 

Interestingly enough, I was thinking of starting a thread about this too.

What do most of you think about raised poles? Do you feel the E string suffers? I put DiMarzio Area J's in my Spector NS-2J and they sound great but the E string is a little weak. Certainly better than the EMG's they replaced, but I can't help but wonder about the raised poles forcing the pickup to be too low on the E string side. I'd raise it up just to see, but I don't have enough foam underneath to push it up so when I get some time I'll add some foam and try it.

 

It shouldn't affect the e string at all as all the staggered poles do is level the playing field for the 2 middle strings which can sometimes be noticeably more quiet without staggered poles. If your e string sounds quiet and raising that side of the pickup doesn't help, there are tons of possible culprits- alignment of the e over the poles, eq settings, cabinet frequency response (the limitations of a speaker will be most obvious on the lower range of the e string), etcetera...

 

yeah, the problem is the E is too hot with flat J pickups, unless you drop the pickup further away entirely, losing overall output.

the fralin J stagger is pretty subtle, less than the radius of a typical jazz bass. highly recommended.

 

I personally love the DiMarzio Model J's not only for their tone, but their individually adjustable poles- pure tonal evenness/response/heaven.

Acronyms.

Rob

 

Raised A & D pole pickups are really best on basses with small radius fretboards...if you have a relatively flat radius it's not really necessary.