Show us your 3 pickup basses!

[SGD Lutherie]

Boy that sucker was midrange thick! I listened to You Bet Your Life (whole album). In Artificial Intelligence it really punched through, it seemed to be a bit low end starved on Do What Makes Your Heart Sing. Many influences in that stuff, couldn't help but think of Jan Hammer's solo efforts based on what I heard of the guitarist. Linndrums? Yamahas? Er ???

But yea, that bass had a shipload of midrange!

You Bet Your Life was a live track. I played my other '73 Rick. It had the Hi-A pickup at the bridge and a Gibson EB-0 pickup at the neck. I don't know why they put that as an album.

Artificial Intelligence has the same bass. The drums on that was an Emu Drumulator. That track, as well as Do What Makes Your Heart Sing, and the other non Jetsonz or Blue tracks is me playing everything. The drums were samples I sequenced in Cubase. The synths were various software synth plugins or a Korg or Oberheim Matrix 6.

Do What Makes Your Heart Sing is my zebrawood topped bass. I think I had EMGs in it at that point. Yeah, that has Jeff Beck Wired inspired guitar parts, and I always loved Jan Hammer's playing. So you hear that in there as well with the echo and stuff.

But now we are off topic, aren't we.

 

[Doner Designs]

Here's an older thread I just ran across with a handful of cool triples (or more).

I really don't understand why there are not more production triples. A Fender J+1 (strat style with a 5 way switch) would be the bees knees and the cat's pajammas all rolled into one.

I really like the Stu Hamm model, but the price is absurd. Anybody have one? You don't hear much about them. He's one of my favorite players too.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/post-your-3-pickup-basses-772776/

 

[Doner Designs]

There's a very beautiful Stambaugh in this thread on HC...

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[Flux Jetson]

....But now we are off topic, aren't we.

Yup .. sorry ...

 

[Doner Designs]

Here is a couple of mine:

This is a 1972 Tele Bass that I purchased last year (I think; sorry that it is somewhat obscured by the two p- basses)...

I have another 72 Tele body that is all original, but I rewired this one & have really been enjoying it the way it is. Eventually, I'll swap things around (I also have a Warmoth Tele bass neck).

Moonshine

Hey Moonshine - I did not see the tele in the background there at first. How did you wire that one?

 

[Doner Designs]

This puppy has a 5 position switch, like a strat. Lace Sensor pups with V/B/T controls. Switch positions 1-3-5 give the individual pups, with a single coil character, and positions 2-4 give the neck and middle or the bridge and middle, with a humbucking character. It's a very fun bass to play, narrow slim neck.

I ordered another J pickup for my jazz. Not sure whether to do it like yours or cut the ears off and glue them together like a double J. Probably will glue them together and put the new one toward the bridge side. PG limits options if you care about looks.

 

[Doner Designs]

What is the tone like of that single coil right at the saddles? Piezo-like?

 

[Doner Designs]

It is a cool shape. If you look at the 8-string I made from the P bass, and then the Big Al, you can see a resemblance. I think it's because Albert Lee's guitar started out with a more general Fender/MM shape and then had parts cut off, just as mine did. Mine is pointier.

Here it was in '96 after getting a new neck and paint job.

David, what is the P like at the bridge in your Jetson bass? I heard the offset affects the tone more at the bridge position. Seems like the D and G would be super twangy.

 

[Doner Designs]

I only have live pics of my 3 pickup Pbass, I will try to get some better pics later. 1 P p/u and a set of J p/u (EMG) wired VVV @ 18 volts. This is by far my favorite Pbass to date, I can get just about any tone I can think of out of it.

View attachment 306209

View attachment 306209

Nice. I like the black with maple neck combo. Did you start with a P bass and add the two J pickups?

 

[bassbenj]

Well I'm interested - very cool! I've been looking for something like this and maybe some other options. I do not like the rotary idea as much as using multiple toggles. I guess those are 4PDT. Never used them before but obviouly they give you a lot more options. I might look into strat type mega-switches too.

No. Actually those are what is called "3 way" switches not 4PDT. You can see more if you look up the numbers given at Mouser or Digikey. They are like what you find for some functions in G&L basses.

 

[Flux Jetson]

No. Actually those are what is called "3 way" switches ......

I use them ALLL the time, I usually keep 50 in stock. Wonderful little toys. These are ON-ON-ON .....

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Switching logic = (pretend you're looking at the terminals here)

1 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6

Toggle UP connects 3 to 5, and 4 to 6

Toggle DOWN connects 3 to 1, and 4 to 2

Toggle CENTER connects 3 to 5, and 4 to 2.

Easly peasy mangs.

If you wanted to (let's say) install capacitors on a 3-way toggle (on-on-on) you do it like what is shown on the bottom three switch legends.

(forgive the wobbly elements in this drawing, I'm really carppy with paint programs).

Fluxtard

 

[Doner Designs]

No. Actually those are what is called "3 way" switches not 4PDT. You can see more if you look up the numbers given at Mouser or Digikey. They are like what you find for some functions in G&L basses.

I looked them both up but was in a bit of a rush. Will need to take another look. I use three position on/on/on all the time but thought I saw 8 terminals on those rather than the 6 I'm used to.

 

[Doner Designs]

I use them ALLL the time, I usually keep 50 in stock. Wonderful little toys. These are ON-ON-ON .....

Invalid Link Removed

Switching logic = (pretend you're looking at the terminals here)

1 - 2
3 - 4
5 - 6

Toggle UP connects 3 to 5, and 4 to 6

Toggle DOWN connects 3 to 1, and 4 to 2

Toggle CENTER connects 3 to 5, and 4 to 2.

Easly peasy mangs.

If you wanted to (let's say) install capacitors on a 3-way toggle (on-on-on) you do it like what is shown on the bottom three switch legends.

(forgive the wobbly elements in this drawing, I'm really carppy with paint programs).

Fluxtard

Thanks Flux. I thought those were 8 terminal switches but must have been in too much of a rush.

It does pay to buy in bulk from an electronics wholesaler (I use Newark Electronics in Chicago) for the common switches, caps and resistors that are not guitar specific.

Guitarelectronics.com is great for the specialty items, but can get expensive when you are a mad scientist. For a few mods here and there its not a big deal either way but the more you do the more $5 here and $7 there eats you alive.

 

[Flux Jetson]

It's all good. Maybe my little crayon drawings will help someone that has a reduced understanding of such things, I figured you knew all of this stuff already .... you are leaps and bounds above what I can do with pickups and the like!

I need to keep things so simple that I have to have my pickups come out of their own jacks so that I can keep track of what is going on! Heheh ...

Gotta have it allllll spread out in front of me all nice and simple-like.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

David, what is the P like at the bridge in your Jetson bass? I heard the offset affects the tone more at the bridge position. Seems like the D and G would be super twangy.

If it wasn't for the fact that those pickup routs were done when I bought got bass, I would have reversed both of them. The P bass originally had the P pickup moved to the bridge position, and a custom made humbucker, with curved blades, at the neck.

This was back in the 70s, and was done by a guitar builder from West Orange NJ that went by the name Amatone. He was quite ahead of his time. It also had copper wound strings on it! The guy wound his own strings. His invention was the "edge wound string"; it was wound with flat ribbon wire, but instead of being a conventional flatwound, it was turned on it's edge. So it felt like a flat wound and sounded more like a round wound.

Anyway, to answer your question, because it is a P pickup, it's bright, but a lot smoother than you would expect at that location. Those current pickups are some DiMarzio clones that I rewound to low impedance.

I'm restoring the bass, and will likely replace the Ps with soapbars.

Here's a couple of old photos of the bass as it was being converted from the Jetsonz bass to how it looks now with the new neck.

Neck parts and body with old pealing paint job on body. The neck is maple/walnut with ebony board, and has two truss rods and graphite.

Finished neck and stripped body in my old workshop. I inlayed a maple block into the alder body for the neck medium scale neck.

 

[Flux Jetson]

What's a medium scale neck?

Also, is the impedance of a pickup measured just as the fixed resistance? Like just measuring how much resistance is seen across the the two leads? Or is it done some other way (like the way electronic devices are measured, y'know with a fixed frequency of like 10khz applied or whatever as well as other things taken into consideration).

And how do you go about changing a given pickup's impedance from hi to low .. er lowER than it was ... do you use different wire ... different guage so that it takes fewer turns or something (like winding a transformer)? I'm just curious to know, I love learning.

I read about that bass player for Audioslave .. Tim Commerford (I think). He was saying he winds his own pickups in his BEAD strung Jazz basses. He said it takes him like two weeks (no winder used). Fascinating stuff!

 

[Flux Jetson]

And another thing (addressing all readers of this thread). Does it make any consequential difference in sound if you place one pickup ahead of another in a series configured setup? Said another way, does it sound any different if the neck pickup is first and the bridge pickup is second, vs the other way around? If so, how are these multi-pickup rigs done up?

Thanks! I'm beginning to slowly grasp all of this parallel/series pickup stuff. I'm not exactly the brightest bulb on the tree.

A lot of times when I read some of the posts in this thread it all turns into Charlie Brown's teachers ..... "bluh bluh bluh .... blah blah bluh bluh bluh ... bla BLAH bluh BLUH BLUH blah blah blah".

Heheh ..

 

[Doner Designs]

David, what is the point of the stagger in a P pickup? Other things being equal, would a "big split" type pickup sound about the same?

I assume Leo did it that way originally because it was maybe cheaper and easier to make that way with no need to worry about signal loss at the edges of the middle strings.

Nowadays I suspect its more about the classic look. Am I right? Of course the stagger would cause some slight differential in the tone of each pair of strings because of location (not a good thing IMO).

I guess what I'm really asking is whether the stagger has an effect on phase cancellation between the two halves of what is, in essence, a side by side humbucker.

 

[Doner Designs]

A few more nice ones in this thread...

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/show-me-three-pickup-production-basses-636014/

I still have not seen a triple MM or triple JJ (double J) which would obviously be 6 (or 12) coils. Dying to try that. Maybe start with a used Squier P bass or Bronco.

 

[fokof]

Here's mine.

Carvin LB75PF

the piezo pickup also serves as GK 13 pin pickup so it is almost a 4 pickup bass !




( I also could have posted all my two pickups bass with a GK3 pickup added)