Some real talk about Pickup Placement.....

[Jaco Taco]

No option for choosing Ric placement. Poll invalid.
/thread

 

[FourNotFive]

In an earlier post I said "The biggest mistake is trying to make one bass do all these things" and while dreaming it sounds cool, in practice it's generally a train wreck. This is a pretty universal concept, the pickup truck that drives like a sports car, the fishing boat with fancy amenities for the women or loafer you can jog in.

I agree when the solution involves compromises, but that is not the case with what I proposed.
Imagine that you know exactly what pickups you want and exactly where you want them positioned (let's call this "default position"). Now imagine that you can move them an inch or so in either direction and switch pickup styles. While these other options may not provide ideal results they do provide options and most importantly these options do not change or detract from the use of "default position".
Put another way: would having the ability to move or switch pickups on your current favorite bass make that bass sound / play any differently when the current pickups are in and placed where they are now? Nope.
By the way I drive a pickup truck that drives like a pickup truck, my fishing boat has no fancy amenities and I only wear loafers to work.

 

[peterpalmieri]

I agree when the solution involves compromises, but that is not the case with what I proposed.
Imagine that you know exactly what pickups you want and exactly where you want them positioned (let's call this "default position"). Now imagine that you can move them an inch or so in either direction and switch pickup styles. While these other options may not provide ideal results they do provide options and most importantly these options do not change or detract from the use of "default position".
Put another way: would having the ability to move or switch pickups on your current favorite bass make that bass sound / play any differently when the current pickups are in and placed where they are now? Nope.
By the way I drive a pickup truck that drives like a pickup truck, my fishing boat has no fancy amenities and I only wear loafers to work.

Have you checked out the Fodera Pope Viceroy? Only the back pickup moves, also Wood and Tronics is doing this, again with only the back pickup. Some others I know less about have been doing this. I get where you are going, totally cool not my thing. When I think swapping out the pickups too and having to remove the strings etc is a step to far. Likely if you change the location you likely want to adjust the height too. Makes me think there is a reason most who have tried this limit it to 1 moving pickup. Also the dual route on a Sadowsky is cool where you can swap the neck J for a P. In all these cases the folks I have spoken to eventually settled on a favorite location and at some point stopped the experiment. My Valenti PJ 5 is never going to sound like my Smith 6, there are to many variables....

 

[AndreasR]

I don't get what myth is being busted but I like 2 pickup basses because it allows for a larger range of timbre.

Second is single humbucker because stingray.

 

[pablomigraine]

I also wanted to respond directly to the OPs thoughts on a new bass.

I have been playing bass for over 25 years now, I've owned many basses and played in all different styles of music. Every experience we have is an opportunity to learn more, and cull down what we like and don't like, what works and what doesn't and most importantly what sounds like a million bucks at home or in the studio but not so much on stage or vice versa. Without you having a REALLY strong preference for where you want the pickup placement to be and having a reason for it, makes me wonder why you would have something built that is outside the norm. If I were you i'd stick with a tried and true formula that you know and like. Take a jazz bass spacing and moving the pickups in or out does some pretty funky things and could result in something you really don't like. I'd be very careful.

If it was me I'd have nailed down the types of pickups I want for the location you choose. You will find for example with respect to 60s or 70s jazz locations you might line up the outer coils of a nordstrand dual coil with the traditional location. While with a soap bar you may center the pickups to one another. Once this is all ironed out and you've decided on the preamp to accompany it, I would then choose woods that will compliment the tone and bring you to a certain weight you want or ergonomics.

Of course you could do whatever you want, it's just my opinion.

Thanks very much for your input. I'm not going off the beaten path with my new bass, it's more about deciding which beaten path. I'm actually not 100% certain that all the options I'm thinking about are even open to me... but right now I'm considering the placement found on certain Zon basses (slightly different than the standard J bass config when measured from the bridge) or something like the Sadowsky Moderns / G&L basses with both pups close together near the bridge.

I don't get what myth is being busted but I like 2 pickup basses because it allows for a larger range of timbre.

Second is single humbucker because stingray.

I know I know.... the idea was that I was inviting people in the know to come in and drop some science in this thread and dispel some myths.... not that I was going to bust the myths in my OP. I'm gonna change the title as this continues to draw negative commentary....

 

[mdlewis]

I've always found that pickup location is one of the more important characteristics that give's an instrument its unique voice.

To restate the obvious, a specific location favors those vibrational modes which have amplitude directly over it. These are like fixed acoustic resonances and will be dependent on absolute frequencies rather than following the pitch your playing, since the pickup is a fixed distance from the anchor points. It's very similar to formants in vocal music, which make one singer sound different than another. My favored position for a single pickup depends upon the style of music and and where I"m generally playing on the next. Normal stuff - it's pretty much a modern P location. Contemporary music it's somewhere in the range of a sixties jazz treble pickup or a music man.

FWIW, there is an additive synthesizer in Logic that's you experiment directly with this. You specify the resonant material and shape, such as steel and strings, or nylon and strings, and you can place pickups at very locations and mix and match. Kinda fun to see what you can do with location and combination alone.

 

[makanudo]

How about pickup configs like the Corvette $$ and Dingwall NG-2 with those massive pickups close together but with the coils close to the "standard" positions?

 

[ofajen]

Bottom line, as the pickup location gets closer to the bridge: 1) low end roll off starts at higher frequencies, 2) is more pronounced at a given low frequency and 3) the frequency of the lowest null rises.

Otto

 

[pablomigraine]

I guess that's really the important factor... the aperture and where the coils themselves sit...

 

[peterpalmieri]

Thanks very much for your input. I'm not going off the beaten path with my new bass, it's more about deciding which beaten path. I'm actually not 100% certain that all the options I'm thinking about are even open to me... but right now I'm considering the placement found on certain Zon basses (slightly different than the standard J bass config when measured from the bridge) or something like the Sadowsky Moderns / G&L basses with both pups close together near the bridge.

The two best examples of the modern spacing is a Ken Smith or Sadowsky modern 24 fret, I'd suggest if you go that route try to play a bunch first. I say a bunch because if you are going off a single Zon it will be hard to know if what you are hearing that you like is the pickup placement or something else. I had a pavel that had a similar spacing to my Ken Smith and they were pretty different sounding. Even the Smith and Sadowsky sound pretty different.

EDIT: Also meant to mention, always measure from the 12th fret, it's more accurate then the bridge

 

[saltydude]

Musicman basses have for many years advertised their single-pickup models as being right at the "Sweet Spot.

Wasn't for me. I shifted or relocated mine closer to the neck. More of a middle position.. I get all the same tones and even more power. I'm just on the knob a little more frequently..

 

[Doner Designs]

Pickup location is a huge factor in tone, especially when you don't have an onboard preamp to dial in different sounds. I like to use 4 band preamps but also prefer triple pickups. The six pack (three dual coils) below has 63 possible coil combinations for a little more versatility.

 

[macmanlou]

I really like where Scott Beckwith positions the pickup on the Shortbass. It's probably close to the P-Bass position, but the Shortbass has a 24 fret neck so it looks like it's even closer to the neck.

 

[tortburst]

I like that you used the 12th fret as your anchor point. I used a bridge saddle and the nut and found it hard to grapple with PowerPoint when resizing the bass pictures to get them in the right dimensions so they all were at the same scale length and lined up.

I did this one last year comparing
Fender 51 p
Fender 59 p
Fender 60s j
Fender 70s j
G&l l2000
Rickenbacker
WAL
Warwick
Musicman

I first made the doc bc I wanted to see where g&l l2000 and fender 60s jazz compared but ended up throwing in a bunch of others bc it was interesting

 

[Marko 1]

I imagined the Jazz mid pickup being farther forward compared to the Precision...

 

[tortburst]

I imagined the Jazz mid pickup being farther forward compared to the Precision...

The jazz neck and precision upper split are so close it hardly makes a difference. The lower split pickup is close to Rickenbacker bridge pickup territory.

I was more surprised to see the 51 was further up

The other thing I thought was interesting was the relationship btwn the 70s jazz, l2000, and WAL.

 

[JjJosh]

I would be interested in hearing what 51 pbass neck pickup placement with 70s jazz bass bridge pickup placement would sound like.

 

[MobileHolmes]

I didn't vote because my choice wasnt' an option:

I think it makes a difference, but there are multiple flavors and I like many of them.

Lately, I've been mixing it up with a J (60s spaning), Single pickup ray, P, and Guild with 2 HBs kind of wide set. They all sound radically different (though they have differences beyond the pickup spacing) but I like each for it's own thing

 

[knumbskull]

Ok how about four parallel rails running from bridge to neck, one under each string lengthwise. On each rail is a separate sliding pole piece. So you can customize the pickup position to the individual tone of each string.

PARKOUR

 

[MCS4]

My main bass will probably always be a two-pickup, jazz style. For one thing, part of my tone is based upon the positioning of my hands and where I strike the strings, which is founded in part on using the jazz-placement bridge and neck pickups as anchors. I dig the tone of one-pickup basses in many applications, but I tend to find them to sound "incomplete" for purposes of everything I need my main bass to do.