Sonum Experior

[michaelwayneharwood]

There are a lot of different takes on pickup placement, and plenty of "standards" from major manufacturers, but what I want is an easy way to move around pickups to fine tune the tone I am looking for in a particular bass build. To help achieve this I took an old prototype made of pine and modified it to allow more room for pickup placement in the interest of experimentation and finding my personal "sweet spot" for a current build I am doing. It's a good start, but it's lacking in so many ways. To address these discrepancies I am going to build a more refined version that has the following specs:

• Bolt on design to be able to swap out necks. This will allow for different scale lengths and neck/fingerboard combinations.
• A large area to allow for multiple pickups in any placement.
• A rear mounted pickup configuration to allow for easy swap out
• Multiple stereo jacks to allow for signal isolation of each pickup and/or coils
• An external break out box to allow for multiple configurations to be tested

I will be detailing the build on this thread for those interested in doing something similar, and I will also post information that I gather about accepted pickup positions for your reference and "discussion".

 

[Robert Canfield]

Great minds think alike Michael! I was going to use a capo to simulate different scales, but I think your idea will be more accurate as the neck mass changes when change different scaled necks. It would be interesting to test that hypothesis. I'm probably going to use poplar from Home Despot , I mean Depot, for my body. I will be following.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I love the capo idea! Quick, easy, and very good thinking! I am hoping that i will end up with a versatile tool I can use to help craft a certain sound for both myself and customers without just defaulting to set standards. Not that those standards are bad by any means - a lot of research and development has gone into them and they are tried and true. At the very least I can provide test different positions with a pickup and make sure that the placement is optional for the tone being sought. There are a lot of other variables as well, but this should help with one aspect that requires hogging out wood and changing your mind later is much harder to correct.

 

[Robert Canfield]

I love the capo idea! Quick, easy, and very good thinking! I am hoping that i will end up with a versatile tool I can use to help craft a certain sound for both myself and customers without just defaulting to set standards. Not that those standards are bad by any means - a lot of research and development has gone into them and they are tried and true. At the very least I can provide test different positions with a pickup and make sure that the placement is optional for the tone being sought. There are a lot of other variables as well, but this should help with one aspect that requires hogging out wood and changing your mind later is much harder to correct.

I personally only need one pickup for my playing 95% of the time. The other tones can be achieved with tone control EQ, etc.... If I'm building for someone else, I need to provide more options.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Here's the basic concept, though it needs a ton of filling out and modification. The device as planned will be a full 2" thick, have a seven string neck pocket, and a large cavity in the middle for pickup placement. The seven string neck pocket allows for a number of different options, and any configuration of necks in regards to string number can be accommodated with some custom shaped blocks inserted in the pocket to accommodate smaller width necks. The build would be fairly simple, and the main component (the body) could be easily built using 4/4 stock. For simplicity's sake I will most likely use some modified Chinese ABM style single string bridges, and piano tuners (of course).

 

[Rôckhewer]

Hey....you don't mess around, I like the way you think, a very methodical and calculated approach.
(I know, you really just want that golden ticket from John Paul Jones that I spoke of).lol....
So tell me, (& perhaps this will be another variable in your tests)... where do you stand on the... direct mount vs. foam rubber vs. springs... behind the pickups mounting options??

 

[Jon Clegg]

Hmmm.... cool idea. Maybe consider doing a pair of rails/rods on the sides of the pickup cavity to facilitate sliding the pickup back and forth kinda like the Gibson Grabber?

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Hey....you don't mess around, I like the way you think, a very methodical and calculated approach.
(I know, you really just want that golden ticket from John Paul Jones that I spoke of).lol....
So tell me, (& perhaps this will be another variable in your tests)... where do you stand on the... direct mount vs. foam rubber vs. springs... behind the pickups mounting options??

Thank you very much for the kudos, though I can't take much credit. I regularly stand on the shoulders of giants. If there was any "golden ticket" I am looking for it's entrance to a "Primus and the Chocolate Factory" show in a very small venue.

You are correct that the pickup "riser" mounting methodology and material choice is a variable. I have used all of the methods you listed, but never did A:B tests to determine whether directly mounting to wood versus springs made any appreciable difference to overall tone which leaves me with no conviction in this regard.

To provide some context for my current belief system (*donning flame retardant suit*) I need to state that I agnostic in the tonewood debate in general, but I am well aware that my ignorance spans the length and breadth of this subject. I believe that 90% or more of your tone comes from your playing style (e.g. your fingers) and the electronics configuration (including pickup placement), though I have a strong feeling that string termination material (e.g. nut, bridge, fretless fingerboard, etc.) plays a significant role in wavelength reflection that will affect sustain and tone to a degree. String choice is another factor as well.

This platform allows me to experiment with different neck and fingerboard woods, as well as the pickup location to try and isolate at least a few factors.

Hmmm.... cool idea. Maybe consider doing a pair of rails/rods on the sides of the pickup cavity to facilitate sliding the pickup back and forth kinda like the Gibson Grabber?

Great idea! I considered rails, but I believe they would limit my options. I like to angle my pickups and it would be more difficult to engineer a solution that accommodates that easily, and it would make experimentation with different pickup "riser" options more complicated, and make dual pickup combinations hard.

 

[randyripoff]

Hmm. You could do rails with some type of platform that rides along them, and then mount your pickups to that platform. That would allow for angling the pickups and easily changing their position.

 

[Robert Canfield]

Here's the basic concept, though it needs a ton of filling out and modification. The device as planned will be a full 2" thick, have a seven string neck pocket, and a large cavity in the middle for pickup placement. The seven string neck pocket allows for a number of different options, and any configuration of necks in regards to string number can be accommodated with some custom shaped blocks inserted in the pocket to accommodate smaller width necks. The build would be fairly simple, and the main component (the body) could be easily built using 4/4 stock. For simplicity's sake I will most likely use some modified Chinese ABM style single string bridges, and piano tuners (of course).

What if (I'm just spit balling) in the large pickup cavity you had panels with machine screws at each of the four corners. As you continue to mount and remove pickup sets, you will be tearing up the wood to the point to will be unusable. Swap out the tore up panels with fresh a one from time to time. I imagine that that different pickup types and brands may have different "sweet spots". In regards to different mounting method I see the pickup more like a microphone. The tone is generated by the instrument, not the mic stand. But, I could off on that. Definitely all off the points where the string make contact with the instrument, Nut, bridge, fret and/or fret board, then the resonance the body and neck. Having said all that, I agree that the majority of the tone comes from the fingers, electronics and pickup position. But remember that the "sweet spot" will change as you play because the "scale" effectively changes as you go up the neck. So we're looking a spot that is sweet across the spectrum of our playing up and down the fret board. Am I making sense?

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

@randyripoff - That's a great idea as well, but I think for the initial version I am going to keep it simple.

@Robert Canfield - My initial idea is to have the wooden area underneath the cavity be removable with machine screws and inserts on the back. This allows me to easily replace the wooden surface if it gets to the point of no return, and I can swap out pickups without removing strings.

Here's an updated concept drawing:

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Oh - one other thing. If anyone finds any of my ideas or designs valuable please feel free to do whatever you want with them. While I respect the law and the patent system I am not personally interested in locking down control of anything I come up with. I honestly don't think anything I produce is really all that novel to begin with, but I feel strongly that if it will benefit someone else they should feel free to do what they wish without constraints. Attribution would be nice, but is not necessary.

 

[Robert Canfield]

@randyripoff - That's a great idea as well, but I think for the initial version I am going to keep it simple.

@Robert Canfield - My initial idea is to have the wooden area underneath the cavity be removable with machine screws and inserts on the back. This allows me to easily replace the wooden surface if it gets to the point of no return, and I can swap out pickups without removing strings.

Here's an updated concept drawing:

That nails it! Removable back plane. What do you think about wire terminals mounted to the body, connected to the output jack? No more soldering and unsoldering.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

@Robert Canfield - Great idea!

After some experimentation with the prototype I think that this is a workable idea and will provide great value to my process. My poor pine prototype had a cracking issue on the bass side, so I am only able to string it A to C....but that provided a good experiment in and of itself. I think the 7 string neck will be where I start, even for 4 string designs. I can string the treble side and position the pickups appropriately under the strings and get the results I am after without neck swapping, though neck swapping would still be an option.

As I have experimented a bit I am finding that having some control over pickup placement while hunting for a particular tone to be exhilarating. I will position the pickup and just play for a while in different plucking positions. I found a few spots that did not do it for me at all, and a pair that sound nice enough that I am torn between them. I have a pair of Seymour Duncan Basslines on hand for a short while for a commission and I going to do some A:B tests in those positions and see what I can see.

I won't be able to add this to my list of builds until the week of March 23rd due to having to do some business travel next week, but this has me excited!

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Here's a quick pair of examples. The first is with the pickup right up next to the bridge, and the second is about 3/4" north. Both are angled at about 5 degrees with the treble side being father north than the bass side. The examples exhibit terrible playing, a bit of noise, and are completely unprocessed. This is the raw sound of the pickup. Each example has three playing positions demonstrated - one at the 24th fret, one in the middle, and one right next to the bridge.

 

[Jon Clegg]

Whoa, the first passage in example 2 sounded really full, almost acoustic.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Whoa, the first passage in example 2 sounded really full, almost acoustic.

That's one of my favorite positions. It sounds very nice when run through a Sansamp and Ampeg combo with just "enough" of the original signal blended in. I am super curious how the Seymour Duncan will sound in that spot.

One concern I have in regards to using this system for customers is that so much of the tone is dependent on the playing style and position of the player. I can fine tune pickup positions for myself and be happy with the result, but if I have a customer that is not nearby it's going to be harder to hammer out the "perfect tone" for them since they will have to live with the sound samples I produce, though that has some value. Of course most of my customers probably would not even care about this sort of process and just want to have the pickups positioned in a "standard" location. All in all doing this might even seem to be a bit prissy to many.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Here's a quick sample of pickup position 2 using a Seymour Duncan Bassline bridge pickup. It's obviously shielded well - there is zero noise. I like the cheap Chinese soapbar a lot better in regards to tone in this position, though I really want to get the noise issues fixed. Interesting.

EDIT: This plucking position is at the 24th fret.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I shielded the Chinese pup and it eliminated most of the noise - no sound clips for that at the moment...sorry. The more I listen to the clips from the different pickups the more I prefer the Chinese pup. The Basslines sound sterile in comparison to my ear. If I wasn't decided about the wisdom of building this pickup testing platform before, this would have convinced me. The pickup testing was quick, easy, and painless.

 

[Robert Canfield]

Any data on a 32" scale yet?
What is the skinny on those Chinese pups?