I have this bass with a neck humbucker. Well, it’s a humbucker ring and emg HB pickup so it’s a split rail P bass pickup in a humbucker shell. Doesn’t sound bad but it’s right up at the neck and it sounds like you’d expect - like a p shoved all the way up to the neck. I’m thinking an emg single coil strat pickup with a rail would help it sound more like a neck pickup strat than a boomy p bass. With a humbucker to single coil adapter ring I can make this switch pretty easy. And the emg plug makes it even easier. I’m wondering if the tone control would work because it’s the one that came with the HB bass pickup. Anyone think the SAX guitar pickup would work with it? I could use the tone pot that comes with the SAX but i dunno lol.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Strat pickup in bass?
- Thread starter FightMilk
- Start date
I’ve used guitar pickups in a bass and vice versa a number of times and it works just fine. I’d try the tone control that came with the bass pickup first but it’s easy enough to swap without mounting in the bass that you can try both.
The Rickenbacker "toaster" started as a guitar pickup, and even has six polepieces.
It works very well at the neck because it's so clear. I think a Strat pickup might serve just like that.
It works very well at the neck because it's so clear. I think a Strat pickup might serve just like that.
Fender Music master basses used strat pickups.
FullumMusic
Commercial User
- Oct 13, 2022
- 2,010
- 5,686
- Disclosures
- Audio/Music software developer, contracted with a company you've heard of and deving my own stuff.
It really depends on how wide the strings are where you're installing the strat pickup, i suppose.
The Squier Bronco Bass uses a Squier Strat pickup. Most likely a blade instead of poles. But the Bronco is short scale and narrow string spacing. So things are gonna line up with the pickup differently than, say, a standard scale bass with 19mm string spacing and a wide nut.
Measure twice; cut once. (Or cut none-ce if you measure and the strings are too wide?)
The Squier Bronco Bass uses a Squier Strat pickup. Most likely a blade instead of poles. But the Bronco is short scale and narrow string spacing. So things are gonna line up with the pickup differently than, say, a standard scale bass with 19mm string spacing and a wide nut.
Measure twice; cut once. (Or cut none-ce if you measure and the strings are too wide?)
- Apr 18, 2008
- 16,013
- 1
- 31,725
- Disclosures
- I'm highly opinionated and extremely self-assured
YES
Narrow-aperture pickups are GREAT up at the neck. Go for it!
Narrow-aperture pickups are GREAT up at the neck. Go for it!
The Lace Sensor p'ups in my Jazz Plus are essentially Strat p'ups. I assume they only have 4 pole pieces but they have the secondary hum bucking lace wrap. It's the same design used on the Strat.
I've done this a number of times with solid success, using Lace, Bartolini, and other strat pickups in basses. Whether or not it sounds "good" is subjective and comes down to preference. Guitar pickups with blade-style magnets may work best for even string-to-string response, but in most cases, as long as none of the strings fall outside of the pickup's magnetic field on either end, height adjustment can compensate for any non-alignment between poles and strings. After all, with 6 poles spread across 4 strings, there's not much space between them anyway and if you think about a jazz bass pickup, the strings intentionally run in-between the poles.
My Guild Starfire (over in my avatar/profile pic) has two Danelectro-inspired lipstick "guitar" humbuckers. I chose them because I wanted something that was humbucking to work quietly with the powerful active resonant filter on-board electronics I wired up, but it was important that they still sound clear and articulate, to let the character of the strings themselves and nuance of my finger/pick technique come through. The low-wind coils and alnico II magnets of these double-lipstick pickups, plus the option to experiment with running the coils in series or parallel, proved to be exactly what I was looking for. Running them passive I expect I might find them a little low in the output department, but since the preamp is so powerful, that was non-issue. The reality is, the same could be said for the proprietary pickups in my Alembic!
My Guild Starfire (over in my avatar/profile pic) has two Danelectro-inspired lipstick "guitar" humbuckers. I chose them because I wanted something that was humbucking to work quietly with the powerful active resonant filter on-board electronics I wired up, but it was important that they still sound clear and articulate, to let the character of the strings themselves and nuance of my finger/pick technique come through. The low-wind coils and alnico II magnets of these double-lipstick pickups, plus the option to experiment with running the coils in series or parallel, proved to be exactly what I was looking for. Running them passive I expect I might find them a little low in the output department, but since the preamp is so powerful, that was non-issue. The reality is, the same could be said for the proprietary pickups in my Alembic!
I also use guitar strat pickups a lot in place of "bass pickups". Any pickup in the neck is going to be bassy but they do have good specs on many of these strat pickups so I would go for one with more treble if you want to avoid the boom. I have actually had better luck with cheaper chinese rail pickups than the fancier pickups I have tried. But I have not done EMG. I have a Dimarzio humbucker rail in my 51 right now that sounds good but surprizingly it is a bit noisy.
I did a search in Japanese and looks like somebody did the opposite.
I recently bought a new Squier Bronco Bass which was on sale for $150 (shipping included!) I knew from the start that I would swap out its cheap Asian-made Strat pickup for a high-end one. I ended up with a Seymour Duncan stacked humbucker unit and the bass sounds AWESOME! While I own some high end basses I now play this bass 90% or more of the time.
pretty sure I heard cliff burton put a strat pickup down by the bridge on his rickenbacker, could be herbin myth
They didn't. This is repeated often around here, but it isn't true.
They were six pole pickups, but they were specific to the Musicmaster Bass.
Strat pickups of the time had protruding pole pieces with no stagger.
Musicmaster and Duo Sonic guitar pickups had flush pole pieces with no stagger.
Musicmaster Bass pickups had four inner flush pole pieces and two outer sunken pole pieces, i.e. two short magnets flanking the others.
As such, the Musicmaster Bass pickups have better string to string volume balance than Strat pickups, Musicmaster and Duo Sonic guitar pickups, or Jazz Bass pickups.
It also means that The Musicmaster coil could be positioned closer to the strings than a Strat pickup, allowing the pickup to be adjusted for a warmer and higher output tone than could be achieved with a Strat pickup.
A six pole pickup on a four string instrument is usually not a problem...however, it is not true that Musicmaster Basses used the same pickups used in Strats.
Huh, I stand happily corrected. FWIW I hadn't just seen that on here, it must be more pervasive than just TB.
Not a myth. He did, indeed, have a Strat pickup on his Ric. He had removed the string mute inside the Ric bridge and installed the Strat pickup in it's place.It was a blade style pickup.
