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Strings not lining up with pick up poles?
- Thread starter krfoss
- Start date
Bill & Becky Wilde P-46 pups work on 4, 5 & 6 string Precision basses; thus the nomenclature. It's the field not the location.
Mis-alignments can definitely cause issues with certain pickups. I just had an Aguilar pickup designed for wider spacing on a narrow spaced bass (I didn't do that, it came that way) and the G string signal was practically gone, the B wasn't great.
That said, the neck trick mentioned would work well to fine tune the spacing, but as it lines up now, you're probably doing really well with signal, too.
That said, the neck trick mentioned would work well to fine tune the spacing, but as it lines up now, you're probably doing really well with signal, too.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a cheap ass Jay Turser bass which I intended to use in a mod project. Just look at that, the strings do not line up with with the pole pieces at all. The bass sounds fine despite the misalignment. So you definitely should be ok.
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Is this a 34" scale? I had this same question a while back when i was setting up my newest 30" scale and hadn't noticed it on any of my previous but they all 3 look like yours and play and sound just fine. standard P & J pickups and the 'width' of the split P coils being standard on mine is what causes it, but although i am eventually swapping pickups i plan to keep them the same positions.
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
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- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
Rickenbacker used the toaster 6 pole pickup for the 6 string guitar, 4 string bass, 5 string bass, and the 8 string bass ... it worked well in all situations, and Carvin used an eleven pole pickup for their 6 string guitars.
When I used to convert 4 string Rickenbackers into 5 string rickenbackers I would take the 4 pole pickup and add 3 more poles to make it a 7 pole pickup.
Yes, it's the 34" Jay Turser 400C. Bought it mostly for the alder body, which at the price point of 150€ is quite something.
Yeah, the bridge was misaligned. I asked for a refund in the end because the bass had other issues that prevented me from modding it the way I had planned.
If it sounds fine, it is fine. I have a (rather expensive) bass with worse alignment than that and it’s never bothered me. I don’t think the pole alignment is that critical.
It looks like you have two bridge pickups in there. While the shells are the same size, many manufacturers still alter the position of the pole pieces to match where the strings line up. If you have two actual bridge pickups in there, vs a bridge/neck combination with the same size shells, you'd see what you're seeing here.
On the other hand, as others have mentioned, the neck pickup will still pickup the strings just fine.
On the other hand, as others have mentioned, the neck pickup will still pickup the strings just fine.
Interesting idea. I havnt taken the pickups out since probably 2001 when I put them in, so I could pop them out to see whats in there and if i installed them backwards. Who knows.
