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SX Ursa 6-string Jazz bass

#1,041
bassbenj said:
You have hit the nail on the head! Fender is odd. You'd think since they call it a "jazz" bass the First Thing they'd sell would be a 6 string one. Instead they seem to have some innate fear of more than 4 strings. And when they do stick a toe in the water (Steve Bailey) they scamper off into the underbrush at the first loud noise. And everybody else seems to be following Fender's lead.
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It really does befuddle me. I mean, Dingwall can make a five-string, fanned fret Jazz bass with a Glokenklang pre-amp and it sells like hotcakes. People obviously have no problem with futuristic J's. And now Fender's come out with their Dimension series and pawn-shop series, which are both getting RAVE reviews... You'd think they'd realize that they have enough loyalists (or people who just enjoy neat things) that making non-traditional products just might work out in their favor.

lowfreq33 said:
I don't really blame Fender for not offering a 6 string bass. The market for anything more than 5 is pretty small when you consider that most of their sales are from beginners or hobbyists. And my personal observation is that most people who would be interested in a 6+ string bass tend to gravitate towards more modern designs.
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I totally agree that people who play extended range instruments do tend to prefer modern-style instruments. That being said, there was a time when Fender was known as a pioneer. Remember, they designed the Bass VI... a lot of decades ago, and nowadays the Ibanez Workshop "created" the same concept and are calling it revolutionary.

My point is, Fender hasn't even tried, and I don't think it would hurt. Ibanez and Dean do quite well selling entry-level 6's, and it's not due to their modern design; it's because there is a real market for entry and mid-level ERB's. And, although they may be rare, Conklin managed to successfully market MULTIPLE Asian seven-string basses, which still boggles my mind.

I've sold many, many Korean/Indonesian/Chinese Ibanez/Dean/LTD/etc. models, and the buyers frankly didn't give two F's about the design. They wanted a high-C, but didn't want to sink (what was it, $3K? $2k? either way, an order of magnitude too high) into a Steve Bailey. Instead Fender continuously tries to rehash the same old designs, packaged in a new box (anyone remember what a disaster the roadworn series was?) and crank out models that, frankly, nobody really asked for. I mean, the fact that we're even discussing this on a 52 page thread - which includes people who have sunk literally hundreds of dollars upgrading a Chinese off-brand - should prove there's demand. Even if they just introduced it into their VM series (Squier's active five-string could more than easily accommodate another string [seriously, you could land a goddamn 747 on its fretboard]) it'd be a step in the right direction. If they made a Mexi/Cali version? It'd be in bed with me right now, instead of this ridiculous Harmonia.

Anyways, I suppose my point is that I need to write a very strongly worded letter.
 
#1,043
5Bass5 said:
I've decided it's time for my 6-string Ursa 2 to get an upgrade. I want to start with new pickups. What kind of pickups do you guys have on your 6-string Ursa 2?
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So far as I know all of us are still using factory pickups. The only known drop-in replacement for the SX 6 are these:

http://www.pure-tone.com/hippo-6-string-bass-pickups/

No real reviews on them yet.

If it were me and I wanted to upgrade pickups on an SX 6, I'd get out the router and go for something that would eliminate single coil hum with a 16 mm spacing. Maybe a Delano 6 string pickup. But as a wide soapbar humbucker it would change the whole character of the bass which is a 6 string jazz clone.

So what you really want is a something in 6 string hum-cancelling Jazz pickups. I have no idea if anything exists that could be made to fit without a big hassle.
 
#1,044
bassbenj said:
So far as I know all of us are still using factory pickups. The only known drop-in replacement for the SX 6 are these:

http://www.pure-tone.com/hippo-6-string-bass-pickups/

No real reviews on them yet.

If it were me and I wanted to upgrade pickups on an SX 6, I'd get out the router and go for something that would eliminate single coil hum with a 16 mm spacing. Maybe a Delano 6 string pickup. But as a wide soapbar humbucker it would change the whole character of the bass which is a 6 string jazz clone.

So what you really want is a something in 6 string hum-cancelling Jazz pickups. I have no idea if anything exists that could be made to fit without a big hassle.
Click to expand...
It would require routing but Carvin makes stacked humbuckers. One reason I haven't pulled the trigger on one of these is that I have a Carvin LB76A with J humbucking pickups that is what I'd do for the modification anyway.
Here's the pickup:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
#1,046
Apolicious said:
It really does befuddle me. I mean, Dingwall can make a five-string, fanned fret Jazz bass with a Glokenklang pre-amp and it sells like hotcakes. People obviously have no problem with futuristic J's. And now Fender's come out with their Dimension series and pawn-shop series, which are both getting RAVE reviews... You'd think they'd realize that they have enough loyalists (or people who just enjoy neat things) that making non-traditional products just might work out in their favor.



I totally agree that people who play extended range instruments do tend to prefer modern-style instruments. That being said, there was a time when Fender was known as a pioneer. Remember, they designed the Bass VI... a lot of decades ago, and nowadays the Ibanez Workshop "created" the same concept and are calling it revolutionary.

My point is, Fender hasn't even tried, and I don't think it would hurt. Ibanez and Dean do quite well selling entry-level 6's, and it's not due to their modern design; it's because there is a real market for entry and mid-level ERB's. And, although they may be rare, Conklin managed to successfully market MULTIPLE Asian seven-string basses, which still boggles my mind.

I've sold many, many Korean/Indonesian/Chinese Ibanez/Dean/LTD/etc. models, and the buyers frankly didn't give two F's about the design. They wanted a high-C, but didn't want to sink (what was it, $3K? $2k? either way, an order of magnitude too high) into a Steve Bailey. Instead Fender continuously tries to rehash the same old designs, packaged in a new box (anyone remember what a disaster the roadworn series was?) and crank out models that, frankly, nobody really asked for. I mean, the fact that we're even discussing this on a 52 page thread - which includes people who have sunk literally hundreds of dollars upgrading a Chinese off-brand - should prove there's demand. Even if they just introduced it into their VM series (Squier's active five-string could more than easily accommodate another string [seriously, you could land a goddamn 747 on its fretboard]) it'd be a step in the right direction. If they made a Mexi/Cali version? It'd be in bed with me right now, instead of this ridiculous Harmonia.

Anyways, I suppose my point is that I need to write a very strongly worded letter.
Click to expand...
someone on tb successfully converted squier v into a 6-string it came out beautiful
 
#1,047
14585257879_8cffc6acc5_c.png

there are two of these ursa2-6 threads
 
#1,050
bass_case said:
A router is a power tool that allows one to convert a bass into sawdust.

In skilled hands there are a million things you can do with one, for guitars the most common use is to make precisely shaped holes (routs) for pickups, electronics etc.
Click to expand...

Got that right! "skilled hands" being the operative phrase. I tried to convert the J-pickup rout to a "bathtub" rout for a P-bass pickup on my Squier I was modding and and forgot to tighten the router bit enough. Luckily I was using the small trimming router rather than the huge one or that bass would be sawdust now. Also lucky was that the pickguard covered a multitude of routing sins.
 
#1,051
So has anyone actually tried routing and installing Carvin pickups? I actually like the sound of the SX pickups, but man, they hum like CRAZY. Are there some good hints you all could throw my way regarding that? I've got copper tape on order and a tech-y friend to help check the grounds...anything else? Really, aside from the hum (and I own standard Jazz Basses, this is much more intense) I really like these basses right out of the box.
 
#1,052
BeowulfKingsley said:
So has anyone actually tried routing and installing Carvin pickups? I actually like the sound of the SX pickups, but man, they hum like CRAZY. Are there some good hints you all could throw my way regarding that? I've got copper tape on order and a tech-y friend to help check the grounds...anything else? Really, aside from the hum (and I own standard Jazz Basses, this is much more intense) I really like these basses right out of the box.
Click to expand...

The closest I came to Carvins, was I went online and got the measurements and as I recall they didn't fit the SX rout. And even worse they were in the jazz pickup shape but the ears were in a different spot! So the bottom line is that this is a Jazz bass and you want Jazz pickups on it. Now if you used soapbars, you could just rout out a big rectangle to fit them, but with new Jazz pickups with different ears, there is no way to "move" the location of the ear routs without a huge hassle and then only on a painted bass that covers up the wood glued into the old ear routs. I gave up.

And the FIRST thing is that EVERY SX needs a copper shield job right off the bat as the first mod you do! (Second mod is replace string trees with something that slides better (eg. Stewmac roller trees) and does not chew up strings.) Of course copper shielding does NOT cure "single coil hum" which results from the fact SX pickups are single coil and why they sound so good. BUT once you get rid of the electric hum with the shielding, the single coil hum that remains will be much less objectionable. Single coil hum can be reduced by bass orientation as well as moving farther from hum source. But only hum-cancelling pickups truly gets rid of it.

Note that Am. Standard Jazz basses come with hum-cancelling pickups these days. (For example: SCN pickups were standard for a while. I put a pair on my MIM Jazz V which had "noiseless" pickups that cancelled hum alright, but sounded horrible! The SCNs cancel hum and have killer tone (now discontinued by Fender, Natch).

The bottom line so far is that the ONLY reasonable way to get rid of single coil hum on a jazz bass with single coil pickups is to run both bridge and neck pickups up full (or of equal volume) and then they act as a humbucker.

I also have high hopes for the Audere "dummy coil" system they just came out with, but so far there are no reports of it working with an SX, let alone an SX 6er.
 
#1,056
Yeah, I'm awaiting the copper tape and hoping for the best. My old Jazz Basses have some hum, sure, that's the nature of the single-coil thing, but this is much worse. The only way I can use the bass onstage is with both pickups full up...and the tone all the way down. Tone knob is very noisy. At home, at moderate volume, there's a lot of nice sounds to pull out of the pickups...but I can't do that with a band yet.
 

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