Why are there so many dang bass pickup shapes?

[Jesse DeCarlo]

Here's what I came up with, not trying too hard:
(Just sticking to 4-string, so I don't go crazy)

"Legacy" shapes:
P (2.2 x 1.08) times 2
Old P single coil (don't know)
J (3.75 x 0.73)
MM (3.98 x 1.9)
Ric (3.25 x 1.12)
Washburn (4.06 x 1.73)
Thunderbird (3.625 x 1.5625)
Gibson EB (huge)
Guitar humbucker (2.75 x 1.52)

EMG shapes:
EMG 35 (3.5 x 1.5)
EMG 40 (4 x 1.5)

Bartolini Shapes:
BB (3.46 x 1.42)
BC (3.95 x 1.25)
BD (3.95 x 1.42)
CF (4.12 x 1.56)
X (4.14 x .87)
MK1 (4.25 x1.33)
MK2 (?)

...and many more that I'm leaving out.

Okay, so we can cut ourselves some slack with the legacy shapes because everyone was still getting it together for the first few decades. But in this modern era, can we please come up with a couple of standards and stick to them? Why so many freakin soapbar shapes? Can we just have a narrow one and a wide one? You can get all the tonal variation you need by making changes to the pickup structure inside the case, as long as the case is wide enough to accommodate the maximum aperture you might want. (Really, you could build a J pickup into a Music Man-shaped case, for example.)

This profusion of shapes really creates problems. To wit: I'm a huge fan of Ibanez basses, but in general I think the pickups on all but the extreme high end of the product line are not great (and I haven't spent much time with the high end ones yet, so I might not like them either). No problem, just replace the pickups and enjoy the great instrument, right? Wrong! They've got instruments with pickup shapes I didn't even mention in that big list above! They at least sell enough MK1-equipped basses that Bartolini makes an upgrade in that shape. But what if I want one of those BTBs with the recently introduced MK2 pickups? I'm afraid to buy one because I might hate the pickups and I don't see any replacements available in that shape from anyone. Why did they need to introduce this new shape? It's skinnier than the older MK1 -- couldn't they just use the MK1 shape and build a narrower structure inside? And what about the Prestige SR models with the "custom" Bartolinis? Don't those crazy Bartolini people make ENOUGH shapes already?

This is insanity. Why are the manufacturers doing this to us? Everyone knows bass players are smarter than guitarists, right? But guitarists are doing better at keeping their pickup shapes under control. 90% of guitars out there (I'm estimating) have one of four pickup shapes: tele neck, tele bridge, strat, humbucker. Most of the rest are mini humbucker or P90. For some of the oddball shapes out there, enterprising companies are already making them in more commonly-shaped cases (P90 and Filtertron in humbucker cases, for example).

The benefits of just a little standardization are obvious and many. I can't think of any drawbacks, but like I said, I'd love to hear any you can come up with.

Okay, done ranting.

 

[fullrangebass]

A little standardization would not hurt (maybe 10 shapes all together for the 4str). But in our universe (bass universe) many people view the pickup design as an integral part of the pickup aesthetics (eg oval shaped Delanos) or the bass aesthetics (eg Drozd basses) and that is perfectly acceptable

Diclaimer: I am not putting Delano pickups or Drozd basses down

 

[Jazz Ad]

Standards are boring. If everybody followed them, we'd still be using uprights.
It's much more fun to have a lot of availalble form factors.

 

[Stealth]

The benefits of just a little standardization are obvious and many. I can't think of any drawbacks, but like I said, I'd love to hear any you can come up with.

Well, here's one of the most obvious drawbacks.
Differing pickup dimensions mean different sensing apertures - that is, the areas where the pickups are most sensitive to string movements and where they react to it. Unless the Delanos are really round just for the kicks, I reckon the coils inside them are actually wound quite differently (as long as their shape is, say, really oval than the standard rounded rectangle we see on J-pickups) and that alone justifies a different sound.

Take, for instance, a twin-jazz pickup and an MM pickup - similar formats, but even with the same polepieces you'd get a different sound simply because the sensing area is different - some frequencies get notched differently with twin-jazzes and MMs.

 

[J. Crawford]

Why are there so many races?

Languages?

Bass companies?

People?

Because thats how we roll.

 

[Jesse DeCarlo]

Standards are boring. If everybody followed them, we'd still be using uprights.
It's much more fun to have a lot of availalble form factors.

Come now, my friend, I understand the sentiment but the argument is a reductio ad absurdum. The electric bass guitar is a completely different instrument from the upright. Bartolini BB and EMG 35 shaped pickups perform the exact same function but differ in size by fractions of an inch, making them incompatible.

It seems counterintuitive, but if there were fewer shapes there would be more variety of internal pickup designs (and this is where it matters) available to us. The way things are, pickup makers have to spread their resources around in order to satisfy the need for many different shapes, which prohibits them from offering more options that would actually give different sounds.

 

[Billy Low]

Please understand that while standardization has it's acceptable points there's alot of creedance to be given to individuality. Understand that many designers are approaching their craft with a since of creativity and artistic vision. That's the whole point to being an artist, communicating and creating an extension of your thoughts and emotions. If I don't think like Leo Fender, why look like Leo Fender?

Believe it or not, many manufacturers of many different products do not create product that the public demands. Many create what they want and use marketing to create the demand for what they have created. Somebody somewhere want's a different shape of pickup. Why hinder that person and the manufacturer because someone doesn't like the fact that they get confused by the large assortment? I may not like how an EMG 40 sits in the middle of my custom body I just built, but I would like a smaller Pkup casing (say an 35), shouldn't I and others have that option? Should't the manufacturer have the abilty to capitalize on this?

Works for me!

The real question is, why does the variety bother you so much? Does the variety of finishes, headstocks, and body shapes bother you as much?

 

[Jesse DeCarlo]

Well, here's one of the most obvious drawbacks.
Differing pickup dimensions mean different sensing apertures - that is, the areas where the pickups are most sensitive to string movements and where they react to it. Unless the Delanos are really round just for the kicks, I reckon the coils inside them are actually wound quite differently (as long as their shape is, say, really oval than the standard rounded rectangle we see on J-pickups) and that alone justifies a different sound.

Take, for instance, a twin-jazz pickup and an MM pickup - similar formats, but even with the same polepieces you'd get a different sound simply because the sensing area is different - some frequencies get notched differently with twin-jazzes and MMs.

Yes, but part of my point is that you can put the exact coil structure of any pickup inside the case of any pickup that's larger. My example of putting a J pickup in a big MM case would look pretty dorky, I'll admit -- there would be a lot of unused space. And I have no problem with the continued coexistence of J and MM pickups, because they're pretty different animals.

But in the case of soapbars that have rails hidden inside the case rather than exposed polepieces, you could put any coil structure inside any larger case and there would be no way of visually telling the difference. So mainly it's the explosion of soapbar shapes that I'm complaining about -- there's just no need to invent a new soapbar that's 1/8" smaller than a shape that already exists. Those oval Delanos are obviously a significant design departure, so that's legitimate. But I can't help pointing out that, once again, if all you're after is the different sound you get from using an oval coil, you could put an oval coil into an already existing fat soapbar or MM-shape case and get the same effect.

 

[IvanMike]

it only bugs me when i want to try a swap.

Big kudos to Bartolini for making pickups that would fit in emg soapbar routings a number of years ago. Before that, if you had a bass with EMG pickups, you were a bit stuck if you wanted to try a swap with Barts.

 

[Jesse DeCarlo]

The real question is, why does the variety bother you so much? Does the variety of finishes, headstocks, and body shapes bother you as much?

The variety of headstocks, finishes, bodies, etc. doesn't bother me because there's not a huge sonic benefit to switching headstocks and finishes between basses, so people don't do that a whole lot.

I'm not some goose-stepping anti-creative type with an aversion to variety, here. To reiterate my point: the reason I'm bothered by the profusion of soapbar shapes is that it limits my ability to take an instrument whose playability and acoustic characteristics I like and match it with a set of pickups whose sound I like. And I'm not talking about high-end, $2000+ custom hand-built basses, because if you're buying one of those you're getting exactly what you want and you shouldn't have to worry about swapping pickups. I'm talking about CNC-built, mass-produced basses from Ibanez, Cort, Lakland, etc. that ship with mediocre pickups in some wacky shape that you can't get replacements for.

Let me offer a metaphor. There is a wonderful, endless variety of bass strings available to us. Rounds, half rounds, flats, different materials, different gauges, different coatings, different core shapes, on and on. And they all work with all of our basses (Steinberg double ball being the minor exception), so we can try them all and get different sounds and feels, forever. I love that. Now imagine that every time a major manufacturer introduced a new product line, they came up with a new way to anchor the strings, so you could only use their strings. Suddenly that instrument is a lot less useful, because your choice is limited by the fact that they tried to introduce a new system. Could the single ball-end system be improved? Probably, but whatever advantage you might get is pretty small compared to having access to the huge variety of strings already out there.

 

[Billy Low]

Jesse,

me being a person with some experience in pickup building will tell you that in more cases than not shape is determined in many cases by the initial pre production engineering. Please realize that a simplistic view of engineering is "I wonder what'll happen if I do this..." I can tell u that I have had the experience of creating two similar pickups with the same wire, same number of windings different winding stratagies and having one of the pickups not fitting the pickup cover without modification. I then tried to do the same utilizing the larger pkup cover. One fit properly and the other needed some sort of spacer to ensure proper placement and to ensure that it remained stable. The spacer was made of a non-magnetic material. There was a sonic difference between the original pkup casing and the one that had the spacer placed inside.

Not only that, some guys (myself included) just feel as if there is enough of the same thing out there already. I mean, how many p, j, MM pickups are out there already?!?!? LOL!!

Just wait till u see my trapezoidal and cardoid pkups!!!!

Just kidding.

 

[Voss451]

I hear ya... I have a Spector with EMG-HZ's in it and so far the only replacement pickups I've been able to track down that I can replace them with are a couple of active EMG's and one or 2 Seymour Duncans and that's about it. When I was playing guitar, there are more choices than you can shake a stick at.

I can understand that many makers want their own sized pickups/pickup covers for both asthetic and tonal reasons but by doing so, if for some reason the person buying it wants to replace the pickups for whatever reason, it puts them in a very awkward position due to the highly limited number of available choices.

 

[Geist]

the good thing about emg shapes is that they are 'somewhat' the standard for soapbars. Having an emg pickup gets you a lot more replacement options than many of those bartolini shapes

 

[Billy Low]

I can understand that many makers want their own sized pickups/pickup covers for both asthetic and tonal reasons but by doing so, if for some reason the person buying it wants to replace the pickups for whatever reason, it puts them in a very awkward position due to the highly limited number of available choices.

Easy solution...BUY A ROUTER!!!!

Hog out the mid section of your bass, put in whatever pickups you want, make a custom pickguard to cover the routes and...VOILA!!!

I guess I'm from a different era, when musicians were their own techs. If something didn't fit your instrument, you found a way to make it fit! Thank goodness today no one belivies in this practice anymore and they take their instruments to techs...made for my kids having a REAL good christmas!!!

 

[Jesse DeCarlo]

Easy solution...BUY A ROUTER!!!!

Hog out the mid section of your bass, put in whatever pickups you want, make a custom pickguard to cover the routes and...VOILA!!!

I guess I'm from a different era, when musicians were their own techs. If something didn't fit your instrument, you found a way to make it fit! Thank goodness today no one belivies in this practice anymore and they take their instruments to techs...made for my kids having a REAL good christmas!!!

I'm 100% in favor of that for basses with pickguards. For my own gear I'm kind of anti-pickguard though, since I don't use a pick and I like transparent finishes over nice wood.

 

[Ach]

Jesse DeCarlo:
What about to sign a public petitions to bass builders and pickup manufacturers, which will describe sufficient enough pickup shapes. And ask to stick with Occama's razor principle (Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.)