Why so little discussion about bass pickups?

[BarfanyShart]

Bass pickups don't matter, it's all too low for most people to hear anyway. You're just up there to look pretty and make the drummer feel like he has a friend.

 

[Peeved T-40]

At first I read the OP amd thought "What I this guy TALKING ABOUT????"

Then I realized he's been here a month.

Welcome to TalkBass, @DCWalt !!!!

Dude, you could spend days reading about nothing but EMG Geezers. And that's before you read the first thread about vintage Fender pickups. You could get lost in those threads for weeks.

Poke around. Do some searching. Not much about pickups HASN'T been discussed here.

again, maybe I phrased the question wrong because I'm not talking about the frequency of discussion HERE. I asked here because you guys DO talk about them.

I'm talking more broadly, out in the world. Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

 

[beaglesandbass]

Interestingly enough, I searched "types of guitar pickups" which brought me to this page, where there are more main categories of bass pickups than electric guitar

there are lower end basses with interesting configurations here and there like the Epiphone EB-3 but in my experience people are pretty hostile to them. I see people trash it's neck pickup all the time on this forum. Personally I think it sounds interesting but It doesn't seem most people are interested in different when it comes to basses

First off, the overwhelming majority of lower and basses are P or J clones. And if someone doesn't like something, it may just be because they don't like the sound, not that it's "different".

You've been here a little over a month, OP. Since then, your only posts in the P&E forum have been this thread. If you don't think something's being talked about enough, don't complain about it. Be the solution and start talking about it. A little friendly advice, threads like this rub people the wrong way even if it's not your intention. First impressions are everything, and you only get one shot.

 

[beaglesandbass]

I've been beginning to think nobody on Talkbass even realizes most 5 and 6 string basses have different string spacing than Fenders...

Or that basses come in finished OTHER than sunburst

 

[two fingers]

again, maybe I phrased the question wrong because I'm not talking about the frequency of discussion HERE. I asked here because you guys DO talk about them.

I'm talking more broadly, out in the world. Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

Ah. Sorry for the confusion.

That I agree with. The majority of bass players I know have stock pickups in most of their basses. I'm kind of a pickup dork. But, then again, I've been a member here for years.... sooooooo.

I have stock, Geezer, and PAF era DiMarzio in P basses. Active EMGs in an 80s parts bass. Nordy P bass pickup and Duncan NYC bucker (all passive) in my main player. Nordy Big Split and Dual Coil in a crazy custom bass. G&L MFDs in an L2000. I don't even know what the Jazz pickups are in my Pirate bass. I'm all over the place.

 

[dalkowski]

Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

We've got bigger fish to fry, starting with protecting the one and, when we have gigs again, making butts move.

In all seriousness, I think I see where you're coming from. It's just not anything I give much thought to.

Back to the show.

 

[MYLOWFREQ]

Because a P is all you need

Real answer is there are plenty of them. The OP sees more discussions about guitar PUs, because there are more guitars and guitar players than bassist in the market. We don't see much posts about bagpipe mouth pieces (if there's such a thing) either.

 

[bassdude51]

again, maybe I phrased the question wrong because I'm not talking about the frequency of discussion HERE. I asked here because you guys DO talk about them.

I'm talking more broadly, out in the world. Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

Now I'm REALLY confused!

 

[Peeved T-40]

You've been here a little over a month, OP. Since then, your only posts in the P&E forum have been this thread. If you don't think something's being talked about enough, don't complain about it. Be the solution and start talking about it. A little friendly advice, threads like this rub people the wrong way even if it's not your intention. First impressions are everything, and you only get one shot.

you know what? if it rubs you the wrong way, maybe that's your problem. There is not a single thing about my question that is in anyway rude, disrespectful or otherwise offensive unless you decide to deliberately take it as such. You in particular have been nothing but abrasive and defensive about what's an honest and reasonable question. "Why is there less discussion about pickups among bassists than there is with guitarists". leave it to the internet to punish someone for legitimate curiosity.

Sorry I asked

by the way, you know what else rubs people the wrong way? saying "a little friendly advice" because "a little friendly advice" is never friendly.

 

[dwizum]

Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

I hope this doesn't sound like me being a repetitive broken record, but I think that's just reflective of the culture and market size.

In a pop band, all focus is on the guitar hero out front. The bass is just there for some thuddy harmony. No one would even notice the bass in most pop songs unless it was suddenly missing. I think that naturally leads to cultural differences in terms of emphasis on tone and versatility. Guitarists get wrapped up in hero emulation and/or trying to stand out from the crowd. This leads to a weird and contradictory combination of copying inane details of a specific pickup or guitar, but also trying to achieve max versatility. That contradiction causes guitarists to do things that don't really make sense to most "normal" people. I'll pick on my brother here for a minute. I just built him a new set of humbucker pickups for his Les Paul and wired them with the "Jimmy Page" configuration, which uses the original three position pickup selector plus four push pull pots to allow for pickup select, splitting, phase change, and parallel/serial options. There's 48 possible combinations of switch settings on his guitar now. Forty eight! That's before you even consider touching the actual volume or tone controls. No wonder guitarists have a lot to talk about. It would take a few pages just to describe them all. I'm not trying to knock it, I think it's cool and fun to do things like this. It's just part of the guitar culture, whether it makes sense or not. People hear about the fact that Jimmy had a guitar set up like this, so they want to do it, too.

You can forget about internet forums and just go backwards in history to see the cultural differences. Look at the progression of Fender's products. With their guitars, they were constantly adding pickups and switches in an effort to be versatile and stand out. From Telecaster to Strat to the Jazzmaster and Jaguar. Meanwhile, on the bass front, they made the Precision, then the Jazz, and... well, that was good enough. Maybe we'll throw in some cheaper versions, or short scale versions, here and there - but no need to get crazy with the controls or pickups. Even that early in the history of these instruments, it was clear that guitars "needed" more attention than basses.

Basically, many bassists assume (perhaps subconsciously) that you can pretty much get the job done without going down the rabbit hole. Give me a good broad-range bass pickup that preserves the full spectrum of what the string is doing and I can vary my technique or EQ settings to pay any song or style I'd like. There's not much to talk about. 90% of the time, the bass is supposed to blend in the mix anyways, not stand out. We don't need to constantly grasp at ways to stand out. And when you do need to stand out, you can do so without needing 48 options to choose from, plus two volumes and two tones.

Then of course you need to consider market size. Even if you totally wash away those cultural differences, you'd still see a major disparity. If one out of every 1,000 guitarists started a conversation talking about oddball guitar pickup configurations, that would be a heck of a lot more threads than if one out of every 1,000 bassists did! And if a manufacturer is considering an oddball instrument, it's a LOT easier to sell to that 1/1,000th of the guitarist population than the 1/1,000th of the bass population.

 

[OptimalOptimus]

Well ... the first page here is more about wiring and pots than pickup so yeah

 

[micguy]

The majority of bass players I know have stock pickups in most of their basses. I'm kind of a pickup dork. But, then again, I've been a member here for years.... sooooooo.

So....if I'm the one who built the bass, are the pickups I put it in "stock" pickups? If I change them after a while, is it only the first set that I installed that are "stock"?

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

The discussion about guitar pickups is endless. It's all about what kind of pickup, who made it, what year is it, how's it wound, what new pickup tech is out there and how they're wired up. But when it comes to bass it pretty much just seems to be a non discussion. It kind of just ends at precision or jazz.

occasionally there's a something a bit different like a humbucker (or bass bucker if you will) or some weird vintage pickup will poke it's head out every once in a while but generally speaking, I just never really hear the bass community talking about pickups.

Why is that?

I happen to mention different pickups all the time man. Output, tone, wiring, positions, types, styles, etc.

Like, I'm getting big J blades for my kestrel. I used to have quarterpounders in my old one. Output is low on the stocks. My pj has quarterpounders in it. My son's mikro has an NP4a and NJ4SE. My Tele has a Big Split (getting a big blade) and a BigMan in it.

 

[Deleted member 365158]

Lets see if this thread can get to 3 pages, then there is more than little discussion about pickups.
I like pickups, do you?

 

[Bassaga]

My theory is that it's because it's just harder for human hearing to tell the difference between bass tones. Every guitarist whose been playing for very long can hear the difference between a PAF and a FilterTron, even a discerning audience member could notice when a player flips the pickup selector switch on a Strat. Not so when you go down another octave, we're just not built to observe as many differences down there. A bassist thumping with his thumb over a single coil or using a pick over a split coil sounds very different to gear nerds like us, but the difference just plain isn't as big as it is up higher.

Same with bass vocalists, to my own chagrin. Tenors like Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo are easy to distinguish because they sing higher where our ears can pull more out of it. Eventually people even start to prefer one of them over the other and discuss them. But when's the last time you heard somebody weighing in on basses like Vladimir Miller vs Sergei Kryzhnenko?

 

[micguy]

I like pickups, do you?

A lot of us have wives that might be looking over our shoulders - not sure if you're going to get complete honesty on that question.

 

[ardgedee]

I'm talking more broadly, out in the world. Pickups just don't seem to be much of a discussion to a lot of a bass players.

There aren't as many forums for bass players as for guitar players, because there aren't as many bassists. And since the basic mechanics of pickups (electronics generally) are the same for guitars and basses -- the only real differences involve working frequencies -- most of the information shared in guitar forums is just as useful for bass players. When I search the web about some kind of bass-relevant electronics topic, most of the time it's answered to my satisfaction in a guitar forum or blog post, and that includes somewhat esoteric issues like Q filters and varitone switches.

I think the other part of the matter is that bassists and guitarists often have different goals in mind. Many guitarists obsessed with pickups are trying to recreate very specific historical sounds, to the extent of being kind of hypochondriac about the subtleties in the sound. There are plenty of bassists who are also into historical recreation but most just want to be heard, and their interest in tone is mostly about pickups that sound pleasing to them while being sufficiently audible in a mix. And that's a much easier target than a constantly fleeting idea of exactly what Jimmy Page's guitar sounded like at some specific concert.

 

[Deleted member 365158]

A lot of us have wives that might be looking over our shoulders - not sure if you're going to get complete honesty on that question.

My wife rolls her eyes about any and everything i do on here.

 

[Killing Floor]

I like pickups.
I talk about 'em.

I ordered a set last week for a project and Lindy Fralin personally called me with questions and waited while I confirmed the radius and some other details. How cool is that? That's one way to make sure your customer comes back.

I think it's fun when people say their pickups suddenly stop working. I know the forces required to suspend the functions of an electromagnet would cause much bigger problems to your life and property than a bass not working.

And I like to talk about pickup lines. Mine was "Gogo dancing is coming back in style, Go Go or Go Home" and it worked 100% of the time and it's how I met my wife.

I have to volunteer this evening and it's going be really warm so I'll probably pickup some tacos on the way home.

My J and P basses have Lindy pickups except for a P that I am keeping original because basses are such a good investment. The pickups in my Sabre are probably my favorite if I'm being honest. "Scatter wound" pickups means they didn't do as good a job winding and they can charge more for it. When I was a kid that is the approach I took to mowing lawns which would have been much easier if I had a pickup.

 

[Peeved T-40]

I hope this doesn't sound like me being a repetitive broken record, but I think that's just reflective of the culture and market size.

In a pop band, all focus is on the guitar hero out front. The bass is just there for some thuddy harmony. No one would even notice the bass in most pop songs unless it was suddenly missing. I think that naturally leads to cultural differences in terms of emphasis on tone and versatility. Guitarists get wrapped up in hero emulation and/or trying to stand out from the crowd. This leads to a weird and contradictory combination of copying inane details of a specific pickup or guitar, but also trying to achieve max versatility. That contradiction causes guitarists to do things that don't really make sense to most "normal" people. I'll pick on my brother here for a minute. I just built him a new set of humbucker pickups for his Les Paul and wired them with the "Jimmy Page" configuration, which uses the original three position pickup selector plus four push pull pots to allow for pickup select, splitting, phase change, and parallel/serial options. There's 48 possible combinations of switch settings on his guitar now. Forty eight! That's before you even consider touching the actual volume or tone controls. No wonder guitarists have a lot to talk about. It would take a few pages just to describe them all. I'm not trying to knock it, I think it's cool and fun to do things like this. It's just part of the guitar culture, whether it makes sense or not. People hear about the fact that Jimmy had a guitar set up like this, so they want to do it, too.

You can forget about internet forums and just go backwards in history to see the cultural differences. Look at the progression of Fender's products. With their guitars, they were constantly adding pickups and switches in an effort to be versatile and stand out. From Telecaster to Strat to the Jazzmaster and Jaguar. Meanwhile, on the bass front, they made the Precision, then the Jazz, and... well, that was good enough. Maybe we'll throw in some cheaper versions, or short scale versions, here and there - but no need to get crazy with the controls or pickups. Even that early in the history of these instruments, it was clear that guitars "needed" more attention than basses.

Basically, many bassists assume (perhaps subconsciously) that you can pretty much get the job done without going down the rabbit hole. Give me a good broad-range bass pickup that preserves the full spectrum of what the string is doing and I can vary my technique or EQ settings to pay any song or style I'd like. There's not much to talk about. 90% of the time, the bass is supposed to blend in the mix anyways, not stand out. We don't need to constantly grasp at ways to stand out. And when you do need to stand out, you can do so without needing 48 options to choose from, plus two volumes and two tones.

Then of course you need to consider market size. Even if you totally wash away those cultural differences, you'd still see a major disparity. If one out of every 1,000 guitarists started a conversation talking about oddball guitar pickup configurations, that would be a heck of a lot more threads than if one out of every 1,000 bassists did! And if a manufacturer is considering an oddball instrument, it's a LOT easier to sell to that 1/1,000th of the guitarist population than the 1/1,000th of the bass population.

I see your point. Bass is my instrument but I've always been a curious, experimental type and I guess I'm a bit envious of the wacky (often times, nonsensical) things the guitar community comes out with. That's why I've enjoyed poking around the forum here. There does seem to be a more experimental vibe, I just wish it was more apart of the broader bass community.