Why so little discussion about bass pickups?

[Peeved T-40]

I freeze-framed that video on the cross section and tried to count the "turns" in each coil, but it was a little challenging. Looks like it's roughly 30 across and 40 tall. That would make for 1,200 turns. I'm wondering if anyone else can validate that. Two "coils" so 2,400 turns total in the pickup.

A normal wire wound pickup might have two to four times that much, or more. I'm wondering how they compensate for the lower signal output as a result of the low turn count. I know their bass pickups are active, but they also have a passive mode that bypasses the onboard preamp. So it's not like they're just boosting the weak signal.

It doesn't strike me as materially different than a wire wound pickup but maybe I'm missing something. Winding a coil is cheaper and faster than making a multilayer pcb, so it's not like this was done for manufacturing or cost efficiency. The "choose which portion of the field is active" theoretical feature he talks about in the video, based on the offset coils and the vias, is possible with wound pickups. I'm wondering if that offset is even a deliberate feature to achieve some specific tonal goal, or if it was done because that was the only way they could have room for the row of vias along the edge.

Has anyone cut up a bass Fluence pickup? I wonder if they're much different inside.

I freeze-framed that video on the cross section and tried to count the "turns" in each coil, but it was a little challenging. Looks like it's roughly 30 across and 40 tall. That would make for 1,200 turns. I'm wondering if anyone else can validate that. Two "coils" so 2,400 turns total in the pickup.

A normal wire wound pickup might have two to four times that much, or more. I'm wondering how they compensate for the lower signal output as a result of the low turn count. I know their bass pickups are active, but they also have a passive mode that bypasses the onboard preamp. So it's not like they're just boosting the weak signal.

It doesn't strike me as materially different than a wire wound pickup but maybe I'm missing something. Winding a coil is cheaper and faster than making a multilayer pcb, so it's not like this was done for manufacturing or cost efficiency. The "choose which portion of the field is active" theoretical feature he talks about in the video, based on the offset coils and the vias, is possible with wound pickups. I'm wondering if that offset is even a deliberate feature to achieve some specific tonal goal, or if it was done because that was the only way they could have room for the row of vias along the edge.

Has anyone cut up a bass Fluence pickup? I wonder if they're much different inside.

It's possible that the picture is too low resolution or too compressed to give an accurate count. The upper right section seems clear enough but there's a chance the "winding" breaks down smaller than what we can make out in the video. I could also be totally wrong though.

Maybe there's a preamp that operates in passive mode? it would be a little silly to call it passive at that point but I'm not exactly sure how else they get roughly normal volume out of it if your count is right.

after seeing the video, those pickups are actually much more "normal" than I had envisioned. I was picturing some kind of crazy, digital pickup or something but really it's still just a coil around a magnet. perhaps the better control over the coil in manufacturing is just enough to squeeze better volume out of fewer windings.

 

[Chef]

Again... I wasn't implying that no one is talking about pickups here... on a bass pickup forum...

I came to the bass pickup forum to ask why, broadly speaking, outside of this forum, bassists seem less concerned with their pickups and electronics than guitar players.

I wasn't implying anything about this forum or the people here

OK, point taken.
My response to that is: there's just not that much to be done with the very established J and P tones. This is accomplished.
Bass in this regard is just a different thing than guitar, where those guys want to discuss strat and les paul pickup variations, how they respond to over drive and feedback and etc just as much as they want to discuss microtonal variations of 12ax7 preamp tube variants.

 

[yodedude2]

The discussion about guitar pickups is endless. ...

Why is that?

indeed.

 

[ardgedee]

Most guitar pickups work perfectly well for bass in terms of output and frequency range. The main reasons bassists don't use them is they're either too small to span all the strings or the poles don't line up with the strings.

One of the more interesting designs I've seen for pickups in recent years has been the Lace Alumatone, which uses a very small coil tucked into one corner of the pickup body, and most of the sensor is aluminum. As far as I can tell the variety of models are mostly about fitting different string patterns, or to fit into different body routings.

 

[dkelley]

Standards are a GOOD THING.

P/J/MM HB/DOUBLE J/SOAPBAR/Mudbucker/Rickenbacker/tele-precision are, pretty much standards... the Soapbar being less defined.

Underneath those standard size pickup bodies can be nearly anything (P is sorta always a P though, which is a great pickup to have standardized imho).

J pickups do not all sound alike, far from it actually.

Soap bar means literally nothing. Under a soapbar you will often find mini precision pickups, or J pickups, or side by side humbuckers, and so on.

So there isn't much else out there in the pickup body shapes, because they already have shapes that can handle pretty much any kind of pickup design.

 

[brianrost]

 

[NoiseNinja]

That's a fair point but there's still stuff you could do with the wiring and in general, the wiring schemes in basses are pretty simple and to the point. I mean, there are active basses with full EQs and stuff in them but I've never seen anything that I might call a Stratocaster of basses for instance. Like a bass that's loaded out with pickups and wired to allow for all kinds of combinations. Maybe there's some high end, boutique stuff out there but certainly nothing off the shelf.

Stanley Clarke just called you, he wants his advertising money back:
Spellcaster Bass | Oneonta Guitar

 

[Peeved T-40]

Stanley Clarke just called you, he wants his advertising money back:
Spellcaster Bass | Oneonta Guitar

like I said, there is boutique stuff out there but I think you would be hard pressed to find this thing hanging in a guitar center. There's also the Squier Bass VI but I'd hardly say the philosophy of these two basses has been broadly adopted by the bass community.

 

[NoiseNinja]

like I said, there is boutique stuff out there but I think you would be hard pressed to find this thing hanging in a guitar center. There's also the Squier Bass VI but I'd hardly say the philosophy of these two basses has been broadly adopted by the bass community.

I think it might surprise you how little the average guitarist really care about pickups, there is just more of them, hence more who do so, and as with all things relative misery loves company, bless their relatively poor souls.

One thing I did notice though is that guitarists rarely speak of the importance of tortoise pickguards and even more rarely about the wonders of using flatwound strings...

Hmm... perhaps you do actually have a legit point after all.

 

[BobKos]

I get the OP and I'm not a guitar player (bass only). A guitarist I know is REALLY into the nuances of tone. I think that is alot more normal in the guitar world than in the bass world. I think in the bass world we have a desired tone in our head. Achieve it. Done. On a good day it doesn't get buried in the mix. Sixers on the other hand are inclined to play with gear till some level of audio nirvana is achieved. This of course includes ridiculous analysis of every component in the signal chain including pickups. And information accurate or not is passed around at every opportunity to stoke the fires of competition and perfection. I guess in a nutshell bass players don't care that much about it because it doesn't matter that much.

 

[Peeved T-40]

I get the OP and I'm not a guitar player (bass only). A guitarist I know is REALLY into the nuances of tone. I think that is alot more normal in the guitar world than in the bass world. I think in the bass world we have a desired tone in our head. Achieve it. Done. On a good day it doesn't get buried in the mix. Sixers on the other hand are inclined to play with gear till some level of audio nirvana is achieved. This of course includes ridiculous analysis of every component in the signal chain including pickups. And information accurate or not is passed around at every opportunity to stoke the fires of competition and perfection. I guess in a nutshell bass players don't care that much about it because it doesn't matter that much.

I mean, it does matter. Single coil sounds different from humbucker which sounds different from P90. Likewise in bass, split coil sounds different from Jazz which sounds different from the ProBucker 760s in a thunderbird.

So the pickup defiantly makes a difference and so do the pots and caps. That being said, where I think guitarists go wrong is in two places.

(1) The weird idea that there's some perfect tone out there. Most of the time when I hear arguments about 'this' being better than 'that' it really comes down to personal taste but it will be argued as an objective truth.

(2) while the pickups and electronics to make a difference, by the time you run them through a dozen pedals it really doesn't matter anymore.

I still think it's a worthwhile topic and it has lead people to do some interesting things but on the average, I think the guitar community takes it way to far and they're chasing snake oil most of the time. Still, I do wish people got more creative with basses

 

[el murdoque]

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.

I have a feeling that there are a lot more guitarists out there that can hear the difference between a $199 Vovox cable and a $20 Sommer - on the line between their pedalboard and the amp.

I'm not saying that swapping pickups can make a world of a difference in a bass, but I have not met anyone who would spend $2k+ on a bass and swap out pieces, because when you spend serious cash on a bass, you're usually buying a bass and not a modding platform. You like how it feels and you like how it sounds, because in the upper shelf, basses can do both at once without help.

Furthermore, most bassists play clean and prefer a natural sound - I always felt that with a guitar that does a lot of OD and/or distortion, the pickup's importance grows.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

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?

Well we do, just not as often as guitarists. I think the nature of the bass work, the subtlety of different pickups as opposed to guitar parts gets lost in the mix.

Not to mention all sound engineers make all basses sound like Fenders anyway... Just joking.

 

[Peeved T-40]

I have a feeling that there are a lot more guitarists out there that can hear the difference between a $199 Vovox cable and a $20 Sommer - on the line between their pedalboard and the amp.

I'm not saying that swapping pickups can make a world of a difference in a bass, but I have not met anyone who would spend $2k+ on a bass and swap out pieces, because when you spend serious cash on a bass, you're usually buying a bass and not a modding platform. You like how it feels and you like how it sounds, because in the upper shelf, basses can do both at once without help.

Furthermore, most bassists play clean and prefer a natural sound - I always felt that with a guitar that does a lot of OD and/or distortion, the pickup's importance grows.

I would actually argue the opposite. It's precisely because most bass players play clean or near clean that I think a wider range of unique sounding pickups should be more relevant. Once you run a pickup through all kinds of effects, what pickup you started out with matters less. So, if anything, I think there should be more discussion about pickups on the bass side of things than the guitar side.

 

[craig0316]

With all due respect, OP, I'm confused.
A) You can't swing a dead cat here in TB without hitting some conversation about pickups.
** I'm pretty sure that swinging around cats, dead or not, is considered animal abuse in most US States...

 

[ctmullins]

[ ... some stuff that I pretty much agree with, right up until ... ] I guess in a nutshell bass players don't care that much about it because it doesn't matter that much.

The heck it doesn't! Bass tone is a bit of an obsession with me, and my experimentation has mostly been around pickups and instrument construction, with pedals and EQ a distant third and fourth.

We are out there. We're just hopelessly outnumbered by people with skinny strings....

 

[NoiseNinja]

I get the OP and I'm not a guitar player (bass only). A guitarist I know is REALLY into the nuances of tone. I think that is alot more normal in the guitar world than in the bass world. I think in the bass world we have a desired tone in our head. Achieve it. Done. On a good day it doesn't get buried in the mix. Sixers on the other hand are inclined to play with gear till some level of audio nirvana is achieved. This of course includes ridiculous analysis of every component in the signal chain including pickups. And information accurate or not is passed around at every opportunity to stoke the fires of competition and perfection. I guess in a nutshell bass players don't care that much about it because it doesn't matter that much.

Might be true to some extend, not least because a guitarists usually can more easily get away with pursuing the sound in their head, where bass players would be the ones who are more likely to end up being forced to adapt to that, rather than the other way around, mostly simply because of the nature of the roles they respectively traditionally play in a band context.

When that is said I wouldn't exactly call discussions about the importance of the right wood, pickups and pedals rare among bass players, at least I see plenty of those kind of discussions on this as well as other forums among bass players, just a bit less common perhaps than among guitarists.

Also when it comes to innovative designs there seems to be a lot more alternatives for bass players than is the case with guitars, and I doubt there would be unless there was an actual market for such instruments.

My point with this being that perhaps the conservative traditionalists among guitar players are much more likely to discuss the finer nuances of tone and how it is best achieved than the equivalent demographic group among bass players, who tends to stick to stock Fender P or J basses, despite them making up a smaller overall percentage of bass players than they do among guitarists.

Just thinking out loud really, not sure how much of this is true or not, not least because my best guess is that by far the majority of both guitarists and bass player not really are all that active on internet forums like this, where things like that are discussed.

However the mystery of how bass design seems to be much more innovative in general than guitar design still stands, and the fact that it wouldn't be if there weren't a substantial market for it, and that guitar design would be much more so if there had been a substantial market for it.

To add my own 50 Cent I am personally quite specific and pertinent about my bass tone, even if I don't subscribe to Cork-sniffers Weekly or count myself among it's esoteric congregation of true believers.

 

[Slater]

I don't want to be a bubble burster or theory-killer here, but it's not any harder to capture bass frequencies versus guitar, in terms of pickup design. All of the common pickup layouts/designs can easily be adjusted to work with either frequency range.

"Capture" probably wasn't the right word. I guess my point is there is less of an audible difference with minor changes to pickup design for bass. Therefore, there's less discussion and application of pickup tinkering and swapping for bass than there is for guitar.

 

[Slater]

That's a fair point but there's still stuff you could do with the wiring and in general, the wiring schemes in basses are pretty simple and to the point. I mean, there are active basses with full EQs and stuff in them but I've never seen anything that I might call a Stratocaster of basses for instance. Like a bass that's loaded out with pickups and wired to allow for all kinds of combinations. Maybe there's some high end, boutique stuff out there but certainly nothing off the shelf.

No longer in production, but meet the Music Man Big Al…

 

[Pings Bass]

Sometimes it seems like all anybody wants to talk about around here is pickups or effects, two things I've never spent much time worrying about in 35 years of playing.