I might select a pickup based on what someone "says" it does, but not usually.
That being said, descriptions are sort of useless compared to ears and listening.
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Why so little discussion about bass pickups?
- Thread starter Peeved T-40
- Start date
I might select a pickup based on what someone "says" it does, but not usually.
That being said, descriptions are sort of useless compared to ears and listening.
I think people get sick of it pretty quick because the language of sound description is so useless, generally. When a person describes a pickup, and then I hear it and think they did a good job, I listen, but that's only happened a couple times. And seriously, youtube videos somehow often have sound that is not that representative, so even that is a poor springboard for discussion.
Simple enough, the aftermarket for the j and p is bottomless. I'd bet relative to all other brands/styles combined they won't come close to the volume of aftermarket stuff a available for the two Fenders. I bought a set each of all three Dimarzio models for a jazz bass and built three parts basses buying individual parts from TB, ebay, etc. I used Fender bodies and necks but everything else was aftermarket and I always had choices of components when i went to buy.
You can buy pickups for other basses but the selection is not near as wide or varied as the choices you have for the p and j that only require a screwdriver and simple soldering skills to install.
I think guitars are more so electronic instruments than basses are. In other words the sound of a guitar is more dependent on the pickups than a bass. Maybe because with the different frequency ranges different pickups are more noticeably different sounding in guitar vs bass. I don't know
I can definitely tell the difference between good bass pickups and not so good ones but even after all these years of playing bass I don't really have a favorite pickup like all the guitar players I play with seem to have and drop in a lot of their guitars. For example I have a fender jazz I'm using as my tinkering bass. It's eventually going to get a fretless neck and I'm curious what kind of pickups to use specifically for fretless. So I've started doing some research into it. Leaning towards aguilar jazz DCB pickups but I know the Tony Franklin fender has a specifically designed bridge j pickup for that fretless bass and I know guys like Steve Bailey have had signature sets specifically for fretless.
Yeah for some reason YouTube sound doesn't translate very well especially for bass players. A prime example of that is u bass. Every video of them on YouTube sounds terrible but I've heard them in person and they sound super beefy
I used to make fun of my gee-tar friends for saying 'there's a skeezer 940 in the neck, a P12A middle pickup and I like a H2.a in the bridge' and now I get into arguments over Pau Ferro vs Indian vs Brazilian Rosewood, so ...
Advances in surgery have come a long way, these days... survival rates are through the roof, I tell ya'!
I think I know where the OP is coming from. When the favorite kid is a Fender/Fender inspired P- bass that must be fed first through a hi-pass-filter/low cut control and where moving the knobs from the center too much is not encouraged, the tweeter should be off, use flat strings over foam and no need to do excursion beyond the ninth fret - why bother about pickups at all - when the frequency range and harmonics have been confined to a small territory for that TB sound
I'm unsure if you're familiar with the experimentation that went into the development of the humble bass pickup? To me, the evolution of the bass pickup to meet such a simple design brief is really helpful background (ie. amplify the fundamental frequencies of a vibrating bass string without removing harmonics).
No doubt you're familiar with early approaches to pickup design, which were first applied to guitar, except for Paul Tutmarc's effort; he believed his attempt was just a variation on the Bell company's already patented telephone receiver.
This was when Rickenbacker/ National and the Dobro brothers were doing their whacky things in the musical kitchen with frypans and toasters ... while Gibson's homegrown electronics genius, Seth Lover, was working out how to tame Les Paul's 60Hz hum, and Leo Fender applied his single coil broadcaster/tele pickup to bass.
What was revolutionary about Fender's subsequent pickup design, which shrunk his 4-pole single coil and doubled it, was that it matched Lover's humbucker idea, wiring the two pickups together in series as a single voice. With two poles per string, this design not only removed the hum but also tamed the (then potentially speaker-destroying) single coil punch.
By producing focussed low-mids that weren't boomy, the split coil design became the golden standard for bass-string frequency response that amps and radio speakers could faithfully reproduce; coincidentally the same speakers playing the bass lines of early rock and roll.
Fender then applied this 2x single coil two-pole-per-string approach to the jazz bass, but wired them in parallel to make to two pickups work independently, allowing the bassist to dial in their sound from (effectively) humbucking to single coil.
(Years later Fender Corp. reissued the single coil "Tele bass" - amps now able to keep up - then poached Seth Lover from Gibson to design their Wide Ranging Humbucker which replaced the single coils in Tele basses from 1972.)
Meanwhile Grateful Dead's Alembic crew had been working on how to actively shape tone by making their pickup circuits electrically active. Leo Fender applied this approach when designing the pickup for Musicman's new Stingray bass. He developed this pickup with two separate coils - each with one large pole-per-string - that can be wired (switched) into various configurations (humbucking/ single coil; serial/ parallel; active/ passive etc) for a range of sounds.
If we include the experimentation of Spector / Steinberger in using EMG's developing active underwound pickup in this list, as well as finding piezo pickup applications for bass; its easy to appreciate the range of experimentation that has resulted in the fairly stable tribes of pickups available today.
Add to this several generations of musicians each trying to replicate their preferred bass tones which, on balance of probabilities, were played on a P or a J, and you end up in the place you first described.
At the end of the day, while the ears might hear, it's the mind that determines how desirable a sound is. This is also the likely reason snake oil works better on guitars than basses.
It is really not debated much, because the community is in near-unanimous agreement that bass pickups are a good idea.
Good points! But, there are many pro guitarists that stick with designs from the 50's and 60's; PAFs, Strat and Teles, Fender, Vox, Marshalls etc...not much "snake oil" with the ones i know, most are concerned with pedals and swapping speakers etc, its often a matter of finding their 'voice' on guitar.I'm unsure if you're familiar with the experimentation that went into the development of the humble bass pickup? To me, the evolution of the bass pickup to meet such a simple design brief is really helpful background (ie. amplify the fundamental frequencies of a vibrating bass string without removing harmonics).
No doubt you're familiar with early approaches to pickup design, which were first applied to guitar, except for Paul Tutmarc's effort; he believed his attempt was just a variation on the Bell company's already patented telephone receiver.
This was when Rickenbacker/ National and the Dobro brothers were doing their whacky things in the musical kitchen with frypans and toasters ... while Gibson's homegrown electronics genius, Seth Lover, was working out how to tame Les Paul's 60Hz hum, and Leo Fender applied his single coil broadcaster/tele pickup to bass.
What was revolutionary about Fender's subsequent pickup design, which shrunk his 4-pole single coil and doubled it, was that it matched Lover's humbucker idea, wiring the two pickups together in series as a single voice. With two poles per string, this design not only removed the hum but also tamed the (then potentially speaker-destroying) single coil punch.
By producing focussed low-mids that weren't boomy, the split coil design became the golden standard for bass-string frequency response that amps and radio speakers could faithfully reproduce; coincidentally the same speakers playing the bass lines of early rock and roll.
Fender then applied this 2x single coil two-pole-per-string approach to the jazz bass, but wired them in parallel to make to two pickups work independently, allowing the bassist to dial in their sound from (effectively) humbucking to single coil.
(Years later Fender Corp. reissued the single coil "Tele bass" - amps now able to keep up - then poached Seth Lover from Gibson to design their Wide Ranging Humbucker which replaced the single coils in Tele basses from 1972.)
Meanwhile Grateful Dead's Alembic crew had been working on how to actively shape tone by making their pickup circuits electrically active. Leo Fender applied this approach when designing the pickup for Musicman's new Stingray bass. He developed this pickup with two separate coils - each with one large pole-per-string - that can be wired (switched) into various configurations (humbucking/ single coil; serial/ parallel; active/ passive etc) for a range of sounds.
If we include the experimentation of Spector / Steinberger in using EMG's developing active underwound pickup in this list, as well as finding piezo pickup applications for bass; its easy to appreciate the range of experimentation that has resulted in the fairly stable tribes of pickups available today.
Add to this several generations of musicians each trying to replicate their preferred bass tones which, on balance of probabilities, were played on a P or a J, and you end up in the place you first described.
At the end of the day, while the ears might hear, it's the mind that determines how desirable a sound is. This is also the likely reason snake oil works better on guitars than basses.
Remember most are playing complex chords, single note leads and using several clean and dirt tones.....bass is normally nothing like that, i mean how many actually gig with an old Bassman head or B15 with a vintage style speaker these days? Sure lots of bassists do have extensive pedal boards but the variation in actual bass design nowdays is incredibly wide compared to guitar.
Most bassists i have seen stick with one bass/amp tone all night (i dont get out much!) and thats where P and J basses fit so well.
Myself, i love Gibson, Epiphone, Ric, Stingrays and many boutique and weird vintage basses as much or more than P and J types.
Also, look at the Peavey T40 basses if you want to see some innovative pickup design!!
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Please explain ...
(You're not the first I've heard suggest this ... keen to know more!)
Plenty if you search but it was a dual humbucker design with extensive switching options, a 'swiss army knife' of bass guitars capable of a very wide range of tones.Please explain ...
(You're not the first I've heard suggest this ... keen to know more!)
Most T40's were heavy (and i mean 12 to 14 lbs was not unusual) and big bodies that many did not care for the looks of....they were phased out fairly quickly.
Probably not ultimately. If I hadn't stumbled into hi-end bass world on this site I'd probably still by on the Stingray 5 that was 'the best bass I've ever played' for a very long time.
I was being facetious. I leave folks who think that fingerboard woods don't matter to their own devices.
I'll recommend a bassist who was a lead Bass Singer as well...kinda dead tho.
Type O Negative's Peter Steele.
Played a wicked bass, sang a wicked bass lead until 2010.
Which makes it bloody hard for him to weigh in
Please explain ...
(You're not the first I've heard suggest this ... keen to know more!)
Here's why Peavey T-40 basses are so well loved...
and pretty much every Active bass they made after it...
