Pickup for short scale bass

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Many of you guys can relate to helping a player refine their part while tracking to help them realize their musical idea.

I've never thought of myself as a performance musician but lately I get asked to come jam on bass. In the studio I've gotten to try some great sounding rigs and I really like to get down on a p-bass through an Ampeg setup.

To the point, I have short arms and stubby fingers and play a short scale at home.

Real bassists - I've got a First Act bass that plays like a dream (and I'm going to ignore your snickers) and am looking to replace the pickup.

Somethng that would suit a Beatles violin bass or a Gibson SG-type.

Thanks,

Bill

[TV Lenny]

Hmmm, let me do a little looking into First Act.

I also make custom handwound guitar and bass pickups.

Tom

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Thanks Tom,

It comes supplied with P-style split pickups. Low output and don't sound half bad but deficient in guts (for lack of a better term). I'd like to stick with that configuration.

It has great balance and sustain and a nice, nice neck, kind of stylin', too.

Love to get something from a TOMB guy, let me know what you've got.

Bill

[TV Lenny]

Sounds good. I'll PM you!

Tom

[darjama]

More guts, huh?

I'll bet those things have some crappy pots in them. try bypassing the volume and tone and wiring the stock pickup straight to the jacks, I'll bet it will help.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

TOMB is just awesome!

I won't jump into anything right away but am filing away your helpful advice; thanks guys.

Although taking a direct out test only requires some alligator clips, hmmm.

BTW - I've done some musing about this - does anyone have any knowledge about using inductive tone controls for passive electric instruments vs the normal capacitor-based methods?

My seat-of-the-pants take is that coil losses at so low a voltage level would make the scheme unfeasible and hum might be a real problem, as well.

Bill

[ampguy]

with basses at guitar center with a lot of diff basses and amps indicate that volumes differ from string to string, wildly.

So the more pickups and controls, probably the better. I'm surprised no one has just put 4 independent pickups, with 4 independent volumes for each string on a bass yet.

[ubertar]

I make quadraphonic pickups for bass. I can make them in P-bass style. You run it out to a breakout box, then have separate control over each string. You can record each string to its own track.
http://www.ubertar.com/hexaphonic

[ampguy]

interesting stuff. I wish I could break out different pairs of strings then send them back through my virtual tape heads in an akai headrush which outputs to separate amps.

I make quadraphonic pickups for bass. I can make them in P-bass style. You run it out to a breakout box, then have separate control over each string. You can record each string to its own track.
http://www.ubertar.com/hexaphonic

[CraigS63]

with basses at guitar center with a lot of diff basses and amps indicate that volumes differ from string to string, wildly.

So the more pickups and controls, probably the better. I'm surprised no one has just put 4 independent pickups, with 4 independent volumes for each string on a bass yet.

[ashcat_lt]

Testing the pickups without the pots is going to require snipping off at least the one wire from each pot (the grounded wire). You can't just alligator clip to somewhere before them because they're still in the circuit. I would expect you'll find it somewhat brighter, but I didn't get the idea that's what you were shooting for.

I'm sure that the FirstAct pickups are crap. I can't imagine you could possibly go wrong in replacing them, but I always recomend the free and easy solutions first. Have you tried adjusting the pickup height? There's quite a lot of tonal variation available right there.

I've always wanted to try a GFS L'il Killer in a shortscale bass.

[Winstontaneous]

Thanks Tom,

It comes supplied with P-style split pickups. Low output and don't sound half bad but deficient in guts (for lack of a better term). I'd like to stick with that configuration.

It has great balance and sustain and a nice, nice neck, kind of stylin', too.

Love to get something from a TOMB guy, let me know what you've got.

Bill

Maybe check that the pickup is wired correctly?
The coils of a P pickup should wired in series, giving them a ballsy midrange with high output.
Might have been mis-wired in parallel.

[ubertar]

Maybe check that the pickup is wired correctly?
The coils of a P pickup should wired in series, giving them a ballsy midrange with high output.
Might have been mis-wired in parallel.

I doubt that would make much of a difference here. Series wiring, when it's in a humbucker, will work that way, because both pickups are getting signal from the same strings. In this case, each coil is picking up a different pair of strings, so you won't have that effect on tone. It'll cut the hum, but it won't affect the sound very much. When you have two signals from the same strings, in series, the output is added together, and doubled. When the signals are from different strings, it's not going to double. It shouldn't have much effect on tone, either.

[Snarl 12/8]

OMG, don't let the bass player from my last band see that.

On second thought, do.

(I was kinda into the concept until I saw the triple strings.)

[ashcat_lt]

Maybe check that the pickup is wired correctly?
The coils of a P pickup should wired in series, giving them a ballsy midrange with high output.?
Might have been mis-wired in parallel.

I doubt that would make much of a difference here. Series wiring, when it's in a humbucker, will work that way, because both pickups are getting signal from the same strings. In this case, each coil is picking up a different pair of strings, so you won't have that effect on tone. It'll cut the hum, but it won't affect the sound very much. When you have two signals from the same strings, in series, the output is added together, and doubled. When the signals are from different strings, it's not going to double. It shouldn't have much effect on tone, either.

Sure it will!

Discounting volume differences, the main difference is that in series you've got four times as much inductance compared to parallel.* ?This will cause a pretty drastic attenuation of the higher frequencies.

Think of the difference between a bright sparkly single-coil sound (say from splitting off one coil in an HB) and the darker, more midrangey sound of the full HB in that same position. ?This is almost completely caused by inductance, and in this case it's only doubled.


*This assumes that both coils are identical. ?Parallel will have 1/2 the inductance of either coil. ?Series has 2x that of one coil. ?And it doesn't matter that one coil is not sensing a given string. ?The added inductance still exists in the circuit.