Selecting
Pickups
- To find the pickup or pickups that
best suit your needs you will need to know
- the tone quality you are
seeking:
- bass, mid or treble enhancement? or
- smooth, even frequency response?
- best bridge pickup growl? or
- best slap tone?
- ultimate low noise?
or
- don't mind a little noise if it gets me that
"single coil" sound
- .
- We will need to know something
about the instrument:
- what brand or type of
instrument?
- total string width at the
bridge?
- approximate fingerboard
curvature?
here are some Helpful Hints,
Frequently Asked Questions and Comments about the following topics:
- 1. tone
- 2. matching the pickup specs to the
instrument
- 3. some common string widths and
curvatures
- 4. special things about
-
- Precision Basses
- Jazz Basses
- P-J Basses
- New American Vintage 5's
- Music Man Basses
- Ernie Ball Music Man 5's
- G & L Basses
- Aria Basses
- Warwick Basses
- other basses 3
- other basses 4
- 5. Pickup Installation
tone
- Variety? Do you need one
particular tone quality or do you want the maximum versatility from your
instrument?
- Our pickups and electronics cover
many approaches and tonal requirements from:
- very specific (you want one particular tone quality and only that one will
do)
to
- very general (you play all styles and change tonal settings all the
time)
Active vs. Passive: Consider that
from the beginning the Music Man Bass was battery powered and did not have an
Active/Passive switch.
- I have yet to see a clear
case of battery failure. I have seen, however, many cases of harness and wiring
failure.
What is the instrument response? What are the
tonal characteristics of the instrument? Is it a bolt-on? a neck-through? If
you listen to it unplugged (ear to the bass side horn of the instrument): what
do you hear? Strong lows? Brilliant highs? How much mid do you hear? How much
of this spectrum do you want in the amplified sound?
Remember that this way of listening to the
instrument tells only part of the story. Even though the deep bass is more
easily heard this way than by listening from an arm's length away, you are
still hearing a treble enhanced version of the instrument's tone. It is a
useful approximation to the sound of the wood. The tone of the
instrument is the combination of wood + pickups +
electronics.
matching the pickup specs
to the instrument
To get the best performance from your choice of our
pickups you should provide us with:
the string width at the bridge (
we can figure out the rest - but we may ask you something about pickup distance
from the G-string saddle) - this is
why
- the curvature of the
fingerboard - we will make allowances for the action of the low-B, etc. and
you can be a little vague here:
- Fender-like (old Fender - highly
curved) or
- Gibson-like (medium curvature) or
- nearly (flat as many modern designs
are)
- this is why
-
some common string widths and
curvatures
4 String Bass
Pickups
- The most common string width
(center of low string to center of high string) for these is known
as
- "Fender width" - 3/4" per
string / 2-1/4" total
- or 57mm total string width
at the bridge.
5 String Bass
Pickups
- From the beginning these instruments
were made in a wide range of string widths.
- The most common widths
are:
- 66mm,
- 70-72mm and
- 76mm total string width at the
bridge.
6 String Bass
Pickups
- From the beginning these instruments
were made in a wide range of string widths.
- The most common widths now
are:
- 82mm,
- 86mm,
- 92mm and
- 96mm total
string width at the bridge.
7 String Bass
Pickups
These instruments are just establishing
themselves. We make pickups for many instruments being built with 108mm total
string width at the bridge.
Fingerboard
Curvature
In general, modern instruments have
lower fingerboard curvature than earlier ones. Fingerboard curvatures fall into
three categories: "nearly flat" (meaning 14" radius or larger), "Gibson-like"
(meaning approximately 12" radius) and "Fender-like" (meaning early Fender,
approximately 10" radius).
special things about
Precision Basses
- The two pickups in the Fender
P-Bass* pair overlap each other by 3/4" (19mm).
- .When these shapes are used in 5 or
6 string instruments they are often positioned on the instrument with different
overlaps. The earliest examples of these are the Pedulla basses.
- ..Orders for P-Bass* pairs for 5 and
6 string basses must
include the overlap specification if it is not the standard 3/4" (19mm)
of the Stock Fender 4 string instrument.
- ...Even if you are reasonably sure
that it is, it might be a good idea to measure it, just in case.
special things about Jazz
Basses
- The lengths of the neck and
bridge pickups in the original Fender* J-basses are not equal.
- .The
neck pickup is 3-5/8" long which is slightly shorter than
- the bridge pickup which is 3-3/4"
long.
- ..Some modern designs, however, use
two bridge length
pickups.
- ...Please check the physical size of
your pickups so that the ones we send will
fit the routed cavities.
special things about P-J
Basses
special things about Fender
New American Vintage 5's
special things about Music Man Basses
special things about Ernie
Ball Music Man 5's
special things about G & L Basses
special things about Aria Basses
special things about Warwick Basses
pickup
installation
-
- If in doubt,
have an expert do it and learn from what you see, even if you only get to see
the finished product.
- .It takes time to learn to install
electronics.
- ..We cannot spend the time to "walk" you
through an installation over the phone.
- ...There is a lot of material on this
site that should prove helpful to you if you want to learn, but installing your
first set of pickups and electronics is not the place to start.
- ....We recommend
these very experienced people.
back to the site map