What is your favorite pickup, and in what position?

Ok, so I have a bass I am building out of a Peavey Retrofire guitar like this one ^.  I currently have a J pickup in the neck position, about where the single coil is with a similar slant to it.  It actually sounds pretty good like that.  I did it that way because I had one, and it was easy to make it look OK.  This bass isn`t perfect, and it is not going to be.  I traded a modified P bass for it to a friend of mine, as he is just learning bass and I wanted him to have a solid instrument to start with(he is a very good tuba player and can pick up anything low pitched, so I have high hopes for him on bass).

I am planning on having three pickups in this bass, the other two falling where the stock humbucker is, and where the stock bridge is.  I just need to decide what is going where now    So, what pickups do you guys really dig, and in what positions?  If you have more than one favorite, then throw them all out there!

Thanks,
-Jake

Greetings, RBS-J!  

Hmmm....it doesn't appear that you've got a lot of real estate to work with on such a small body. But if space weren't an issue, I would easily fall back on my favorite, old Dimarzio Model P's and J's. I'm also a huge fan of DiMarzio X2N's.

I currently use EMG 40DC's for my low/clean neck positions, and DiMarzio D Activators for my distortion channels.

Keep in mind the bridge is near the end of the body on my actual model now(effectively giving me as much room as any 34" scale, 20 fret bass).  I could fit two musicman pickups in and still have the jazz at the neck.  

That said, I am thinking this bass needs a P pickup in the traditional "sweet spot".  Huge fan of the model P dimarzio, don`t know if it will be permitted on this one for budget purposes.  A P pickup is pretty high up the list though.  

So, what should go in the bridge position now then?  Maybe a generic soapbar or something.

-Jake

P.S.- I have seen you describe your stereo setup in past threads, pretty nifty.  Not my thing, but it`s still cool

RBS_Johnson wrote:

P.S.- I have seen you describe your stereo setup in past threads, pretty nifty.  Not my thing, but it`s still cool

Thanks, Jake!  

A decent soapbar in the P sweet spot might work OK, but it won't sound like a P-type.

Here's a thought (that you may have already considered). If your budget isn't permitting a DiMarzio P, and you're willing to settle for a generic soapbar, why not just get a generic P? This way, you could get close to the results you want, and when you can afford a DiMarzio, you'll already have the routing in the body.

Ya, I`m thinking right now of a genera-P in it`s normal spot, and a genera-soapbar in the bridge.  That would give me three pickups, and I could upgrade them if I wanted to actually use this bass later.  Seems like a reasonable plan to me

Ok, so these should clear up my situation a bit.  I apologize for the crappy camera work, I can not find a setting on our camera I liked for inside....  





And with a flash on it:





I was rather impressed with my self on the bridge.  I got it intonated in the middle of the adjustment range of the saddles.  And I realize that the neck is slightly crooked.  Not too much, just enough to bother me.  I`m hoping once it`s done you won`t really be able to tell(I lined the bridge and the J pickup up with the neck).

-Jake

Looks pretty awesome!

Wow! Looks great!

It still bugs me that the neck is crooked.  But it was a really crappy guitar to start with.  It is about the same string spacing as a P-bass, but with a much thinner neck.  I don`t find it super comfortable, but that was the neck I had on hand.  There is a ton of space under the pick guard, so I am picturing three volumes, two tones, and two to three mini toggles(plus the stock three way).  It looks cooler as bass, but it balances about like a thunderbird now  

Or I may pull an Eric and mount up another jack so I can have a sweet distortion channel with my little 25w guitar practice amp

I remember Billy Sheehan mentioning having to do a little chiropractic work on his old Fender P bass, when he'd bend the neck, sometimes the neck would shift in the pocket and he'd have to snap the neck back into place on stage.

Maybe try pulling on it harder? 

I run a setup pretty similar to Eric's.
Yamaha Attitudes come stock wired stereo. I don't run two cabinets but my preamp has two inputs so one pick up goes into one input, the neck pickup is EQ'd just for bass and the bridge pick up is EQ'd for all the high end, then it goes into the effects return of my Ampeg SVT-4 Pro, into a 8x10. I don't get quite all the advantages of running two separate cabs but I've noticed it sounds way better than throwing overdrive and distortion on to the same channel/pick ups you want bass on. This way I'm not getting low end on my distortion or high end on my low end. My Ampeg 8x10 does have the option to run it has two 4x10's so I've been considering getting either a power amp or two cheaper heads to actually run the same cabinet truly stereo but, not sure I'II do that just yet. I understand that running stereo isn't for everyone, costs more money, more gear to move but the advantages are worth it to myself in a loud metal band where I want to have thundering bass and overdrive and have them actually being heard.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words,

I still like those basses(especially the one you Kahler-ized).  They look like they are scalloped on the upper frets of the D and G strings?  The rig looks cool too, looks really heavy, but cool.  What`s with the bears?

The neck isn`t getting fixed now, I would have to move the bridge and pickup, which is entirely too much work at this point    Honestly I am considering putting in a P pickup where the guitar humbucker is now, and just painting the extra routing black and leaving it open.  On this bass, being pretty is fairly far down the list

Yeah the frets are half scalloped on the D and G.
Only really heavy part of the rig is the cab, rack was ALOT heavier before I had the Pearce and the SVT-4 Pro was in the rack...
The bear is a Japanese character named Rilakkuma. Its a inside joke with me and my girlfriend that I have them on all my gear.

That`s cool, nothing like an inside joke to make people ask questions  

But, I don`t think you ever came out and said your favorite pickup/position  Is it safe to assume that your favorites can be found on your Yamaha`s?

Ah you are right I haven't!
Yes that's a pretty safe assumption.
The only thing I find missing on my Attitudes is being able to get those really nice Jazz Bass bridge pick up harmonics.
I have a Fender Tony Franklin Fretless P bass that I put a neck pick up in and wired stereo, it has a jazz pick up at the bridge. and the harmonics on it are so nice but I don't like how jazz pick ups sound with overdrive on them, otherwise I would consider getting one installed on my green Attitude. (I don't use overdrive with the fretless)

So put one on the green attitude with a three way switch wired to your "clean" channel.  Seems logical to me, though I may not be the best person to ask about logic  

This discussion has been making think that I need a P pickup on this bass in a real-soon-now kinda way.  I was going through my parts stash earlier and found a genera-P pickup    Now I just have to pop one cover off to resolder a lead wire one and hopefully not burn it up.  Then I can use the three way switch on this one  Bonus is that both the J pickup on the bass now, and this P pickup are from the parts bass I got the neck from.  Recycling is good, lol.

Yeah I considered that but, still haven't sold myself on it yet... maybe in the future.

Looking forward to seeing that P Pick up on your bass!

to find out how a distorted bridge jazz pick up sounds....listen to type o negatives "october rust".
as far as i know peter steele recorded the album with a customized esh bass with a single somewhat jazzy at bridge position.
i always liked his heavy distorted bass, esp. on the earlier albums.

P pickup is a no go....  I had three coils(1 1/2 full pickups).  I thought one of the two matching coils needed resoldered.  I was wrong.  The windings were completely broken and inoperative.  The other individual coil was not savable either....

So, I once again dug through my spare parts and found a dual rail humbucker that was in a single coil guitar housing(for strat`s, etc.).  I put that into the humbucker ring on the guitar(temporary) and positioned it about where I wanted it.  I used a wood chisel to open up the rout and lined up the blades left to right.  I got the north coil about 1/4" down from the center of where the two P coils should be.  Interesting sound, it is surprisingly bassy for a guitar pickup.  I also put a coil tap on it, and I think I like it better in single coil mode.  

Only downside so far is I think the J pickup and the humbucker are out of phase with each other.  I will experiment some tomorrow or the day after, and get some more crappy pictures

@Basszupfer Damn that tone is pretty awesome!

@RBS_Johnson I'd love to hear how your bass sounds! Any chance of a video sometime?

i always liked pete´s approach (followed by cliff burton, tom angelripper, cronos aso.) to use distorted basses in a band context.
imoho pete´s bass sound was the best at their debut album "slow, deep and hard".

very full distortion with full bottom end (guess he played an alembic that time).
i watched type o negative back in ´99 in cologne at bizarre festival (captured on the "symphony for the devil" dvd), when he played a customized rickenbacker-style fernades bass.
this is one of my unreachable dream sounds so far.....rumours say, that he had a special fernandes sustainer kit for bass in that axe.

...and so listen to pete´s pre TON band "carnivore".


omg, pete influenced me very hard a few years ago...

@Al:
Sure, if you are ever in Athens, hit me up and you can play it.  I will play cameraman    Seriously though, maybe.  I don`t consider myself a terribly great bassist.  I have just as much fun modifying things and getting different sounds/playability as I do actually playing them.  Plus I am rusty from all the hustle around moving and not being in a band for awhile.

@Basszupher:
Cool songs.  I do like the bass sound, just a bit(lot) heavier than my personal sound.  You never threw out your favorite pickup/position either....  You have a ric in your avatar picture, is that about what you like?

rightyright, i´m a huge fan of the rick-design! but i´ve got two identical copies from unsung/korea (distributed as "CAREER" here in germany) as my main basses.

well, i don´t really mind about pickup´s and their positions.... but for sure it´s a fact, that different tonewoods, constructions, pickup´s, strings aso. will end up in different results.
important for me is that the bass has a tonal character (a reason that i avoid mostly all active basses), 4 strings and usage is simple as possible.
i really hate it, if there´re tons of knobs and some other for me useless nicnac´s on it.
i´m a guy who needs just ONE basic sound in a band.
i modded one of my rickenfakers a few weeks ago with a seymour duncan rick-replacement bridgehumbucker. that thing sounds now much more fatter and louder as with the stock singlecoil.

and maybe i never was someone who really experimented with different pickups and all that.

but i really HATE the original rickenbacker 4003 stock pickup´s.....imoho they´re really lame! i own one of those rare 4003 S/5 fivestringers.....and unfortunately this bass wasn´t really playable (very tight stringspacing) and it had for my personal taste no sound....


so isn´t any wonder that lemmy kicked out that ric-pup´s out of his basses to replace ´em with thunderbird pups? cliff burton modded his ric with a jazzy in bridge position an a sidewinder at neck position.

I have played a few rics, and I love how they play.  I don`t love the price tag, lol.  Sound is easy to change(like your hum bucker in one of the fakes you have).  

My favorite bass to play and sound wise is a late 60`s Aria hollow body.  It is 30" scale, has two humbuckers, one volume, one tone, and a three way switch.  I love the simplicity of it, and the sound.  I took it apart and began refinishing it though, since it LOOKED like it was 40-some years old.  That one I really need to finish...

My first bass turned out to be a great learning experience for what I did and didn`t like(I still have it).  I hated the bridge, hated the stacked control knobs, hated the blend, etc.  On the flipside, I love the string spacing at the nut, I love the neck profile, love the pickup sounds I can get.  It is active, but it has a preamp, not active pickups.  I have been slowly fixing those things I don`t like.  I never enjoyed how the battery always holds out until you want to go somewhere and play, then dies.  I am going to carefully hook it up without the preamp and see if I like it.  Always something to be done on a bass like this....

So, I guess the moral of the story is decide what you like and use it  (or that I am weird, not sure  )

-Jake

Just wanted to say that I am totally loving this thread, Guys. It's good to see active dialogue with the exchange of useful information. Bravo, Gents!

Carsten, I am also a fan of Type O Negative, and it was a dark day when Peter Steele left the planet. His bass tone was/is truly one-of-a-kind.

Speaking of bridge-position pickups (and yes, I realize that the emphasis was on J-types, but still), our very own John Gallagher of Raven uses his bridge pickup for his distortion tone:

I love that solo Eric!
It was a EMG or a X2N he used for that solo right?
I have a second Rickenbacker I use as a piccolo bass now, it has a X2N-B in the neck pick up which is the same as a X2N just wired more powerfully for bass I believe.
I imagine that pick up would really kill with some distortion on it!

It used to be an X2N, but when we got together with them this last October, I noticed that it had been changed. John told me that he had literally beaten the X2N to death, so he replaced it with an EMG. Still screamed!

this vid isn´t avaiable in your country....
omg, how i hate the german GEMA!!!

but yes!!!! john was the first bassplayer where i noticed, that there was a thing on his bass.....which i´d only seen on guitars before!!! a trem? the beginning of a long long long research for me...

Basszupfer wrote:

this vid isn´t avaiable in your country....
omg, how i hate the german GEMA!!!

but yes!!!! john was the first bassplayer where i noticed, that there was a thing on his bass.....which i´d only seen on guitars before!!! a trem? the beginning of a long long long research for me...

Bummer, Carsten! Well, you've probably already heard I.G.A.R.B.O., right?

I remember after having my first Kahler for a couple of years being introduced to Raven, and I was like "WHAAA???? ANOTHER TREM USER!"  

for sure i had!!!!

oh man, i´ve got to take some time for me to reswitch my pedalboard....at the moment i run a napalm death-like sound...i splitted my signal with a boss line selector to mix the dist. signal with the natural bottom signal.... i have no idea how i get some cool screaming feedbacks out of my rig. i think that´s rick-ish nature....sometimes i miss an additional pickup close to the bridge for that high sizzling...

Eric and I are in the group chat on the main index page, if you guys want to hop in....

I have decided that my retrofire bass is better used as parts right now(in the midst of refinishes and upgrades trying to end up with nicer or at least done basses).  So it will be parted out and quite a few pieces contributed to other guitars.  

Coming soon though is a thread on an old, ongoing bass project.  Now influenced by BTF, and in particular Eric and Al.    

-Jake

Looking forward to seeing it!

As am I!