Mighty Mite Passive Soapbar Bass Pickup - 4-String: Rear (MM-MMSP4-R/BK)

mighty mite Passive Soapbar Bass Pickup - 4-String: Rear (MM-MMSP4-R/BK)

i ordered one of these last week. it was very cheap ... about $28 with shipping.

it didnt get great reviews but this info was from the internet ... thats where i go for factual information (sarcasam). it was stated that it was too high end and lacked lows ... but thats not what i'm using it for. its a bridge pickup and i'll be using it to pick up highs and mids with a split humbucker p style for the mids and lows.

i'll post a review after i mess around with it.

i may end up going with the semour duncan phase 2 passive humbucker if its junk.

and whats with mighty mite's website?

Yeah, it's a little funky. But I think you'll be impressed with the pickup. It's not anything outrageously fabulous, but the one I had did the job well.

Which bass did you have it on?

this is gonna go on the p bass project. i'm going outta my way for other things (like the neck, frets, trem and finish) and i'm not gonna know how it comes out untill its done, so i needed to cut some corners somwhere.

if the bass project works out well ... i'll continue to make upgrades later.

Well, at least it's something to hatch out your idea. A place holder, I guess. So what are you going to do for the finish?

Martin, I used mine on my Tokai Jezz, but I don't have any pictures of it anywhere.

Cool. Not the Musicman pickup?

LOL! If you guys had any idea just how many experiments I did to my poor Tokai Jazz!

The area underneath the pickguard looked like the Grand Canyon from all of the routing pockets, and it went through a handful of pickguards in it's lifetime as I had to re-do them for each different pickup configuration. It started out with the stock single coil J's, then those got changed to DiMarzio Model J's, then I think I pulled the neck one and replaced it with the Seymour Duncan P, then I pulled that and dropped in the Mighty Mite soapbar, then that got changed for the Music Man-style Mighty Mite.

Or...as Mike/Amimbari would say..."or something like that!"

Damn' you Eric, I didn't even know GAS for modding existed......... But now I got it.................

i'm currently on round 3 with the finish on the p.

round 1 ... getting all the laquer off it. paint stripper and laquer stripper diddnt work. wanted to put laquer thinner on it to break it down but decided against it. spent 3 weeks just sanding it by hand with 100 grit.

this is a mex p and is real crappy maple. there are some thin spots right in the binding veneer and top. next time i finish a bass its gonna be a solid one piece body.

round 2 ... used mowhawk ultra penetrating stain - blue. it didnt penetrate squat! it stained my hands blue getting the stuff off the bass more than staining the bass. tried 3 applications, 4, 5 and it more or less just painted the body dark purpley black. tried to work the stain in with steel wool and it just intensified the brush strokes. what little bit did penetrate turned the body green ... yuk!

i stripped the stain off (alcohol based) and bleached the wood clean again. its still hanging with the 50/50 nacl h2o spray on it drying ... wait ... nacl is salt.

round 3 ...wanted to use this stuff .......

http://www.woodburst.com/color_charts.asp

but this guy has retired and i cant find surplus anywhere ... chek out the hughes in the blue and purple!

instead i got this ........

http://www.grandriverdoor.com/grs/wWoodKote.aspx

if neither of these work ... i'm just gonna paint it with royal blue spray and be done with it.

either way, i'm gonna finish it off with satin finish.

in the baltic blue. i hope it works.

mighty mite's website is really weird and difficult to use ... even to figure out how to buy said products ... even if you really wanted to. i mean ... that woman kept scaring me away!

so i went thru this company ... deerfield music ... somewhere in illinois. i got a confirmation e mail 10 days ago. no deduction from my account and no shipping box daily christmas gift with a pickup in it when i got home from work.

i called the company today. ......................................after the voice que maze ............................ they are closed on wensdays. who the heck is closed on wed.?????????

i'm thinking about calling back tomorrow and telling them to cancell the order. it shuddnt be this hard to get such a cheap pickup. their crappy service has cost them a $30 sale.

i think i'm gonna go with the dimarzio split p and the semour duncan phase II.

any one know anything about an economy pickup PU-DJX-B????????

Darkstrike wrote:

Damn' you Eric, I didn't even know GAS for modding existed......... But now I got it.................

Just doing my job creating chaos!

Yeah, I'll admit that I do suffer from a really bad case of mod-GAS!

That's a real bummer about your experience with Mighty Mite, Madmike. I managed to bypass all of that since I bought mine from an eBay dealer, so I never had to deal with Mighty Mite directly.

And perhaps I'm demonstrating just how dim I truly am...but what's a PU-DJX-B?

i found it somewhere stated that the economy brand is dimarzio ... but i'm not so sure that its true. the people i bought it from make no claims as such.

here it is ..........

http://guitarpartsresource.com/bass_pickupseconomy.htm

they dont even give any specs. with 12k output, i assume its passive. is that correct?

either way ... i can use it.

i just dig the whole aspect of "economy".

Ahhh...yes. I recognize these listings. There's an eBayer up in Canada that sells these, and I have been tempted to give them a whirl. And I would think these would have to be passive given the high impedance ratings, but I believe you can use such pickups in an active system provided it's tweaked properly.

Do you mean active tone circuit, passive pickups?

Yassir. I seem to recall reading somewhere in DiMarzio literature that it can be done, but in all honesty, I'm not sure why you would want to do such a thing.

Most active systems run passive pickups, in my experience.

All of my active basses are such.

I don't know, either...when I have DiMarzios, I want their sound to come through and the sound of the strings to come through, not the preamp's character.

You want a clear pre amp then, that when set flat sounds passive,

like an Audree, or a Seymore Duncan.

Or just wire passive!

Darkstrike wrote:

Most active systems run passive pickups, in my experience.

All of my active basses are such.

Not most, but many, especially low and intermediate priced basses. Although my Kramer has passive Dimarzios and an active preamp, even though that is quite a good instrument.

the ibanez edb 600 ... the one for the kahler install experiment ... and the one i'm sacrificing to the bass gods in the name of the fender p project ... had passive pickups and active eq preamp stock.

i never liked it. too much tone and too much fretty sound.

replaced it with a bart active preamp with 3 band eq. the stock ibanez arent the right pickups for that preamp. i dont know why not ... cant get the specs for those ibanez stock pickups. it just doesnt work too good.

i still dont like it. i can have the best preamp in the world, but if its working from cruddy pickups, it preamps a cruddy sound from the git-go.

after i'm done with the p bass, i'll be looking for something else mediocre to rebuild ... perhaps the bart active preamp will go in that with the correct pickups.

How about "Madmike and the Big Blue Explorer"?

Sounds like a children's book!

The exciting adventures of MadMike! Follow his escapades into the Big Blue as he searches for the ultimate bass experience!

Hey now! We could on to something here!

(picks up phone to call famous publicist)

actually i was going to put that preamp and the kahler i currently have on the ibanez, on the new warmouth explorer i was eventuall gonna get around to building.

all the warmouth parts i'm getting for the p bass are interchangable for the warmouth explorer. depending on how the p bass project goes, i may sacrifice those parts as well.

its true eric ... i do want the best bass experience. i just dont have the budget to just go buy it ... so i gotta build it. i'm a real bad consumer ... constantly expressing my dissapointment to companies customer service reps.

"mr. madmike, our basses offer the best in ergonomic design in stylish body shapes. all models are available with gotoh tuners, dimarzio, bartolini, rio grande or q tuner pickup configurations of your choice and badass brige or kahler tremolo options. all hardware is in either chrome or black annodized brass. finishes come in blue, gray, black, natural satin, trans blue and trans gray................"

"yes, but can i get that with stainless steel frets?????"

"well ...................no. "

"ughhhhh! "

I completely understand your frustration, MadMike. I am also held back by either finances, or the limitations of retailers.

This has a LOT to do with why I customize my gear to the extent that I do, since I either cannot afford the prices that established retailers charge, or that the options that they offer are not what I want or need.

This is why I love being a musician, as the opportunities to "do it myself" are almost unlimited.

I remember reading an article by Eddie Van Halen where he was saying that he could never find anything to his liking straight off the rack, and I could not agree more. But of course, we cannot expect retailers to produce an exact make or model to please everyone. The nice thing about most guitars/basses/amps is that they can be changed to some degree to suit the needs of the individual.

yeah, ya know what? good for eddie putting out that wolfgang evh guitar. ed had the time and the resources (and the reputation of his name) so he designed his "perfect guitar" to be mass produced. now a guitarist can get it right off the rack.

i checked ... there isnt a wolfgang bass. the reason why i checked is because i heard ed making some statements about why every company doesnt use stainless steel frets. he wanted them on his guitar ... so it now will be. i diddnt know guitarists had a problem with this as well. i guess when you play as much as or as furious as ed does, you wear out some frets.

i need to update my post about the p bass project. but the point here is that, even tho i didnt get what i was looking for in a finish, i gained some more knowledge, materials, and the most important part, it kept me busy and out of trouble for a month.

EricHaven wrote:

Sounds like a children's book!

The exciting adventures of MadMike! Follow his escapades into the Big Blue as he searches for the ultimate bass experience!

Hey now! We could on to something here!

(picks up phone to call famous publicist)

The fantastic new dime novel from E. Haven & Co.?


I couldn't agree more...you have to make an instrument your own in some way. The basses I own that I haven't modified are awesome, but there's something missing.

Warmoth is awesome. I'm glad they're around. They are kinda limited, but they offer a lot of things that just speed up your projects. No longer to you have to worry about where you can get stainless steel frets on a Jazz neck or a Les Paul body that's compatible with a Fender neck...how cool is that?? And they'll rout and finish them for you, if you want. Some day, I want to do a Warmoth project.

Dime? Hell! I need some new gear, so $2.50, and not a penny less!

Seriously, if money were not an object, there literally isn't anything you cannot get gear-wise. No matter how bizarre/weird/rare/unheard-of. If you can dream it, and almost as importantly, payfor it, you can either find it, or have it made for you.

True dat!! Steinberger transtrem?

What I mean is that Warmoth is just kinda a step in that direction. They make it easy for so many people to visualize concepts that they wouldn't normally think of bringing to fruition, jahmean?

true eric, true ... but pay for it you will.

warmoth told me that a new neck with ss frets for my ibanez ergodyne edb600 would be a custom, out of the ordinary job so iddid fit this bass correctly. ittl take about 4 months and cost about $1200.

i dont like that bass all that much!

"SACRIFICIAL BASS FOR THE BASS PARTS GODS!"

Chowderboots wrote:

True dat!! Steinberger transtrem?

F*** YOU ED ROMAN!!! F*** YOU!!!





I'm sorry, I'm still not over that one...

Well, if I had a ton of money, then I wouldn't mind the cost. Although, on principal, I don't think I would willingly pay 10 grand for a Steinberger TransTrem, as I also think that is an excessive price. True, I did say before that it might have to do with re-tolling costs, but the more I think about it, the more I don't agree with it.

OK, listen. If I ever do get off my lazy arse and design to design and build a locking bass tremolo system, I may go ahead and offer it for sale to any of you who wants one, but at a fair price. Just enough to cover production and material costs, and a tiny smidge of profit.

However, this is quite a ways off, so don't hold your breath just yet.

That is, unless someone wants to fund my research!

I'd buy one, just as soon as I get a bass I wouldn't mind gutting to put it in. Unless it's top mount, in which case I guess it would depend on the dimensions, and seeing as I currently have no basses that would fit a Kahler, I'm pretty sure I'll just end up having to get another bass.

On the plus side, I could get one routed for EMG-35s or guitar humbuckers pickups so that I could use it as a test platform for my pickups, once I actually get started with that project.

Right on, KS!

Actually, I have no idea if it will turn out as a surface-mount, or a standard fulcrum design. And just today during my lunch, I was trying to come up with some sort of compact resistance system, so I don't end up ripping off Kahler's spring design.

Guys! Maybe you could help me design this bloody thing! Any suggestions on a spring/tension system other than either the Kahler or fulcrum designs?

I'll think about it, Eric...but I think that the fulcrum style feels the best, if I had to choose. So I'd probably start from there and see what I could come up with. I'll let you know if I think of anything!