hi , from a struggling pickup builder

[customstocker]

Hi . I have a few Basses but would be a liar if I was to call myself a musician , I started playing bass about 8 years ago . . A lack of timing doesnt help me , terrible taste in music ...& limited free time, the latter , I'm sure is a common complaint .I customised a few basses myself & then out of the blue, a few years ago , I was bought into a stringed instrument project in Germany . The resident Luthier there's, heart wasn't in the project & the thing wasn't going to plan . my background is design based & I think I was their last resort. To cut a long story short , at a certain point in the project we needed a pickup which had an arched top face , this didn't seem to exist so I built a simple winder from a gutted overlocker sewing machine & made some units from all raw materials . as these were unconventional I made a replacement pup with the same materials for " Mike ", the German Luthier's, hand built strat , so we could test efficacy & actually hear the sound on something that he was willing to play .Mike is a great blues guitarist & the results were encouraging out of all expectations Iv'e continued on & off with the pups & am experimenting with multi-coils now . There are an awful lot of custom pickup builders out there already , but also plenty of blogs with players complaining about whats not out there in the way of after market stuff.... which , lets face it , goes against the whole point of custom building in the first place . my idea is to offer what's missing as well as standard stuff . Recently Iv'e been working with an electronics boffin in Poland & have developed an active unit with 3 filters for use with hand wound pups on a 1 or 2 pup bass . I have a cheap & nasty Jazz bass clone by Mensfeld , built in the 80's bought 2nd hand to test a pair of jazz pups that I wound . I routed off it's fingerboard last summer with the truss rod still inside , which was pretty scary ! & added a padauk fingerboard, this is 1 of the woods we used in Germany on the Violafon instrument as it gives a great sound on a fretless, god knows why it's not used more , maybe because of the colour . on this cheap beaten up jazz clone with the new electronics fitted & the padauk fingerboard it sounds alot better than the hundred quid it cost . see pic , thanks for reading . [attachment=209238:fretless jazz giffard brass probes kbks & swiss sights 002.JPG]

[TheGreek]

Martin??

Good to see you contributing to the forum.

For those who don't know Martin, he builds (very good) custom pick ups to order - pretty sure he'll build you whatever you want to your spec.

A friend of mine, Frank, bought a set for a jazz IIRC - he was very impressed though the pick ups went when he sold the bass. For those looking for a custom set of pick ups you should give these some consideration - I'm sure Martin would offer discount to BC members.

[alyctes]

Welcome aboard!

The J looks nice

[discreet]