funkle

You can also record a dry signal, then send that out to the Stomp for fx, and then taking the signal back in to another track, if you desired, as well. I think there’s a way to do this if you have it connected through USB to your PC and use it as your interface…?

It smelled great. It was part of the very pleasant experience of owning a Warwick. It didn’t make it play any better, or fix the way it hung or balanced, but it was very nice 😆

Thanks @kodiakblair, you are a mine of information as usual. I thought I might be asking too much of what a split coil could offer. I reinstalled the single coil just now and everything I loved came back. All the spank and grit and attitude. Perfect. I’ll try going OTT with the shielding. My inner modder is saying ‘why not eventually add another single coil, reverse wound and reverse polarity with the first?’. (Hush, inner modding demon, hush….)

Thanks Gav, I'm still recovering from the 'Rona, best avoid me for now!! My freedom date is October 20th... You are kind as usual. It's ok though, I don't think I need to borrow your bass. After listening to various 51 split P pickup videos online that I could find, I might be asking the impossible. If it was possible to make a humbucker sound like a single coil, it would have already been done convincingly. Same problem as already exists for Jazz Bass pickups, really. I'm not convinced at all by the Fralin '51 split P videos I have heard, and they are meant to be 'very close'. Can't find videos anywhere of the Duncan overwound 'Stinger'. The custom Bloodstone stacked pickup looks like a beast, but unless @kodiakblair says any of the splits he has used fits the bill of sounding 'just like' a single, I'll probably just go back to the stock pickup and see if shielding helps. Interesting journey, this one.

I might well.

Eyeing up Jess Lourerio, Herrick and Bloodstone now. I couldn’t navigate the Basscutlure website that easily, so left that. I’m stumped by the options. Flush or radiused pole pieces, series vs parallel wiring of the coils, different magnet types, etc Which of these will be closest to the gritty single coil tone that I enjoy from the Squier already? With a bog standard Squier pickup, lol…

That pickup is simply ‘wow’. I have no other words, lol. Looks like I’ll be trying to get a hold of some European pickups! Or, I suppose I could also experiment with shielding. 🤔 My experience of shielding is mixed, I have had better luck replacing single coils with humbuckers on the whole.

Nice one!! The Bloodstone one sounds vicious, how many coils on that thing?!! Lol. Must be a huge pickup. I’ll check out the suggestions made here by you and @bloke_zero. Particularly if I can find them secondhand 😂 The Duncan stacked one seems to have a good rep on Talkbass as well.

On a brief tangent. What on earth are the Nordstrand pickup descriptions like? Lol. I suppose they are as good a description as any….perhaps trying to highlight the arbitrariness of attempting to describe sound.

It’s all good, it’s a good pickup, and It was a good price. I knew it might not work out, and I did not mind. Part of the journey

Such is the way it goes. If you and others have suggestions for split coil 51 pickups that sound like single coils, then I’ll definitely take suggestions!

Ok, I swapped over to the Nordstrand 51p hum cancelling pickup (https://nordstrandaudio.com/collections/4-string-51-precision-bass-pickups/products/51p4s-hum-cancelling). My first impressions are that the bass has lost some of the grit and magic that I enjoyed about the single coil. I tweaked the pickup height carefully (at first this caught me out), and whilst it is now not noisy at all, I just can't quite help but feel that some of the character I liked is reduced. It just feels less 'raw'. I'm not sure I am going to stick this, but I'll sit with it for a while and see how it all plays out first. I feel like a swap back to the original is on the cards sometime though, even now.

Honestly unsure. Been too long since I played one. If it did neck dive seated, lighter tuners would probably sort it for you. Some instruments I have had have been terrible neck divers no matter whether seated or standing. But lighter tuners helped, generally.

Yes. Good price. Neck dive, though, in part, caused me to sell mine. Also, the body shape makes the neck feel much longer - it sits much farther to the left than Fender style basses, and so your fretting hand has to reach much further. That gave me symptoms of carpal tunnel, and was the other death knell signalling the end of my relationship with that instrument. I had the same problems with both the 4 string and 5 string Thumbs. Such a shame, they felt, played, smelled, and sounded great otherwise.

Just bought a Nordstrand 51 pickup from Chris, painless transaction with quick communications and shipping. Thanks again!! Pete

This probably isn’t helpful, but I generally prefer a 2 band preamp on a bass. I control the mids by picking the right bass for the job in the first place (P vs J vs Stingray), using pickup selection where I have a 2 pickup bass, or changing where I place my right hand when plucking. YMMV. I use John East preamps wherever I can. My Jazz has a East J-Tone (2 band) and my ‘Stingray’ has a 2 band East MMSR. (The Celinders I have both came with tweakable Greengrove 2 band preamps.) However John doesn’t have a flat 2 band just on it’s own, the BTB 01 (https://www.east-uk.com/product/btb-01/?v=79cba1185463) which could be perfect for this uses the Bass/Treble section from the J-Retro, which has a little too much bass boost baked in for my taste. So you either need to ask him to make a custom, buy the highly tweakable Uni Pre and omit installing the mid, or use a J-Tone. Or go Aguilar as you planned, lol

Just coming back to this topic nearly a year on. I still love the gritty thump of this bass. I took it into a studio and did have some niggles with hum, so am going to try out @greenolive ‘s Nordstrand 51 humbucker he’s got for sale and report back.