how bad can a pickup be?

[LukeFRC]

Question....

Random pickups.... how bad can they be?

Like I'm looking for pickups for a project. and you have all the cheapies on the bay....
but how bad can these actually be?

The bass i'm modding has one P pickup, not nice - and has the magnets stuck to the bottom
and one jazz pup that sounds pretty good

the reason I ask is that I had, and could possibly get hold of again a no-name musician pup... 4 wires (or maybe 5 with the earth) sounded ok I think, (the colours matched the SD wiring guide i think.

Anyway walked home today past local music shop that has some second had bits, and they had a MM pup for £30 or so, except it was one of the ones with the magnet stuck to the bottom- which would lead me to think that the one I had possibly was better....

so the one I had, given we don't have a clue what it was, it can't be too bad can it? think just try and get that back and use that?

[Mr. Foxen]

Bad cheap pickups tend to be unpotted and thus microphonic. Plenty of cheap pickups are potted. You can tell because they are waxy. Haven't come across any other sort of badness in cheap pickups, but sometimes nice ones sound better.

[LukeFRC]

it looked a bit like this except it didn't have the earth wire linking all the poles and it was sealed in round the edges.


Edit (or the sticker telling me what it was!) Edited September 19, 2011 by LukeFRC

[dr Szelma]

my friend says "I can't afford buying cheap stuff" and 9/10 he's right. If you want cheap but decent ones, try Wilkinson (Vintage basses are armoured with them)

[Vibrating G String]

Magnets stuck to the bottom implies ceramic magnets as I've only seen alnico where the pole pieces are the magnets. As far as tone is concerned cheap poorly made pickups can sound great. The Wilkinson in my OLP or any pre CBS pickup for example.

[tommorichards]

[quote name='dr Szelma' timestamp='1316791257' post='1383009']
my friend says "I can't afford buying cheap stuff" and 9/10 he's right. If you want cheap but decent ones, try Wilkinson (Vintage basses are armoured with them)
[/quote]
Id probably go for wilkinsons. I have 2 J types in my vintage jazz, and they sound darn good. Also a soapbar in another bass, also sounds dang good.

Saying that, i bought a P,J,MM each off ebay, and stuck them all in one bass. They have some good sounds TBH.