Pickup Question

[randomname25]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking about Frankensteining some old beat up basses, i have a quick question though..

At around 40 seconds into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmPH_HcYwWI there is a MM Stingray4 with a 5 string pickup.

Does this have any tonal advantages/disadvantages? Would this only work with humbuckers or would it be possible to do this with J Pups?

Cheers

[All thumbs]

[quote name='randomname25' timestamp='1355058726' post='1893417']
Would this only work with humbuckers or would it be possible to do this with J Pups?

Cheers
[/quote]

Isn't that kind of how J-Bass & P-Bass pickups are already? The string sitting in between two poles rather than directly above one. Not exactly the same I guess.

[brensabre79]

I think it probably works in the same way as the Fenders, and the Rhodes keyboard where you can actually adjust the position of the pickup poles for each tine. I know that many Rhodes players have the pickups adjusted 'off-axis' for a mellower sound and 'on axis' for more attack. In fact some software electric pianos (such as Lounge Lizard) have a control to allow you to do this so you can hear the effect for yourself if you have one.

The principle is the same I would imagine for the pickup poles on a guitar/bass. So with the poles off-axis it should sound more mellow, less 'barky' - which is a good thing for a Stingray IMO and I can see why they might be experimenting with it in this way - also that bass has flatwounds on, so it will have quite a smooth attack anyway. Maybe they are trying to make it sound like a Fender?

The only thing is, if you did this, besides making a mess of your bass, you'd probably have to raise the pickup a bit nearer to the strings as the distance to the pole on the diagonal is that much greater...

To answer your question, J pickups do this already (it doesn't have to be a humbucker) but you can get humbuckers in the J style pickup casing too so I'd stick with those and experiment