EMG Geezer Butler P/J pickup set. Review.

[NancyJohnson]

I recently acquired a set of Geezer Butler EMGs from @doc40hz of this parish, with the intended recipient bass being my newly acquired Hamer Cruisebass.  The Cruise was still fitted with the 80s DiMarzios and two of the three Hamer stamped pots; clearly someone had been in the body cavity at some point as there was evidence the tone pot had been replaced.  Half of my basses are active, either from stock or John East and I just fancied to keep the Hamer passive, but didn't really like the DiMarzios...they just seemed to toppy and shrill.

Installation was easy enough.  The J-unit dropped in without issue, but the P-unit was too deep for the existing cavity - the push-fit connectors cause the pickup depth to extend 2-3mm outside of the casing, so chisels out.  Took the opportunity to shield the cavity.  Connection was simple, fun in fact.  I took the opportunity to replace the barrel jack as well (the old one was very noisy).

Tone.  Aah, subjective I know, but mother of god; while I tend to generally play with everything full on, here I doubt that will be the case.  I've tried this with the DG A/O head and the dUg stompbox...the P-unit is off the scale tonally; phat and beautiful...the bridge pickup is more complimentary; toppy and there to roll the volume up to achieve the right amount of clank to sit behind the P-unit.  Damn, these are awesome pickups.

The only negative thing is the Hamer's body rout mean from a visual aesthetic, the strings don't sit plumb centre of the poles, but I doubt this has any issue other than the visuals (I can always break out a Sharpie if it annoys me!).

5/5

 

 

[NancyJohnson]

Just did a little tweaking (yes, I know I should be working); it's amazing how sensitive these are.  Just dropped the bridge unit a couple of mm and the results are stunning.  The bridge unit seems very hot compared to the nexk pickup and these are very phat/thin unit.

[dannybuoy]

That's a good thing for a PJ. Most off-the-shelf ones I've tried out didn't sound that great with both pickups on, totally different to my Yamaha BB which has a monstrously loud J pickup.

[Baloney Balderdash]

You forgot to mention that they are absolutely dead silent, even in basses without additional shielding, no electromagnetic interference noise whatsoever.

And they even continued to be so after I accidentally pulled out the bridge ground wire in the bass where I had them installed.

These pickups are shielded internally and the connection wires are also shielded, as in the ground running as a braided shield all along the insulated hot wires. 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Baloney Balderdash

[Trueno]

Excellent pickups. I fitted these to my Squier Jaguar SS. No problems with fitting in my case and I fine-tuned pickup height over a couple of days. The bass is supposed to be a back-up, but I could easily live with it as my go to.

[dave_bass5]

I had a set in a Squier VM PJ when they first came out but wasn't really blown away with them. Thats probably more the bass i recon, a bit of a lightweight sound no matter what pups it had in it.

I now have the P in my Fender Sandblasted P bass and love it. Wont be changing this anytime soon (ever).

[Lfalex v1.1]

On 12/03/2021 at 10:05, NancyJohnson said:

The bridge unit seems very hot compared to the nexk pickup and these are very phat/thin unit.

Ideally,  they should be. SO many basses and guitars with a humbucking neck and single coil (assuming this one is!) Bridge pickup sound watered-down when the bridge pickup is added in. Some Telecasters are awful, especially if there's only a selector switch rather than VVT.

I guess the principal reason is the smaller string excursion over the bridge pickup. At least this set seems to have addressed this. 

[NancyJohnson]

Right, a bit of an update here.

 

My nephew was over at the weekend and almost as soon as he arrived asked me to break out the Hamer.  He was having a noodle on it, I was in the kitchen getting a beer and I was asking myself what he'd done to the bass as it sounded shocking.  It's odd, but having the P-unit on 10 and just rolling up the J to compliment sounds great when you're sitting right on top of the amp, but from another room it sounded quite odd.  He said straight away, 'I think the J-pickup is wired out of phase.'  Rolling both volumes up to ten things sounded very tinny.

 

I took the control plate off and switched the wires from the J-pickup (simply the case of unplugging the pickup, flipping the connector 180degrees and plugging it back in) and boom.  The connector is definitely upside down in the cavity.  I honestly don't know whether the connector under the pickup is wired the wrong way around, or if there's a construction issue on the pot, but there's no tone-suck when the J-pickup is fully engaged.

 

Very odd!

[NancyJohnson]

*I'm just going to post something here by way of an addendum concerning the original pickups sounding 'toppy and shrill'; I'm not a big fan of changing pickups unless absolutely necessary (ie failure).

 

The old DiMarzios were suffering a bit of an age-breakdown - the magnets underneath (see below/not my image) had become delaminated from the resin they were set into - the resin appears to have shrunk a little causing the magnets to fall out and attach to each other.  I did glue them back in, but to be honest I wasn't 100% happy with a make-do fix, so in this instance went with replacements.  One comment on the Hamer group was that the magnets dropping out is common and causes the output to sound like someone had swapped the pickup for a Telecaster one.  Fair comment.

 

The Geezer Butler PJ set was offered, so I went with these.   I have an earlier Hamer from 1986 (same year as the Cruise, serial numbers are about 800 apart), which doesn't appear to be suffering, so I'll leave it as is.  They don't sound significantly different from each other.

 

I'd recommend anyone running a bass with 70s/80s DiMarzios to pull them out and just check the condition below decks.