NPUD: A Nordstrand Conversion and a Nordstrand Convert

[adamg67]

I think I posted the halfway stage of this conversion before, but I’ve finally got the pickups on my main (or one of two anyway) bass sorted. It’s a Maruszczyk Jake, and maybe I caught them before they got big but it’s just right, no quality issues and from messing with it all the hardware is good. Unfortunately, when I ordered it I took a bit of a chance on the pickups and got a pair of Delanos, a PMVC 5 FE/M2 (split coil P) and a MC 5 FE/M2 (humbucker). I know now that Delanos are a bit Marmite, and I also know why. I love Marmite but it turns out I don’t love Delanos, for this bass at least.

One of the problems was that the two pups were actually really similar in sound - a very well behaved neck position P and deeper twin coil at the bridge ended up being only subtly different in character and not far apart for the end result tone. Fitting a series / single / parallel switch for the bridge humbucker helped, and made me realise why a P/J works so well, but i still felt like everything sounded too similar. I could try and explain how I ended up thinking of a Nordstrand as a replacement but there’s no real logic to it. it just sounded like it would sound different to the Delano and nearer what I wanted. So, I went for it and stuck a Nordstrand  NP5 in there, with the Delano MC 5 at the bridge.

That’s when things started getting a bit weird. I could not get the NP5 to work properly with the Delano, and after what I would call a bit of a learning experience I know that this is because they really don’t work together. Delano, for some probably good reason (being kind), have a load of split coil pickups that don’t work like what I would call a “standard” split coil. What I’d expect on a bass is half a coil magnetised one way, half the other, with the coils wrapped in opposite directions as well. That’s pretty much how a humbucker works, but across the strings instead of in the neck/bridge direction, if you see what I mean. It turns out that Delano have some pickups that are split coil, magnetised the same way but with opposite coils, so they’re hum cancelling but the two halves of the pickup are out of phase with each other. This obviously does not play well with “normal” pickups. You can’t even rewire the pups to work together (as I found out), because if you change the direction of one of the coils on either pup you sort the phase issue but lose the hum cancelling. Delano even have triangles and square symbols next to pickups that work in each of the different ways so you can match them - maybe everyone knows this but I didn’t!

My solution to the problem, after some mostly helpful but also sometimes confusing comms with Nordstrand was to go for an NP5 at the neck end and a Nordstrand BigSplitMan at the bridge. The latter is a monster of a pickup which is basically two Nordy big singles squashed together into a humbucker. I’ve already got the series / single / parallel switch in there so this gives a big single, or two big singles in parallel, or two big singles in series... yes, I needed to hear what that sounded like  On top of that each half is split coil so every combination is hum free.

This really works for me. I’ve got it all fitted and tested and I like it so much better than the Delano setup. I think with this bass I want to be able to stick it straight into a DI or desk, which maybe means having the character in the pickups is a good thing. That seems to be what the Nordstrands give me. The NP5 is different enough from the BigSplitMan as well, so switching (well, blending) between the two makes a nice difference. Switching between the different options on the BigSplitMan gives even more range. I’ve set it up so the volume is the same between the NP5 and a single half (like a single Big SIngle), which also means the parallel configuration is about the same volume but with a nicely different tone, and then the series monster gives a volume boost and another fatter tone. At this point it’s time to get a bit less factual and just say that this all sounds amazing. Deep P style sounds from the NP5 that can be blended with a nice clear Big Single at the bridge, or two of them!

End result: what I should have ordered in the first place! And a big plus for me is that both pickups are custom pole spacing to suit the bass (17.5mm string spacing), so my OCD is fine with the strings running nicely across the (pairs of) poles.

I did think about posting sound clips, but it’s so subjective, especially when it’s not a “known quantity” bass. It’s a Maruszczyk with ultralights, mono rail bridge and an ebony board with Thomastik flats. All a sound clip will tell you is what that exact bass will sound like with these pups. I can tell you that, it sounds fantastic

Edited March 20, 2021 by adamg67