Unusual Pickups

thegummy

If you already had something to cover the main types of basses, I.e. A precision, jazz, stingray, active soap bars, one for flatwounds etc. and you also had an additional bass, do you know of any unusual pickups that would give something different to the others?

Let's say it's routed for a J but can be routed further if necessary. Anyone know of any unusual bass pickups that sound good and different to the standards?

Couple of thoughts I've had have been a bridge pickup that Oil City makes that is meant to sound like a Ric. Maybe the old single coil P pickup if that would work in the neck spot of a jazz. Maybe even a guitar pickup if any of those would sound good?

Appreciate any suggestions.

ICBM

Fender Wide Range humbucker, Gibson ‘mudbucker’, something Rick-like...

rpr

What about Lipstick pickups? ,aside from Danlectros, Im sure Fender brought out a bass with 3 fitted

Funkfingers

That was a signature model. I forget the artiste’s name and the band he is/was in.

@JezWynd seems very keen on ye olde Höfner pickups. Some of this might be to do with their positions along the string.

ICBM said:

Fender Wide Range humbucker

Presumably, this refers to the four pole screw bass version?

ICBM said:

Gibson ‘mudbucker’

DiMarzio does a couple of these. The original has Gibson pole spacing. The Will Power Neck model has a Fender-compatible pole spacing and a slightly different tonality.*

* I just so happen to have a BNIB example of the Will Power Neck languishing in a parts drawer. 

Epiphone mudbuckers, removed from EB lookalike basses, can sometimes be found cheaply on eBay, Reverb et cetera.

thegummy said:

pickup that Oil City makes that is meant to sound like a Ric.

I have STILL yet to try this pickup. I do, however, have first dibs on one if its original purchaser decides not to keep it.

One note of caution. One of my favourite comments about RIC 4001/4003 bass guitars is that they still sound like a RIC when they are not amplified. 

thegummy said:

the old single coil P pickup if that would work in the neck spot of a jazz.

The original single coil P Bass pickup is of relatively low output. Higher output and noise-cancelling variants of it exist - at a price.

Oil City built an SCPB-sized Overkill pickup for Bridgehouse. Descriptions of the sound may appear in his thread about the project bass.

That’s probably enough waffle for now.

PhilKing

A Thunderbird pickup is a great and unusual sound.  I have one in my @WezV ;fretless and I have a 63 Thunderbird IV and an mid-60's Epiphone Embassy and they all sound really solid.  Not the sound you associate with an EB bass.

KKJale

A split P with P90 construction is an interesting angle. Lollar does one, as does Novak. 

Bisonic/Dark Star pickups were very hip for a while. 

Jeremiah

Kent Armstrong make a lipstick type pickup that fits in a Jazz rout - I actually have a pair and I think they sound quite nice, but like all single coil pickups I got too annoyed by the hum so I went back to noise cancelling active pickups.

thegummy

Love this forum - come back a day letter and there's a string of great suggestions - thank you everyone!

Funkfingers said:

thegummy said:

pickup that Oil City makes that is meant to sound like a Ric.

I have STILL yet to try this pickup. I do, however, have first dibs on one if its original purchaser decides not to keep it.

One note of caution. One of my favourite comments about RIC 4001/4003 bass guitars is that they still sound like a RIC when they are not amplified. 

One thought I had when I saw this pickup on the Oil City website is that there's only a bridge position - do a lot of Ric players play with just the bridge pickup on or is that the "classic" Ric sound, bridge only?

The point about it still sounding like a Ric unplugged will apply to most of the options I imagine, i.e. putting another bass's pickup in a J won't transform it completely in to that other bass but I'm fine with that, not trying to get a Ric on the cheap, just ideas to create something with a different application than a Jazz.

Funkfingers

My take on the OCP Overkill pickup is that it can add RIC type clank to a PJ bass. I would be very tempted to change the VVT control layout to VT and a three-way selector switch.

When playing my 4001, I have been mostly using both pickups. Each contributes something useful to the overall sound. As the distortion saturation increases, the choice of pickup ceases to be important.

thegummy

Funkfingers said:

My take on the OCP Overkill pickup is that it can add RIC type clank to a PJ bass. I would be very tempted to change the VVT control layout to VT and a three-way selector switch.

When playing my 4001, I have been mostly using both pickups. Each contributes something useful to the overall sound. As the distortion saturation increases, the choice of pickup ceases to be important.

Is that the most common selection? Obviously some people will vary their settings for different songs etc. like the do with the Jazz but is both pickups on the most common way?

That's what kind of confused me about there only being a bridge for the Overkill, is it meant to sound like a Ric when combined with a normal J neck pickup or when it's soloed or would there have to be a neck pickup that's like the Ric's neck pickup to properly get the sound?

ICBM

It’s going to be difficult to get true Rick sounds from a Jazz because the pickup positions are so different - the Rick really has middle and neck pickups, the Jazz bridge and middle... the Rick ‘bridge’ pickup is almost as far forward as the Jazz ‘neck’ pickup.

While I could believe you could get a fairly Rick-like ‘bridge’ sound from a Jazz, the Rick neck sound is very different - you could possibly get close with a separate tone control, but you would need a stack-knob type wiring scheme to stop it affecting the bridge pickup.

4string

One thought I had when I saw this pickup on the Oil City website is that there's only a bridge position - do a lot of Ric players play with just the bridge pickup on or is that the "classic" Ric sound, bridge only?

@thegummy The pickup was an exercise in seeing how close we could get, as I play a 4003S and was looking for a 'spare bass' without shelling out for another Ric. The original pickup is in a Harley Benton Jazz, in the bridge. We left the original neck pick up in. As a 'both pickups', all controls to 10 Ric player I sound right live, not used it for recording - the VVT wiring allows you to tweak the sound just right.

The relative positioning of the pickups on a Jazz and Ric help.The Jazz bridge pickup position is closer to the bridge than the Ric, which I think helps get the clang element that one would want. We will attempt a Ric neck pickup at some point, but as the Jazz neck position is closer to the Ric bridge position than the Jazz neck, I am not exactly sure what that will sound like in a Jazz. I have a dream of a custom P bass body with the pickups routes in the Ric position - might look weird, but I suspect we can get it to sound like the big R :-) 

prowla

I addressed this very question with my Rickenberger,

prowla

ICBM said:

It’s going to be difficult to get true Rick sounds from a Jazz because the pickup positions are so different - the Rick really has middle and neck pickups, the Jazz bridge and middle... the Rick ‘bridge’ pickup is almost as far forward as the Jazz ‘neck’ pickup.

While I could believe you could get a fairly Rick-like ‘bridge’ sound from a Jazz, the Rick neck sound is very different - you could possibly get close with a separate tone control, but you would need a stack-knob type wiring scheme to stop it affecting the bridge pickup.

You can get the low down growl/clang on a Jazz, but not the thickening of the sound as it moves up the neck.

There are two basses I can think of which have the neck pickup like a Ric: the Gibson EB3 and the Billy Sheehan Yamaha.

ICBM

prowla said:

I addressed this very question with my Rickenberger

This does actually deserve something very unique - a wisdom, a wow and a lol all for the same post .

Interestingly, when I'd broken my arm a couple of years ago and for a while couldn't reach the far end of my Rick properly, a friend lent me a Mustang Bass, which was pretty close to the Rick bridge pickup (which I use most) - I can understand why quite a few bassists in the early 70s used both. The Mustang doesn't have the low-end punch of a P-bass so it sounds more like the 4001/treble-cap Rick.

It's also surprising how much difference there is between the "1/2 inch" and "1 inch" positions for the Rick neck pickup - my first proper Rick was a 4003, and I never felt the neck pickup had that McCartney late-Beatles-era deep thud. When I got my 4001 which at the time had a Bartolini, it immediately had that sound. I put a Rick HB1 in, then finally a 'Toasterbucker', and they all sound basically the same - it's the position that matters.

thegummy

ICBM said:

It’s going to be difficult to get true Rick sounds from a Jazz because the pickup positions are so different - the Rick really has middle and neck pickups, the Jazz bridge and middle... the Rick ‘bridge’ pickup is almost as far forward as the Jazz ‘neck’ pickup.

While I could believe you could get a fairly Rick-like ‘bridge’ sound from a Jazz, the Rick neck sound is very different - you could possibly get close with a separate tone control, but you would need a stack-knob type wiring scheme to stop it affecting the bridge pickup.

Cheers, think I'm going to keep the Overkill as a potential option but forget about how much it is or isn't like a Ric.

Hope there are some demos on the web, I haven't actually looked but will after work today.