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Vintage threads from the first ten years
Re: How Do I Prevent Pickups Interacting?
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 5/18/2006 1:54 PM |
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Spence |
Re: How Do I Prevent Pickups Interacting? I use the middle position on my Les Paul as much as any other so perhaps I've got something good going on here or I had perhaps better get out of making pickups and playing guitar altogether. Don't you adjust your pickups so that all positions are useable? |
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| 5/18/2006 2:48 PM |
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| David Schwab |
On 5/18/2006 7:54 PM, Spence said:
Sure, I balance the outputs of the pickups so they match. I just don't care for the sound of two passive pickups in parallel. That's my own preference. It's not so bad if you have totally different sounding pickups in each position though. I'd rather hear each pickup by itself. They just have more tone. I also don't care for the sound of humbuckers in parallel (the old dual sound thing). I think by buffering each pickup, and then mixing them, you get a better two pickup tone. It's a composite ... it's not one pickup taking away from the other. But that's not a "classic" guitar tone that most people use. | |
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| 5/18/2006 3:13 PM |
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| Eric H |
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I understand the very valid points you're making David, and personal taste overrules everything else. -Eric | |
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| 5/18/2006 3:18 PM |
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| Zhangliqun |
"Which Page recordings are we talking about? He played a major portion of his famous recordings on a brown Tele... (Whole Lotta Love, solo to Stairway, etc.)" The examples you give are bridge pickup tones. How about on the Song Remains the Same concert movie? Lots and lots and lots and lots of middle position there. "In fact I'd wager when Page did play a LP, he was using one or the other." You'd be wrong. You assume because you don't like that tone that nobody else does either. He used it a LOT. Since I've Been Loving You, the end part of The Ocean, a lot on the Presence album as well. It's one of the quintessential Page tones. As for the Tele, the middle position on a Tele is the same thing, just with a single coil flavor. "He also has his LP set for series and out of phase wiring, so I'd guess he wasn't always crazy about the stock two pickup sound either!" Because he added more tones to his guitar it means he didn't like what was already there. Very faulty logic. All it means is he wanted more tonal variety. It doesn't mean he didn't like the existing 3 basic tones (not counting the variations you can get from mixing the two pickups at different volumes, which Page did a lot). "The two pickup setting on a Gibson wounds weak and sort of like an acoustic guitar." Like an acoustic? We really ARE from different planets. Are you sure it was wired right? "OK.. you are talking about Jazz basses. For REAL old school funk, you need a P-bass. "
Old school funk like what, Motown? Don't get me wrong, the Motown/James Jamerson bass playing was great stuff, but it isn't the slap tone, which you can only get with a two-pickup bass like the Jazz or any bass with two Jazz-style pickups in the same position as the Jazz. No-one used Jazz basses when they came out because that is very typical with any new thing that has just come out. Everybody was used to the P-bass because for years and years, that and the Ric was really all there was. The J-bass was radically different tonally because the P-bass has its pickup right in between where the two pickups on a Jazz would be. It stands to reason that it would take a little getting used to before it became popular. I've been playing bass for 27 years FWIW. So your bass has active pickups? Mine is the more typical passive pickups with a 3-band active EQ. |
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| 5/19/2006 10:26 AM |
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| David Schwab |
On 5/18/2006 9:18 PM, Zhangliqun said:
No, like stuff from the 70's. How about... Tower of Power, Wilbur Bascomb ( Jeff Beck)... Earth, Wind & Fire (Tele bass), A lot of James Brown tracks were on a P bass... Louis Johnson, Bernard Edwards (RIP!), George Porter, Jr., Chuck Rainey (slapped a lot on a P), Nathan Watts (Stevie Wonder), Anthony Jackson (For the Love of Money was on a P)... the list goes on... 
No... you can get a good slap tone from one pickup basses. How about Flea on his Music Man? I often like using the neck pickup on my bass for slapping, which is an EMG-40P5. It gets a nice hollow slap tone.. think of the P-bass tone on "Dirty Low Down" by Boz Scaggs... (just a string pull-off, with no thumbing, but that introduced that sound to a lot of people). That said, two pickups sound great for slap too, but they don't have to be Jazz basses. Stanley Clarke got a great slap tone. Not a Jazz, but he did use both pickups. I like Stanley's tone better than Marcus'. I don't think there's a right and wrong sound.... unless you are just copying someone else's tone. Listen to some Sly and the Family Stone. He often sounds like he either has the tone turned down, or he's using the neck pickup. It's a more muted tone. Of course he used flats on some of the stuff too. How about Bootsy... he's got like 15 pickups on his bass! (I'm exaggerating..) Point is, there's more than one way to get a good slap tone... not just a Jazz with the mid scooped on the amp. It's not the bass anyway.. it's the player.
Up until recently I had three EMG soapbars, a 40P5 in the neck, a DC in the middle, and a 40J at the bridge. I replaced the DC and the J with a pickup I just made. They run into a BTC 2-band preamp. My other basses have two active pickups, except the fretless which has only one pickup in the MM spot. | |||
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