Hellzero

My 1978 fretless Stingray looks ace in natural finish with full chrome hardware. Just give the full chrome a try first and then decide to go full black afterwards should you still want it. That said, in ancient times, Musicman used to do swaps ... maybe it could be worth really insisting on this point.

It was called humour...

This the way they have been protecting themselves from copies and fakers over the years, and it's working pretty well. At least, when you buy an old Musicman you know you're buying the real deal ... most of the time, unlike Fender, for instance.

10 hours later... Or a second later... 🤪🤣😉

Nope, it's for 4 strings Musicman basses, not regular fivers. 😉

If only...

The centre pickup is a dummy coil for the hum cancelling: you won't get any sound out of it... 😉

That looks more than lovely 😍 😍 😍 😍

What about an easy to use preamp like this:

And the slight hum coming from the power generator could be used as a drone when tuned to the desired pitch.

Atlansia built something like this with this Oxford, not exactly what you described, but an attempt to have almost any possible sound by selecting any of the 16 pickups/coils:

Yes, I did a few times over the years. As I don't really use the placement from the bridge because of its inherent inaccuracy, I've always let it in inches and never mattered.

Use the nut as a guidance for a more accurate position. Check this file where there is a lot of pickup placements including Fender and Musicman (4 or 5 string pickup is the same position): Pickup Positions For Many Makes Of Bass.xlsx

You can try one at the Musicman sweet spot position and the other at the typical Jazz Bass 70's bridge position.

The Roland GK3B is indeed an hexaphonic (per se a pickup for each string) pickup like ALL so-called MIDI pickups @ped, but it allows you to use a MIDI system so is often referred as a MIDI pickup for some reason. It was not @Rosie C enquiry. 😉

I sold mine in the mid 90's for ... 750 €/£...

I did many times, but it always ended with a whole resale as I didn't see the point of all this. That said, it works very well latency wise and I don't see why it wouldn't work with a fretless bass as it's only about converting a note into data for the MIDI system. Listen to Uzeb and Alain Caron as he's been using (6) strings MIDI fretless basses since the beginning in the ... 80's (when the latency was delirious especially with a low B).

It all depends on the power of the magnet.

Yep, the opamp could have been affected.

To reverse the demagnetisation, you'll need a lot of specially designed apparatuses, so it will be cheaper to change the pickup...

At least, you tried it. 😉 That said, I'm a bit astonished by the hiss you get, and I think I know why: Your cabinet is unforgivable on this subject and amplifies any default (not a bad thing at all per se), but it's the price to pay for transparency. Good luck with your quest, and I hope the Eich will suit your needs.

You were lucky to have a Hohner back then, I started noodling a decade before you on a crappy Maya EB-2 with the strings at around 1 cm away from the fingerboard... 🤦🏻 And people nowadays are selling these pieces of shīt at silly high prices, simply because they were made in Japan... 🤢🤮

Spinal Tax.