shoulderpet

Hi

I have some Neodymium bar magnets and I have a cheapy ceramic P pickup that I am planning to replace the ceramic magnet with the neo magnets, I could only find the bar magnets in 20mm length bars so my plan is to put 2 bar magnets side by side for each half of the pickup but I was wondering if it matters which side round the bar magnets are, to explain what I mean if you add a magnet to the bottom of an alnico pickup if the magnet is the wrong way round it will repel, seeing as I will be removing the ceramic magnet completely and these are not alnico pickups there will be nothing to repel the magnet? so does it matter which way round I have the magnets ?  thank you

Ok so I have found some neodymium bar magnets for only a few quid so have ordered some and will be experimenting with them, not sure whether to use one of the ceramic pickups I have and replace the ceramic magnets with the neodymium magnets or whether to put them at the bottom of one of the pickups I have with Alnico pole pieces 

23 minutes ago, Bigguy2017 said:

Steel because it's magnetic and cheap, and nickel plate to prevent rusting. Works great, what else could you use?

Iron, nickel, cobalt and gadolinium are the four magnetic metals;

Iron (as steel) is the cheapest, is readily available and easy to work with.

Various alloys of the four could be used.  Dunno, other than steel, nickels or cobalts, what's out there?

Ahh so I guess nickel plated as then they do not have to use stainless steel, they just use a low grade of steel and nickel plate it so it doesn't rust ? 

Having recently tried a load of P pickups I eventually decided to stay with the Roswell Quarter Pounder P pickup having a nice thick tone and having a good look to it, that being said I have found the highs a little muted compared to what was in the bass before and has less high end than the Duncan Quarter Pounder P pickup and being wound at 8k rather than (i believe) around 12 for the Duncan the pickup has slightly less output.

This pickup is an alnico pickup that uses alnico 5 pole pieces, having some ceramic magnets spare from some cheap pickups and knowing that Dimarzio have a few pickups that have alnico pole pieces boosted by ceramic magnets and having read about people adding magnets to boost the magnetic field on pickups I thought why not give it a try. 

I was initally thinking I would epoxy the magnets underneath the pole pieces but the pole pieces stick out a good mm out the bottom so I resorted to taping the ceramic magnets to the bottom of the pickup using electrical tape.  Put the pickup back in tuned my bass up, nice result! More highs and high mid punch, the pickup is very crisp sounding now, greater output, more of that piano like tone that you get with a bright bass/pickup, worth the experiment

2 hours ago, Paul S said:

Silly money - cashing in on the zeitgeist that short scales seem to be currently enjoying.  I had one for a while, a '79 I believe.  I've also had a Squier Vista Series Musicmaster and a Squier VM Mustang.  The two Squiers blew the Fender out of the water completely in every respect.  I had the Musicmaster modded to have a Wizard Trad pickup put in it, which improved the tone no end.  But it was still heavy and clunky.  I bought it pretty cheap so it didn't matter.

I can well believe that the Squiers would be better, tbh my Squier Jaguar bass is a much better bass than the Musicmaster I owned (also a 79) ever was, I would get another Musicmaster IF the price was low (£400-500) with a view to modding the crap out of it

Yeah the prices are crazy, I owned one many years ago, I brought it for £75 and moved it on after 2-3 years, it was a terrible bass, weighed a ton, terrible bridge, cheap pickguard, the cheapest nut ever and the tone was terrible, really murky sounding, now on Ebay there are Musicmasters going for close to MIA Fender prices which is ridiculous when you consider that this was Fenders budget offering at the time that these were made, they even made the bodies from leftover wood from other instruments and put a strat pickup in to save costs

Hi

Just wondering why is Nickel plated steel so common on cheap strings? Almost all of the cheapy strings out there, Harley Benton, Gear4music, Rotobass, Legacy, Johnny Brook are Nickel plated steel, there must be a reason but what is it?  thanks

12 minutes ago, PaulThePlug said:

It Arrived, and it works.

Nice fit in the Ibby socket... Vol is loud enough with some cheapish over ear Sony cans (they aint that loud with my Sony mp3...) bit hissy at full V, backmit of a little and its OK. Tone is bright and gets brighter... but you can hear the change in your guitars tone adjust... so perhaps that can come out, Drive, not a great deal... but spose you wouldnt be looking for Geetar Distortion?

Gets quite a bit more driven when the GSR Phat II is upped... So level of drive i spose is down to your pickups and how hard they can hit the front end...

Dunno how it compares to the Vox, but for £17 deivered, it certainly 'does the do' for a bit of practice. rechargable too... Auto Wah is a bit of a gimmick, shame it wasnt something real useful. Compressor or a nice bit of soft Chorus?

Plug is fixed so may be a bit more robust.

I would still love a simple effects pedal styled headphone amp, 9v with Vol, maybe tone (maybe not with the above) some drive would be nice...

Perhaps i should of gone for the Electro Harminox Headphone Amp @ £45ish

 

Have you tried a cable from your bass to a pedal and then the headphone amp plug goes in the output of the effect pedal, thats what i do with my Amplug and it works

1 hour ago, eude said:

I agree the build quality seems crap, but I have found mine to be very useful.
Seeing that there are so many copies on the market, surely somebody, somewhere can do a knock off and make it high quality? Metal body, good quality electronics, USB recharge etcs.
If I had the time, inclination, and a bit of money I'd do it myself!

Be interested to hear what you think of the Donner one.

Eude

Yeah it's the tone to me, Amplug sounds awful, noisy, mine is temperamental, really it should be a £20 device not £30-£35

44 minutes ago, PaulThePlug said:

Went for a 'Donner Basement' 'Vox-a-like' jack plug hesdphone amp.

USB recharge rather than AAA... Blurb says a bit of Ampeg SVT drive...

£17 posted from Amazon... Vox are about double that plus postage...

New Vox has Drum Box, prefer the idea of a little drive like the older model.

Fingers crossed - which does make playing little harder...

Let us know how it is, I would love to find a replacement for my Amplug which is imo complete crap

Rotosound funk master's are your friend

On 05/06/2020 at 19:17, Rich said:

It's done  very pleased with the result, quite surprised at how un-Raylike the sound is with the MM pickup solo'd but pleasantly surprised as it's a good usable sound -- very distinctively different to anything else in my wee collection, which was the entire point of the exercise to begin with, so it's mission accomplished  the series/single/parallel switch makes for maximum flexibility too. It's passive V/V/T at the moment and I'll probably leave it like that.

 

I was listening to some music on Youtube and I was listening to this live track and I instantly thought about what you said about your bass sounding un-Raylike , if I were not watchign the video I would never think this was a Stingray

[youtube]

49 minutes ago, Kevin Dean said:

This is what is on the back of the pickups  SPB-1     &  STK-J2B  ?

Thats a Seymour duncan SPB-1 vintage P bass pickup and a Seymour duncan Jazz hot stack, I absolutely hated the SPB-1 when I had one

34 minutes ago, Kevin Dean said:

They just seem weak / no punch compaired to my shuker basses that are passive .The bar is a Roland GR55 pick up .

Ok fair enough, I tried Seymour Duncan hots, vintage and quarter pounder, I only liked the quarter pounder pickups though they are an acquired taste, the vintage were too boomy and not enough high mids for me, sounded like the tone knob was permanently rolled off, the hots were too middy.

For punch you have a few options

Entwistle Pbxn and Jbxn sound huge, a ton of punch but the magnets stick out several mm out the back of the pickups so you may have to route the cavity deeper for them.

Dimarzio model p and model j are meant to be very good and are very popular with rock players but I have no direct experience with them

EMG Geezer, again no experience with these but a lot of people like them and they are geared towards a rock tone so should have plenty of punch

I currently have in my pj bass a Roswell QPA p pickup (Roswell clone of Seymour Duncan Quarter pounder p) and a Seymour Duncan Quarter pounder j pickup, both sound very good imo 

On 06/06/2020 at 08:56, Kevin Dean said:

No , they are passive , I'm looking to upgrade as they don't seem that great compared to my other passive basses .

I'm not a big fan Seymour Duncan pickups apart from their Quarter pounder pickups, what is it that you don't like about them? that will help others recommend replacements and possibly to work out what model of Duncan's you have currently.

What is that funny black bar thing by the bridge?

On 06/06/2020 at 04:26, james_027 said:

thanks for this answer, so if you want more mid, flat are really good at it?

 

Yes but avoid Daddario Chrome's if you want mids

Ok so I have been practicing and it seems my issue is the alternating pattern between the 3 fingers,I have always played with fingers 1 and 2 and if i play for example with fingers 1 and 3 I can play reasonably ok but when I use all 3 fingersI cant seem to keep the alternating pattern consistent 

8 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I remember when  I was looking at Yamaha attitude basses , this video came up, I don’t know much about him , but he’s well fast with 3 and 4 fingers 

 

Ahh yes Billy Sheehan, monster player, im one of the few people that loves his tone, seems like a cool guy too, thanks for the vid 

Thanks guys, am working on finding a rhythm that works 12321232 (index, middle, ring, middle, index, middle, ring) seems to work well

38 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Ive tried this a few times after seeing a friend play with all 4 fingers, and I found it really difficult, I used  this video for a few exercises, apologies if you’re more advanced than this 🙂

 

Thanks, I will give that a watch, I'm a complete beginner with 3 fingers so I'm sure anything will help 

Hi 

Am after some tips for developing 3 finger plucking technique, for years I have played with 2 fingers, am trying to learn 3 finger plucking for faster bass parts but struggling, it's like my 3rd finger is half as fast and strong as my index and middle finger, I am thinking maybe I'm trying to obtain the unattainable but I want to give this a fair try, I want to avoid introducing bad habits so am after some tips, thanks

32 minutes ago, Rich said:

It's done  very pleased with the result, quite surprised at how un-Raylike the sound is with the MM pickup solo'd but pleasantly surprised as it's a good usable sound -- very distinctively different to anything else in my wee collection, which was the entire point of the exercise to begin with, so it's mission accomplished  the series/single/parallel switch makes for maximum flexibility too. It's passive V/V/T at the moment and I'll probably leave it like that.

 

Looks good, of course Stingrays have a hefty preamp amp that I suspect heavily colours the tone so there is that difference that may account for the tonal difference

11 hours ago, Rich said:

True, true... although there are two factors:

1. I've had a look around on t'internet, specifically at things like the Sandberg PM4 which has an identical pickup configuration... their MM pickup is even closer to the bridge than mine, and I figure if it's good enough for them...   and;

2. I've already been busy with the chisels, so it's kinda a done deal  it's only dropped in the rough hole for the moment, I haven't cleaned any edges or tidied it or anything yet. 
 

Im in envy of your skills, I cant even solder, I am sure it will sound killer, 1/2" really isnt a large amount, besides those MM style pickups are much meatier sounding than most other pickup types, imagine how weedy a Jazz bass would sound if the neck pickup was moved to MM position

2 hours ago, Rich said:

Ok, this project has taken something of a left turn... having a rummage in the ol' spares box, I came up with the old pickup from my OLP 'Ray. Hmmm... watch this space

(Yes I know the MM needs to be about 1/2" further away from the bridge to be in the proper sweet-spot, but I really don't want to butcher that lovely pickguard if I can get away with it.)

You could raise the actiona bit to give enough string clearance and solder 2 wires to the volume pot and connect the pickup to the 2 wires with electrical tape and move it around to see if it makes enough of a difference to warrant butchering the pickguard

Ok so 4 days later and no response from Seymour Duncan,dissapointing but that seems to be the way of businesses these days, also with the pickup covers for jazz bass on sale on their site , what sense does it make to offer pickup covers with the standard size pole pieces that you can get anywhere (and for about half the price) and not offer pickup covers for the larger pole piece quarter pound jazz pickups, one of their best selling pickups, even if they dont sell that many they must cost no more than 50p a set to make, they could make a killing on the mark up, anyway thats my moan over with, luckily I seem to have managed to buff out the scratches