shoulderpet

Cool, the pickup I have is a hot pickup but cant hurt to supercharge a bit more, does it matter if the pickup is ceramic or alnico? 5mm wide or thick? One of the reasons I couldnt use the Pbxn pickup is that it was just to big depth wise

Ok so as I have a few days nefore i potentially am sent back to the office I have a spare Alnico and a Spare ceramic pickup and they are both inexpensive items I was thinking of as an experiment removing the ceramic bar magnet and putting it on the underside of the Alnico pickup and seeing what change (if any) in tone and output is, worth trying? This guy has had good results mixing different magnet types https://ironstone-guitar-pickups.co.uk/mixed-alnico-ceramic-magnets/ Apparently Dimarzio ultra jazz pickups have Alnico pole pieces with a Ceramic magnet

Good p bass comparison video below, some of them are p/j basses and not sure if he used both pickups but still an interesting comparison and a surprising variation in tone between the basses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACVRdQZtP20

This is a strong contender Machine gun bass

I would go for the Squier, im sure the Greco is probably nice but I have a Hofner that is not being used as I brought it, fell in love with the tone and then realised after getting back into gigging that I am P bass, overdrive and rounds kind of person, I can get the Hofner to sound aggressive with some extensive eqing but on the P all it takes is the right set of strings and I can get either aggressive or thumpy and everything inbetween, also the string spacing on the Hofner style basses tends to be very tight which can make it difficult to switch between basses.

Yes precisely that -all other things being equal, slightly less treble and upper mids although this can be countered with string choice, as @hooky_lowdown mentioned type of strings will have the biggest impact. This from an article on short vs long scale basses explains it well: each note played on bass (or any instrument, for that matter) includes a series of harmonics that are predictable ratios of that note. The volumes of these harmonics give an instrument its unique tone, or timbre. When the string length changes, the character of those harmonics (and their volumes) change. This is easily demonstrated on any stringed instrument. For instance, play an E on the 12th fret of the low E string. Then, play the same note on the 7th fret of the A string. While the pitches are the same, the timbre is different. The E played on the 12th fret of the low E string is darker than the E played on the A string, which is due to the shorter length of string resonating in that position. So, because of their reduced scale length, short-scale basses are inherently darker and, arguably, richer in tone than long-scale basses. Yes semi hollow will be warmer and woodier sounding

I agree with what has been said so far, cant hear anything bad about either of them, 1st bass is stronger in the mids 2nd sounds scooped, both sound fine to me , which bass is it you don't like the sound of?

Thanks, those look just the ticket, Newtone sounds like a good idea

thanks, i will give them a try

You've got a much better bridge there than the old Rick bridge

Hi all After some string recommendations, am playing a short scale p bass and with lockdown meaning extra hours practising bass and my hands being more sensitive than most to string tension and a bit too much playing Rio the 105-45 set of strings (warwick longscale nickel strings cut down) I am using have started make my hands ache a bit, I am thinking of going 95-40 or so and interested to know what people have used that is good, I am not completely averse to stainless but for some reason nickels seem to sound better on this bass, I prefer a brighter, gnarlier kind of tone , thanks

Yeah I learnt this recently, placed an order and took 5 days to get to me which doesnt seem like long but not being able to go out to buy these things in person it seems like forever, next time I ordered I spent a couple quid more and got a courier delivery which showed up within a couple days

The SPB-2 I hated, mids, mids and more mids but it might have been that I was using flats at the time so what ever highs there were just got obliterated by the pickup, that being said the mids that were there were the wrong kind of mids, not the growly bitey kind of mids but more the 200-300hz ish region that most people try and avoid boosting

Glad its not just me, it was vintage sounding in the worst possible way and although they claim it is modelled after vintage Fender ive never played any Fender that sounded like that, would be great if I played dub reggae though

Anyhow I'm sticking with the Kent Armstrong pickup so if anyone wants the Wilkinson pickups I will be selling them, they are decent pickups but I am satisfied with the KA pickup

Yeah, the only Seymour Duncans I got on with with the Quarter pounders, the SPB-1 was all boom, no mids and the treble seemed kind of timid so basically they just sounded boomy and dark, very polite sounding too, no growl , I tried the SPB-2 a few years back and couldn't get rid of it quick enough, was like the mids were on full regardless of eq, also very smooth sounding, not cool growly mids and they seemed to wash out the low end, that being said when I tried them it was with flats so that may have been the issue, i would like to try them again to see if that was the issue but at £80 a set I dont really want to take the chance

Interesting, that is a name that doesnt come up that often

Ok, I have them fitted, on opening the package I was pleased to see a nice attractive cardboard KA branded box, makes a nice change from the cheap looking plastic boxes that some pickups are packaged in, the wires are cloth covered and waxed which makes fitting them a little easier, one gripe though is that the wire connecting the two pickup halves is way longer than it needs to be, the space under the control plate on my Jaguar bass seems to be quite cramped partly because the person who soldered the SPB-1 eons ago seems to have left the wires coming off the pots a bit on the long side, I am using the twisting the wires together and covering with electrical tape method of wiring up the pickups so I am not about to mess with what is already soldered. On fitting them I noticed that they seem to use the same colour coding as the Wilkinsons , I wonder if they are made for KA by the same company that makes Wilkinson pickups. Once wired up they sounded good, I was surprised that they were not as bright as I had heard, I would say they are probably similarly bright as the Wilkinson pickup but to be fair I have heard a couple of accounts of people being surprised at the Wilkinsons being fairly bright , also worth noting is that my bass amp is at my drummers place at the moment so my impressions are based on the tone through the (admittedly fairly crappy sounding) Amplug and my impression hearing it through a proper bass amp would likely be different. One thing for sure is this is definitely louder than the Wilkinson pickup, whereas the Wilkinson sounded low-ish output and sounded like it lost a lot with the Quarter pounder J pickup rolled off this sounds like the Quarter pounder J pickup is adding a little extra sizzle rather than dominating the tone, this pickup is not as loud as the Entwistle though and that pickup made the Quarter pounder J sound like a vintage output pickup. So all in all the KA adds a little extra muscle to the tone compared to the Wilkinson but its kind of like comparing different photographers taking a photo of the same thing at the same time, one of the photos may jump out more aggressively , one may be more muted but they are basically different flavours of the same thing. Another thing learnt is that there are some surprising gems to be found and also that cost is not necessarily any kind of indicator of quality when it comes to pickups, out of the pickups I have tried during this mass swap-out (Duncan SPB-1, Entwistle PBXN, Wilkinson Alnico and Ceramic, KA Hot Ceramic) the only one that I actually disliked the tone of was the Seymour Duncan SPB-1, the cheaper pickups were surprisingly good even the cheapest Wilkinson ceramic was at least fairly good and the other pickups all compare favourably to pickups from the more expensive brands.

Got the Boss TU-01 clip on tuner and it is the best tuner clip on or not that I have had, much better than there stomp box tuner

Ok, curiousity finally got the better of me, the Wilkinson pickup sounds good however the bass tone I tend to go for is about as subtle as using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut so I figured something more aggressive was probably in order, having had a look at the available options I have gone for a Kent Armstrong Hot P Ceramic pickup, I recall reading some positive feedback on this pickup from @Paul S and it looks like the pickup is geared towards the bright and growly end of the spectrum so I though I would give it a try

Hope you manage to get the SPB-1 sorted, the Entwistle is a fine pickup though I had to take mine out as due to the size of the pickup I could not get it low enough, I also have the Fender Hi Mass bridge, I fitted it to my Squier Jaguar and on that bass it seemed to brighten up the tone a little but as your bass has a maple fretboard it is probably accoustically a lot brighter than my Squier so that would explain why it made no difference

Cool, what is their inherent tone like, I have seen them described as dark but the way that Dimarzio describe them makes them sound very modern, kind of brings to mid the Bartolini MK-1 pickups in the Ibanez SR range, I had an Ibanez with those pickups in and they had that kind of dark sounding but modern and smooth characteristic to them

Its an ugly headstock but the rest of the bass looks so nice that I could overlook the ugly headstock

Ok so I may be keeping the pickup in for a while at least for a bit longer, not being able to play music with bandmates due to the covid thing I was playing along to some music and the Wilkinson alnico pickup just has this gorgeous punch and fatness in the low mids,very Mike Mills from REM kind of P bass sound. I think going with some more aggressive pickups may sacrifice some of this quality so im going to give it some thoughy first. Anyone who is considering P pickups the Alnico Wilkinson WPB pickup is well worth consideration, don't be fooled by the price it is a decent pickup.