shoulderpet

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

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

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

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

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

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]

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok I have the Rowell QPA fitted , my initial impression is that it is not a million miles from the tone of the Kent Armstrong, sounds good and the big pole pieces look awesome, im sure someone with better ears than me would be able to disect the differences but to me it seems that with a couple of exceptions (SPB-1 and SPB-2 , Yuck!!!) picking out the differences between a split coil P pickup is a bit like picking out the difference between 2 different brands of black paint and I would even say that changing the value of your pots will likely have a bigger impact on your tone. I have the Kent Armstrong Hot pickup up for grabs, if anyone is interested message me and I will do you a good price, the pickup wires are cut very short (probably about 2" long) so they will likely need to be extended but the pickup is in good working order.

Thanks, it turned up today , yeah the tracking information was very limited all sorted now though

Would you say these are an upgrade from the stock machine heads on Fender type basses? this is too upgrade a Squier and I want to make sure that I am makign an upgrade rather than just changing the machine heads, thanks