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Mudbucker pickups; yay or nay? - Reggae. Mixing with Jazz pickups.


mcnach
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I've been playing a lot of reggae lately. I would use whatever bass, typically the Stingray or a Sandberg VM4 (P/MM)... but I'm coming to love this "JJ" bass for that. It's got a pair of Area J pickups (humbucking) in parallel with each other, with a blend and a passive tone.

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I've also been enjoying the sounds of a Gibson EB0 type bass I've seen around. Thumpy, but it retains enough definition, and it's a great sound to have too. I am considering getting a Mudbucker to add to this bass.

I realise that due to the much larger impedance of the mudbuckers (around 30 Kohm!) blending them with the Jazz pickups would not be straight forward... But I don't even want to do that. I think I would want a shared volume/tone control, and a switch between the mudbucker or the JJ pickups (in whatever state the blend control puts them). 

That should be easy, right? Or would the mudbuckers prefer a different value for tone caps or tone/control potentiometers?

 

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7 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Mudbuckers are difficult beasts to tame, and whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, I’m pretty sure not many reggae bassists use them. An active circuit might be a better bet? 

 

I wouldn't say it's a 'popular' pickup in Reggae (or in any style, actually), but it can sound pretty good for a nice round deep tone. I thought it would be a cool addition to the sounds I get from that JJ bass above. 

I find it easier to get the right sounds (those I hear in my head when the voices shut up for a minute ;) ) for reggae with passive tone controls. I'll get a decent sound with anything, but an old treble roll-off with the right pickup (needs to still have a good spoonful of low mids) just works better for me. Definitely keeping this one passive. 

 

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I’ve never tried a mudbucker , but I like the idea, there’s a pic of one fitted to a jazz bass below,     I don’t know much about electronics but If you can get the controls right I think it would sound great,       but my Sandberg TT in active mode with labella low tension flats gives me a great  clean deep reggae tone , so do my jazz basses with tapes .  

Btw, that’s a cool looking bass you have  mcnach 👍

D44FE5A9-9AA5-4491-A472-ECC5BA50E233.jpeg

Edited by Reggaebass
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57 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

A Stingray Special HH is great for that - the neck H is very articulate but does dub reggae very well. 

 

You know what? My idea about the mudbucker may be a bit narrowminded, and I might be better off just looking for a neck pickup of another kind... and indeed, an MM type can sound really nice indeed. 

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55 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

I’ve never tried a mudbucker , but I like the idea, there’s a pic of one fitted to a jazz bass below,     I don’t know much about electronics but If you can get the controls right I think it would sound great,       but my Sandberg TT in active mode with labella low tension flats gives me a great  clean deep reggae tone , so do my jazz basses with tapes .  

Btw, that’s a cool looking bass you have  mcnach 👍

D44FE5A9-9AA5-4491-A472-ECC5BA50E233.jpeg

 

Thank you! It was an experiment one time I had too many Precisions around, and it worked out pretty well. It is not lacking depth as it is. I'm using some pretty old stainless steel rounds (I've got a set of TI Jazz flats I bought for it but I'm terrible when it comes to changing strings, I never like new strings, of any kind, for a while - except tapes, those are ok from day one), and with the 'neck' pickup alone and the tone almost entirely rolled off it sounds very good. I've been called to join a new project playing UB40 covers and I tried the Sandberg VM4, the Stingray, a Precision and this JJ one, and while they all did the job more than well enough, this JJ has 'something', the right amount of definition and depth, without messing about with controls much.

Actually, instead of an additional neck pickup, I might be better off using some kind of EQ pedal to switch between my 'basic' reggae sound and a more dubby one. I have one of those MarkBass SuperBooster pedals with the VLE and VPF filters that might just be the thing, and no extra expense or surgery required.

I'm talking myself out of the mudbucker, eh? Thank you all for being my soundboard :D 

 

I think I love the look of those SG basses with the big neck pickups, but hate playing them, and my sanity was clouded here for a minute.

Got practice tomorrow with the UB40 band... I'll bring the SuperBooster pedal along and see how it goes.

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6 minutes ago, mcnach said:

Got practice tomorrow with the UB40 band... I'll bring the SuperBooster pedal along and see how it goes.

I used the markbass amps for a long time and always used the filters otherwise I couldn’t get the sound I wanted, the pedal could be all you need (I want one now 😁) ,I’ll be interested to hear how you get on,    I’ve kinda gone back in time,  at the moment I’m using an , Ashdown mag 300 EVO lll  head , with markbass Ny 115’s , with a bit of compression, and really loving the sound 

The UB40 band sounds like good fun , I really like some of earl Falconers basslines, Kingston town being one of my favourites 🙂

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14 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

I used the markbass amps for a long time and always used the filters otherwise I couldn’t get the sound I wanted, the pedal could be all you need (I want one now 😁) ,I’ll be interested to hear how you get on,    I’ve kinda gone back in time,  at the moment I’m using an , Ashdown mag 300 EVO lll  head , with markbass Ny 115’s , with a bit of compression, and really loving the sound 

The UB40 band sounds like good fun , I really like some of earl Falconers basslines, Kingston town being one of my favourites 🙂

 

The band is fun indeed. I am not really a UB40 fan... I mean, I do enjoy listening to a few of their songs but there's a lot others I'd choose to listen first. However, like with so much other music, live is another matter. We've only met twice yet, so it's very early days. The basslines are simple, but there are some really nice ones. I particularly enjoy "Good situation"

First time it was just drummer/backing vocals, guitar/lead vocals, sax/backing vocals and myself on bass. Second time, the trumpet player from my main band joined us too, keys player let us down for the second time... Today we'll have no keys, but it looks like we've found the right guy (sax guy, who is the band leader, knows him) who's coming next week... he also does backing vocals, so we should start sounding pretty full. Still looking for a trombone. Nor many around (good ones, anyway... lots of people own a trombone -myself included!- but not many are good enough), and those that are around tend to be busy... We may be getting an alto sax, so our existing sax moves to tenor, and that may fill up the wind/brass section nicely. We will see!

The MarkBass pedal with the switchable clean boost and VLE/VPF filters is really useful. Like you, on my LMIII head, I relied a lot on the VLE especially to get the sound I wanted. The EQ section was merely to adjust for stage/room sound, so I generally had it set almost flat, maybe bumbing the low mids a tiny bit, and used the VLE/VPF to get me the sound I wanted. I've never found the treble EQ on any active onboard preamps to be much use except to tame the shrillness of new strings a bit. A passive treble roll-off is much more musical, for my liking, in most situations, and the VLE does that thing very well, which in combination with the VPF might just be the thing.

 

 

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Well, the MarkBass Superbooster does a great job at giving me an easy deeper and 'fluffier' switchable version of my tone. I think this is what I'll be using, and leave the bass alone. It's a big brick of a pedal, 'though. Shame they could not put it into a smaller box.

 

I still like the look and sound of the mudbuckers... so maybe one day I'll find an excuse to transform some other bass ;) But not today.

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On ‎04‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 19:18, yorks5stringer said:

I had two....nightmare! As you can see, has been returned to a single neck one now.

20171011_150155.thumb.jpg.5e2df85d4fdc982c9bda7328ba027519.jpg

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Just being pedantic here, but that's not a Mudbucker (Motherbucker?), but a Fender "Wide Range" (IIRC).

The Tele bass does look cool though, especially the twin pickup version.

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Well, not only the MB SuperBooster is very useful for my purposes... I seem to also have a dub monster in my collection and I had forgotten about it. 

IMG_20191107_230201355.jpg?dl=1

 

I don't use it much, only at home. It's a very light bass with a very bad case of neck dive due to the light weight body and the position of the strap button. It makes the neck feel very long too. It sounds nice, it's fun to play, but I've got better nicer basses I prefer. However, that MM on the neck with the tone rolled off (it's passive)... 

Yeah, I think I'm ok with things as they are :)

 

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