NOGPPD (New Old Geezer P Pickup Day)

[Baloney Balderdash]

So I used to have a P/J set of EMG Geezer Butler pickups installed in my main Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro bass, both permanently full on wired in parallel directly to the output jack socket of the bass, but swapped them about a year ago or so for just a single DiMarzio Model P pickup.

I loved the tone of how that single Model P pickup sounded, but a couple of months ago I started getting huge random occurring fluctuations in my tone, and after much frustration trying to find the source of this mystery I finally manage to isolate it down to the fact that somehow the pickup must had gone faulty.

I suspect that the pickup poles in my Model P pickup gets slightly connected with the lead somewhere, as there's an increasing loud buzz noise when I touch the pole pieces, and that after I tried to shield the pickups a while ago, swapping out the thin single core wires with shielded ones and attaching conductive copper tape to the bottom of the pickup touching the pole pieces and connected to the ground, the pickups hardly had any output when I tried them out after this procedure, and what little output there was was very noisy, buzzy and scratchy as well, which changed back to normal as soon as I removed the grounded copper tape from the bottom of the pickup.

Anyway, so with the issue having been identified I planed to buy a new Model P P pickup, but as it happened to be all the dealers in Europe are out of stock at the moment, and Thomann, where I usually buy my gear, lists an estimated waiting time of approximately 6 weeks before they will have them back in stock, so I thought what the heck and went to install the old EMG Geezer Butler P pickup, from the P/J set that I used to have installed in my bass, instead, never really having tried it out on it's own, without the J also being full on in parallel.

And I got very positively surprised, after having balanced the pickup for approximately even output from the strings, dialed in my EQ, an always on patch of stacked fully parametric equalizers on my Zoom multi effect, to suit the Geezer pickup, previously having been dialed in to fit the Model P, and made up for the less hot output of the Geezer by turning up the input gain of my EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, that I really use more so as a tube preamp stage than a compressor, I discovered that the Geezer P on it's own sounded even greater than the Model P.

Perhaps slightly less fat and full sounding, but in exchange much more responsive to playing dynamics, articulated and defined, but, with the EQ dialed in right and with the less hot output made up for with more gain dialed in, every bit as aggressive, punchy and snappy as the Model P, but with an added nice bite to it's tone, and a beautiful open sounding clarity, that while it sounds slightly less fat and full than the Model P, make it's tone just as big sounding, and personally I discovered that I actually personally prefer that open clarity to the more compressed fat fullness of the Model P.

As said I have it connected directly to the output jack socket, with the J pickup still siting there, from back when they were installed as a set, but currently disconnected and lowered considerably.

Damn, I am glad I went for trying this out, stupid of me not even having thought of trying the Geezer P out on it's own before, such an amazing sounding pickup.

I could have saved the money and trouble with the failing Model P, even if I'd say that is still a great pickup (that is if it works as it supposed to), as it turned out I just personally prefer the Geezer P.

Another added bonus to the Geezer is that it is dead quiet, even without having the bridge grounded, as it unlike the Model P that comes with thin single core wires, is shielded internally and got shielded wires as well, with the ground running as a braided shield all along the insulated lead wire.

In comparison the Model P was horribly noisy, though some of that noise might had been due to mine being faulty.

But what an outstanding great pickup the Geezer P is!

Don't get me wrong, I loved it back when I had it wired in parallel with the J from the set, both full on, too, through the old Trace Elliot rig I owned back then, but as far as I am concerned where it really shines is the P pickup on it's own.

And here the old Geezer is installed in my Mikro Bass (the big blemish above it near the neck stems from a haphazard attempt to drill (Doh! ) an extra far neck pickup cavity, that then subsequently in similar haphazard hack style was filled up with filler mass and painted over with black paint and a couple of layers of clear varnish):

 

PS: The bass on the track in the video linked to in my signature by the way was recorded with this Mikro Bass back when it had the EMG Geezer Butler P/J set wired in parallel directly to the output jack socket, though a lot of post production magic was applied to this first take improvised bass.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Baloney Balderdash