Alternative pickup positions

[blackrock]

Hi
Just a bit of curiousity
I've never personally been taken with the neck pickup soloed on my 4001. It's at the 1" position so I miss the 5th fret harmonic for one thing. I don't want to change the pickup itself or start messing with the route to try the 1/2" position, but notice the existing route as is, could maybe give maybe a sort of 3/4" position or up to maybe a 1 1/2" position (or thereabouts).

Many years ago, for a temporary quick and dirty change of look, I recall I made a matt black pickguard from an old vinyl LP - quick and easy to cut, shape and drill (I sandpapered to get the matt effect) - bit thin of course, but could be doubled up.
It occurs to me that as experiment I could always quickly make one up again and have the pickup slot around the same length as the existing wood route, with screw 'slots' the same, to try the different positions out with a sliding pickup.
Then make a more proper pickguard if I find a position I like better.

But before I start messing about, and maybe find the whole thing be a waste of time, I was just wondering if anyone else has tried positions, within the standard route other than 1/2" or 1" - is the 3/4"(ish) position for example, enough to get things like the 5th fret harmonic back or an appreciably different tone?

[jps]

...the neck pickup.....t's at the 1" position so I miss the 5th fret harmonic

I play open harmonics fairly often in my original work and due to that I prefer the 1/2" location. I can't tell you what it sounds like at others so your experiment would be a good one to try.

[aceonbass]

I would like to know at what point moving the neck pickup forward you'll start to get your ping harmonic back. It'd also be interesting to know how far toward the bridge you'd have to move the pickup to get your harmonics again. On my customized 4003 my neck pickup is an HB1 in the 4002 position, and I get the harmonics there.

[jps]

The problem is soloing a neck pickup that is at that node at the 214th position; it pretty much totally cancels some harmonics as there is minimal string motion when playing certain harmonics.

[bassduke49]

I prefer the 215th position!

[aceonbass]

Been reading the Kama Sutra have you Paul?....

[jps]

The 24th is kind of normal, ya' know?

[squirebass]

Squirebass hurries to the library, to re-read the Kama Sutra...

[iiipopes]

Pickguardian can make it wherever you want it: 1/2-inch, 1-inch, 3/4-inch or anywhere else. What I would do is get another pickup, doesn't have to be a RIC pickup, for this purpose any lightly wound single coil will do, like a cheap Asian-Jazz-oid. Wire it up to a jack, hold it over the strings and move it back and forth until it sounds like you want it to. Mark that position on the pickguard, then have a pickguard made for you. You might need another person to help you suspend the pickup over the strings. By having Pickguardian make the pickguard, you know it will be a direct retrofit, and you can always reinstall the original if you ever want to.

[blackrock]

Cheers everyone for your thoughts and input. Hand held pickup to get the position eh? Does sound like a simpler route and less messing about certainly. Appreciate the suggestion.

Would a different pickup not have a different 'aperture' though? At least I think that's the word for the area of string which is 'sensed' by the pickup. Could the width of that be enough to make a difference here?

[iiipopes]

Whatever position you like using the hand-held pickup will sound the same with the RIC pickup, but with more clarity. That's why I suggested something like a cheap Asian Jazz-oid neck pickup. It will be underwound, with a ceramic magnet, and will bear some semblance to a neck high gain.

Send a PM to Cassius987 and he can tell you how we did the same thing to demonstrate differences.

[blackrock]

Cheers Scott. Does sound easier with two folk, I'll see how far I get finding a willing assistant then (and suitable pickup of course). PM sent to Cassius987.

[cassius987]

Cheers everyone for your thoughts and input. Hand held pickup to get the position eh? Does sound like a simpler route and less messing about certainly. Appreciate the suggestion.

This was a really fun experiment! Scott soldered a Jazz pickup straight to a mono jack and held the pickup in various positions along the length of the strings as I played. We did this to demonstrate the importance of the pickup position in bass tone. We quickly worked out the difference between the various Ric positions and Fender positions with that one Jazz pickup. Now that I have two Ric basses with Fender pickup positions (my 4001FL's mid pickup and Dan Basica's 4004L to blinged out 4002 conversion), I can tell you that pickup position is perhaps the most important factor in tone, contributing to at least 50% of the final sound, but it is not the only factor. Pickup design, electronic configuration and the instrument itself also contribute in ways that shape the final sound significantly. Then there are external factors, like having a good preamp...

I use my wife as a guinea pig for sound testing a lot because she has no idea what I'm varying or whether I've even changed anything. Pretty much without fail her favorite pickup position on any bass is the Rickenbacker bridge position or the Music Man "sweet spot". Too far in either direction from that and she starts to think it's too muddy or too thin. I tend to agree with her most of the time.

One thing I'll say is that the 1/2'' spacing versus 1'' spacing on a Ric does cause the sound to change slightly, but not enough for me to want to compromise a new bass that doesn't support 1/2'' routing. By the Jazz neck position, the 5th fret harmonic has come back into play but the 4th fret harmonic is significantly quieter. Honestly, I don't worry about open string harmonics at all anymore. They are just way too fickle to get them all to sound perfect at any one pickup position and overall not very important in most bass playing. And this is coming from a guy who once had to play Portrait of Tracy as an intro to another song once per set. (I can't even remember which band this was...! I'm getting old.)

Would a different pickup not have a different 'aperture' though? At least I think that's the word for the area of string which is 'sensed' by the pickup. Could the width of that be enough to make a difference here?

You are 100% correct. In theory, a narrower aperture is "better" as there will be less length of string detected. You can think of each unit length of string as a repeat scan of all the others that the pickup, in an analog fashion, integrates into a final signal. Since the string is not perfectly uniform in behavior along its length this then sensing a wider length of string will inevitably lead to filtering, and if I remember right it is the high end that suffers most in this regard. One of the narrowest pickup apertures in the bass world is a Jazz pickup. Ric pickups are nearly as narrow in the sensing area, but not quite.

In practice, narrower apertures may not always be better. We are already conditioned to like many recordings that were made with basses with pickup apertures wider than a Jazz. The Precision Bass, Rickenbacker 4001 and Gibson EB-0 are immediate examples. Anything with a humbucker too. I once had a custom pickup made with as narrow an aperture as reasonable possible and while it did sound quite good, it seemed that it had traded a bit of its warmth away to get some extra top end. Not worth it in my opinion.

[aceonbass]

Tonight at rehearsal I ended up playing with just the HB1's for most of the night with the balance control favoring the bridge pickup. The bass I was playing was the one I posted a pic of earlier on the thread. The sound I was going for was very much the 80's punchy/mid heavy bass tone, and would not have been possible with a stock 4003, even if it had HB1's in the stock positions. In my case, and for what I was going for, pickup placement was EVERYTHING. While it may have been possible to achieve this tone with a lot of amp tweaking (GK MB800) the final result would not have sounded good with my Ricky 8-string.

[blackrock]

Thanks Cassius987 - lot of useful info there.
Checked out the pics of the mid pickup 4001FL you mention - looking cool.
As is aceonbass's 4003 - intriguing stuff!