Preference For Neck Pickup or Bridge Pickup

[ezra]

Ok, for the bass players, do you all prefer the neck pickup or the bridge pickup?

Has/have/do(es) anyone played a Ric bass with a Bartolini in the brige? If so do you like the sound better than the stock pickups.


I only ask because, I played one today (I might buy it) and the neck pickup (bass?) sounded weaker than the bridge (treble?). But I would like to switch between the 2 a good bit, I am jsut trying to figure out a way to beef up the neck pickup.

Thanks.

[rick12dr]

What year is this bass you tried? If it's a 70s model 4001,it could have a set of mismatched Hi Gain PUs in it. Or, the neck PU might have needed to be raised up closer to the strings.Better idea is this; If you otherwise like the condition of this bass, feel and color, and it has a decent acoustic ring to it, get it as cheap as you can, then get a set of the Vintage 4001 PUs; the horseshoe bridge, and a toaster for the neck.
Problem solved!!

[dave4004]

Ezra, to answer your question, I play both my 4003 and 4004 with both pickups on (center switch position). And all controls dimed. On both basses, output of neck and bridge pickups are equal.

I have heard a Rick (4001) with Barts, nice tone and sounded somewhat Rick-ish, not surprising since the overall shape of the pickups is the same. But I prefer Rick pickups.

[ricnbacker]

Keith,

i always play with both pick ups on, i like the mix of treble and bass.


as for one pick up being louder, i found that if i lowered the bridge pick up the volume became equal.

[gpatt5762]

I play a 4003S with reissue vintage pickups. If you're not familiar with V's it's worth noting that the neck pickup on a Vintage-Equipped Rick, such as a 4001V63 or 4001CS is one-half inch closer to the neck than onn later models, and does make a difference in the sound.

With Toaster and Horseshoe installed, Neck=10, and Bridge=5 works well. And yes, the outputs of both are not equal, th HS is louder, but who cares?

YRMV

Garry

[fireglo]

I like the neck and middle positions best. I hardly use the bridge pickup alone.

[syncop8r]

I generally prefer the sound of the bridge pickup on my 4003S. I do like the neck pickup on low notes but not high notes. Perhaps there's a way that I could play through both when playing low stuff and just the bridge pickup when running up the fretboard? Some sort of on/off footswitch with the stereo split to two amps? Is there some sort of "gate" which could do this automatically? I really don't know.

[craigv]

I suppose it's possible to rig a low-pass filter on the neck when running in stereo (ROS) so that the neck pickup only passes lower frequencies and the bridge passes everything. But this could easily be done with an equalizer set so that the neck channel response rolls off at a certain spot.

[banta]

I have had several configs of the neck/bridge pickups on my Ric basses, and always have leaned toward mixing both w/max tone & volume on the bass. I've always played very aggressive and like a full sound with lots of bite.

Soundman's nightmare.

[syncop8r]

Craig - what exactly is a low-pass filter? Is it a pedal or ...
I'm not really up with gadgetry.
Thanks for your suggestions.

[craigv]

Mark, it would just be a circuit similar to a speaker crossover. I'm not aware of any commercially available device for this (I'm not big on stomp boxes either), but the electronics buffs among us would be able to whip something up with a few components that could fit neatly inside a bass. The trouble would be deciding the frequency and slope of the high-end rolloff...hence why an equalizer would be much simpler and also easier to change settings. Having a stereo output makes this possible. In reality, the tone control serves the same function but to a lesser degree of accuracy.

[dougp]

For my main "rock" tone, I use only the bridge pu (a Seymour Duncan humbucker on my 4001), volume and tone all the way open. But for other types of sounds, I'll experiment with different pu/volume/tone settings (for instance, last week we were recording our fake ska/dub song, so I mixed both pickups [sorry, don't remember the actual settings], turned the tone knobs way down, and used a lot of compression - about as close to a reggae tone as you can get on a 4001!).

This is one of my favorite filter boxes:
http://www.analogeffects.com/theresonator/index.html

(The Moogerfooger filter is also supposed to be excellent, but I've never tried that one.)

It contains both lowpass and highpass filters. A highpass filter would allow you to filter out the lower frequencies, and allow higher tones to pass.

If you've heard much of Bootsy Collins' bass playing, you know what a lowpass filter (in his case, under envelope control, hence the term "envelope filter") sounds like.

[syncop8r]

I'm a big fan of Bootsy's "on the one" philosophy. I want to hit those root notes on the one with everything I got (ie both pickups) and do melodic stuff in between through just the bridge.
I'm guessing an equalizer would still send an altered signal to one of the amps, instead of turning it off altogether?

I would definitely like to use the stereo - two amp idea as when I play with both pickups into one amp it sounds really DRY, and there's a chorus thing happening, and the growl of the bridge pickup is somewhat reduced. With two amps I could ADD sound when I wanted instead of taking it away.

I'll see what's available here, though if it wasn't too hard I'd prefer to make something myself... if I had a diagram... some sort of box with an on/off footswitch and a pot or two to adjust?