Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

jaybonitrane

jaybonitrane

Snickerdoodle Milk
I have a 5 string Lakland Bass it has a SD Stack II in the neck and Duncan design music man style pup in bridge.

I'm looking for a different neck tone possibly warmer and more Celloish or could be tighter and meaner with perhaps blade magnets...SD have anything like that?

I plan on keeping that bridge pup just the way it is. Mmm mm.
But blending the neck tone leaves the high end sounding strange and the the two high strings are a bit weak for my playing style.

I might have to summon the custom shop.
 
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Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Stacked coil pickups do things like that.

Something J shaped, with one coil for three of the strings and a second coil for the other two, might be the solution. For a bass guitar with passive pickups, I suggest a Bartolini.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

It is passive with an unknown old style active preamp. Do you think changing to a new preamp might fix the problem of warmth?

Im not familiar with Bartolinis although I have heard of them.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Does the Lakland allow you to switch off one coil of the MM-style pickup?

The top coil of the Jazz Stack plus half of the MM would cancel hum and produce fewer frequency loss artefacts.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Yes it does coil splitting...but im not having any hum issues. Its the general tone of the neck pup...especially on the high end.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

As I posted earlier, that frequency loss is something that stacked coil, noise-cancelling replacements for traditionally single coil pickups all seem to do. Sure, the hum is eliminated but some of the tone goes with it.

If the J Stack pickup had four con + shield output cable, you could try coil splitting it. Make certain that the upper coil is the one that remains operational. See whether the single coil tone is more to your liking.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

No I don't care for the single coil tone at all however the bridge pup sounds so good that I can tolerate some of the blended tones.

I may look into getting a gray bottom antiquities II for 5 string if there is such. The Bartolini is something I need to experience first hand.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Funkfingers said:
Stacked coil pickups do things like that.

Something J shaped, with one coil for three of the strings and a second coil for the other two, might be the solution. For a bass guitar with passive pickups, I suggest a Bartolini.
Click to expand...

I recommend this too. There are several pickups available in a split-coil 5-string J -- Nordstrand, Delano, DiMarzio, Aguilar, and probably others, as well as Bartolini. I know Fender makes a split-coil 4-string J, I don't know about 5-string.

On my bass with the Fender split-coils, the high end is brilliant. Clear and bright, but not harsh.

If it was my bass, I'd get rid of the preamp altogether and go 100% passive. But that's just me.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

If I pull the preamp do you think that I would have to replace both pups?
There could be output issues?
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

I don't think so. The pickup you are replacing has plenty of oomph, enough to run without a preamp. Volume-wise, do the pickups balance OK? If they balance with the preamp, they'll balance without it.

One way to find out for sure would be to wire it up while you're doing surgery, and give it a listen.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

So far, we have been told that the pickups are SD/Basslines. The onboard active EQ and the bass guitar itself are yet to be identified. The time can come for either pics or the make/model of instrument to be mentioned.

IMO, unless the body materials of the unknown bass guitar are terrible, passive pickups and controls should work fine. You just have to take more care setting up your amplifier.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

BlueTalon said:
do the pickups balance OK?
Click to expand...

You nailed it. (I am thinking in terms of tone rather than volume.)

On a typical bass guitar with two near identical pickups, there is a (perfectly reasonable) assumption that the one nearer the bridge provides bright, wiry sounds and the one nearer the fingerboard provides the smooth, deep stuff.

A Stingray type pickup in the usual EB/MM position provides a pretty wide range of frequencies all by itself. So does a Jazz Bass type pickup in the neck position. (Very like a '51 Precision, in fact.) Neither of these pickups offers the metallic growl of, say, Jaco Pastorius when he soloed the bridge PU on his #1 defretted Fender.

Hence, the SD/Basslines Jazz Bass Stack could be providing a perfectly good sound for its position. Just not the sound that you expected and/or hoped for.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

I have talked about this bass in a previous thread...if the search function will work then I can link the other thread but I dont have the photo in my device anymore....brb
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Ok I forgot it is a Bartolini Preamp.

I have been tempted to take this thing apart once before.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Funkfingers said:
You nailed it. (I am thinking in terms of tone rather than volume.)...

Hence, the SD/Basslines Jazz Bass Stack could be providing a perfectly good sound for its position. Just not the sound that you expected and/or hoped for.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you, in this particular context of possibly ditching the preamp, the signal compatibility volume-wise is the immediate concern.

The OP is already not happy with the tone vis-a-vis the high end from his J pickup, so we're already talking about replacing it. And he quite likes his MM pickup. So whether he keeps the preamp or not, signal output compatibility is going to be important.

The Q factor for me here is his MM pickup. He says it's Duncan Designed, but there is no listing for it on the Duncan Designed page of the Seymour Duncan website. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, but we can't get any additional information from the official site.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

The bridge pup is Duncan Designed and was only available in a Custom Lakland...it is unknown spec.

If I measure the output of the bridge before I mess with anything then we would be out of the dark? I will be back with the number.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

If you enjoy everything about the bass as it stands EXCEPT for the neck position pickup, could you manage on the bridge pickup and the EQ?

If the bridge pickup is a DuncDes, the chances are that the neck one is too. The obvious solution is to spend some money on American pickups and electronics.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

Yes the neck pup is SD stack.

I have an idea to order a custom made Black Winter 5 for J style bass neck position...waiting to hear from MJ when she gets back from Mexico.
If it can be done with gray bottom flat work I will have it calbrated to match the bridge.
 
Re: Recommend neck pup replacement 5 string bass

jaybonitrane said:
Yes the neck pup is SD stack.

I have an idea to order a custom made Black Winter 5 for J style bass neck position...
Click to expand...

I am reeeeeallly curious about how you envision such a pickup. For the limited geography of a J pickup, there are only three or four possibilities for getting two humbucking coils under the hood.

Stack - two full length coils stacked vertically, with limited vertical depth per coil.
Split-coil - two otherwise full size coils of (roughly) half the normal length, mounted end-to-end to cover the entire string spread.
Parallel coils - same concept as a normal humbucker, except the coils are very thin (you could safely say "squeezed") to accommodate the narrow J pickup profile.
Sidewinder - not sure if this is even a possibility in a J, but even if it is, I'm quite certain this is not how a Black Winter would be shoe-horned into a J pickup.

If I had to guess, I'd go with parallel coils, something like SD Cool Rails or Hot Rails. But the only pickup maker off the top of my head that I know makes those in a J pickup is Joe Barden.
 
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