The Last Bass Outpost

Are the recent bass banjo tuners that horrible? I'm working on a '58 Explorer bass project now, and had almost decided to use them..
Are they tough to tune up with, or is the problem that they do not stay in tune?

I've played a few '73-'75 EB-0/EB-3s. The mudbucker doesn't have much going on above 1Khz but it is there and you will hear more of it in the middle position. OTOH I wouldn't call it cleaned up b/c it's just way too overwound to be clean.

That is my impression too. Not cleaner, the lows/sublows are still there, but it feels more focused. It's a mud with a twist of Pee!

Way cool!

The supertone is aluminium with chrome plate on top, I don't think they offer the supertones in nickel. Even the two points are not available in nickel. I lined up the supertone along with the nickel parts on a '63 EB0F, to replace a retrofitted 3 point. It did not work for me, both because of the chrome not matching the worn nickel of the pickup cover and because of the sheer size of that thing. I ended up biting the sour apple and bought a '62 bar bridge in good shape, costly but perfect.

Usually when matching new chrome parts with old nickel parts, I just strip off the chrome with hydrochloric acid. There is almost always nickel under chrome, the acid only removes chrome and leaves beautiful nickel unspoiled.
However as the bridge is aluminium, you can't do that. But I think you can reverse-electro-plate it, althoug it's complicated. I guess it's easier just buying chrome covers for the pickups.

I've shied away from testing it cos if it does create a horrible buzz it will be a massive pain to clean it all off again

I bought a can of blackboard paint (cheap) some years ago to test that theory. I can't remember how many coats I put on (I did not use an instrument) but it build up thick and did not have electrical continuety. So it's cheap but useless, at least the one I bought.

The sellers of shielding paint use small bottles because most people only need for one or two guitars. Ok the price is high, I've actually been temted to cook up and sell it half the price just to annoy them but then I'd have to do that all the time, and who'd want that..

It's fairly easy, cheap and well explained how to make your own. If too much hassle - like many said before me - aluminium foil is just as good and very cheap!

If he sells it, at least he can afford a better camera!

It is maybe worth remembering that he wasn't actually that happy with the design Gibson implemented, and liked the various iterations (including the bursts) even less! To him a Les Paul guitar should have had low-Z pickups, so those less loved '70s instruments were actually closer to his vision.

It's also worth remembering that Gibson tried to talk to him about his pickups while developing the Les Paul Model, but he would not reveal any secrets. Imagine the gold top or standard with LoZ pickups to begin with

I can't see how anything that small could be a mudbucker.

Pretty small! I might have posted this before, but two years ago I wanted to see if I could make a mini mudbucker for the bridge position on my EB3. At the time, small enough Alnico bars was not readily available over here, so I bought two cheap mini humbuckers with Alnico magnets and a firebird cover with no holes. I had to use super thin plastic for the top/bottom of the bobbin to make room for enough wire to get it in mud area. It ended up 27K ohm, and is louder than a normal mud - but a lot brighter. It took forever to build, but sounds fantastic!




Sorry for hijacking the thread!