Of mudbuckers and magnets.

[dadagoboi]

Those pickups are made by Gotoh I think, they are made with a much thicker wire, maybe 40 awg or something. They are almost low impedance compared to the original ones. They don't sound bad, a bit anemic, but I think that is because of the limited magnetic field. Also, I think that the row of screws can't transfer much of the magnetic field to strings, I'm not an electrical engineer, just a hack, but that is my impression. Maybe replacing the screws with a different (solid) core blade under the cover things will improve. I need to find some time to experiment...

Artec, apparently now out of production.  Out of stock at Allparts for over a year. Yeah, pole screws do absolutely zip. When available they cost me $18...which means they cost Allparts less than $10...which means the manufacturing cost was probably $5 including cover.  Can't buy much copper for that!

That's why they sound like shit compared to the real thing.  And not even a nice firm turd, more like diarrhea.  Only my opinion of course.

I'm not sure if I have the model one I traded for last year.  It's a cream one, I need to build a bass for it if I do.

Novak builds versions of mudbuckers.  They don't sound very good.  Again, my opinion

[exiledarchangel]

Artecs have much more wider polepieces, Fender-spaced (52 or 54mm I think), those are about 48mm, thats way I think they are Gotohs.

[Dave W]

It's still in production - Thought it was long gone?  Never seen one new but I haven't exactly been looking lately (I did years ago).  Did they reissue it recently or something?

It's never been out of production, but I haven't seen one in a store for at least 15 years. My guess is that most buyers of vintage Gibson EB series basses today aren't likely to consider replacing the original mudbucker; things were different when the basses were cheap and not considered vintage. There's still a demand for them, just not as much as before.

[Alanko]

Dimarzio killed off the Model G pickup, which might be what Granny Gremlin is thinking of?

Artecs do indeed have wider spacing. I discovered this when I tried to stick one in the EB-0 bass. I would hesitatingly say Artecs are spaced to go in the neck position of Fenders.

I'm guessing Artec only sold them because somebody had commissioned them for a bass? For example I'm noticing a lot of cheap Chinese Filtertron/Fidelitron type bass humbuckers available at the moment, and those Chowny basses came out recently with these pickups fitted. Likewise I'm wondering if the Artec mudbuckers were devised for the B&CH EB-2/Rivoli copy bass, or some other far-east wonder like the Italia or Fret King basses? I'm guessing that it cost a wee bit to tool up to make them, so it would be worth it to make a bunch of them!

All that, and the Artec was a diarrheabucker...

[Granny Gremlin]

Italia Mondial maybe, yeah.  That predates the Bach.

As expected, Uwe's got one (and I played it; photographic evidence exits, but I look like a total dork).