Lowe Shop Notes

[Dave W]

Interesting. As a translucent finish over ash, it looks russet.

[BTL]

Interesting. As a translucent finish over ash, it looks russet.

I can see that.



The harnesses are finished and shipping out:



Now, this is happening:

[BTL]

As far as I know, the Lowe by Hipshot is the only "chopped" six-saddle guitar bridge that is a top-load, string-through, and a direct replacement for a vintage 6 + 4 T-style.

A Bigsby-compatible plate is also in the works.

[Dave W]

Interesting. Will this be only offered on your guitars, or separately?

[slinkp]

What does chopped mean?

[Dave W]

What does chopped mean?

It's a separate bridge. It doesn't enlose the bridge pickup like a traditional Tele bridge.

[BTL]

Interesting. Will this be only offered on your guitars, or separately?

My plan is to offer my hardware separately on Reverb.com as supply and demand allows.

That will include routing templates for my pickup ring V2.0.

It may include wiring harnesses and loaded pickup rings, too, but I need to confirm if my OEM agreements allow for that.

[Alanko]

It's a separate bridge. It doesn't enlose the bridge pickup like a traditional Tele bridge.

In the case of the Tele Seymour Duncan modified for Jeff Beck he really did chop a normal Tele bridge in half:

[BTL]

Yup...that's where it came from, or at least the one that made it famous.

[BTL]

Nut slots don't just cut themselves.

[BTL]

Here's a nice little write up on my Primaluxe basses and plug and play electronics from a couple of members over at ebassist.com:

Kindness: SmallEQ and I spent part of the afternoon today playing around with BeeTL's plug and play harnesses on our basses. SmallEQ's bass is the fiesta red, mine is the sea foam green. We both started the day with the Lollar Thunderbird option:



In addition to the two Lollar Thunderbird pickups, we had (clockwise starting in the upper left) a TV Jones Thunder'Blade, a Fralin Hum Canceling P90, and two Guild BS-1 pickups (only one shown):



You can see from the back of the pickguards that the only thing you need to do to swap in a new set is plug in the ground wire, everything else is wired up and ready to go:



We were both big fans of the Guild BS-1.



SmallEQ is sticking with the BS-1 (BiSonic/Darkstar) shown above, but I decided on the TV Jones Thunder'Blade:



Kindness: The swaps are dead simple and it is really a unique experience to be able to play different pickups in the same bass with the same setup back to back within minutes of each other. And it's even better when you can audition them side by side in such similar basses. It made it really easy to pick exactly the pickup option I wanted and see how similar and dissimilar the options were.

I am someone that typically tweaks whatever setup is in front of me to a mostly consistent sound. I basically try to take anything you put in front of me and do my best to make it sound like Bob Nyswonger recording a P bass. That's too complimentary of my playing and tone, but it's the sound in my head. That's "bass" to me.

I started with the Lollar. It was my least favorite. More "Bartolini" and less "Aero." Smooth, rounded notes. To me, its muffled. To others, it's thick and juicy.

The other three set of pickups are more alike than dissimilar. In a progression away from the Lollar sound I would go Guild BS-1, TV Jones Thunder'Blade, and Fralin Hum Cancelling P90. In isolation, I prefer the Fralin. But it is close enough to the others that I would be more than happy with the Guild or TV Jones. In fact, factoring in that I already have a Dark Star bass (Lakland Hollowbody), and Fralin P bass (my Lakland Glaub), and because the pickup looks rad as f***, I am sticking with the TV Jones.

One of the things I love about the Guild BS-1 (and my Dark Stars) is the ability to adjust each pole piece. They are sensitive and, at the right height, are fantastic. The TV Jones pickup is also sensitive to height adjustments. At first, it was a bit thin, but bringing it up to about 3/16" below the E string was a noticeable improvement.

I'm really impressed by the execution of the plug and play concept. Now that I'm done plugging, I'm ready to get playing.

SmallEQ: While I'm not trying to make each bass sound like a Pbass, I do tend to make every bass sound the same and when I can't I generally don't keep it for very long.  The Lollar Thunderbird pickup fell into this category for me. 

When we were swapping the bisonic and the TV jones we started off by looking up what the recommended string distance was and that made it easy enough to dial it in.  I think ultimately I preferred the TV Jones pickup a bit more, but I've always wanted a DS bass and the sound was close enough that I decided to go with the DS. 

May ask you to whip me up another assembly with the TV Jones pickup at some point, but probably wouldn't be necessary.  My other bass has the TV Jones Thundertrons and I must say that with my experience with both kinds of TV Jones bass pickups, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

[Dave W]

Nice of them to give such a detailed review.

[BTL]

Thanks, Dave!

Both of them are players whose opinions I respect.

It was pretty cool that they were able to audition all of the pickups back-to-back in the same setting.

One day soon I hope to do some web demos to demo all of the options for those who can't try before they buy.

[BTL]

I'm adding a Combo 600 inspired guitar body shape to the portfolio.

Behold the Comboluxe:

[Nocturnal]

I like it