guitar pickup in bass

[wellREDman]

I was daydreaming about giving my frankentele bass a bit of snarl by putting a jazz pickup close the bridge, but  it occured to me that (a) i dont have a jazz pickup and (b) i have a handful of guitar pickups lying around
  there has been a few mentions of gibson using guitar pickups on basses, and I wondered if anyone had anything to say about sticking a strat single coil  on a bass?

[Chris P.]

The Fender Musicmaster has a Strat pickup. Dano lipsticks are. Just do it! A SD lipstick gave my Musicmaster a bit more treble and growl.

[Dave W]

Blade-type guitar  pickups will work, and pickups with magnet polepieces (like most Strat pickups) usually work well also. Using a guitar pickup with steel polepieces with the magnet(s) beneath are more likely to have problems with dropout between the strings if used on a bass.

One issue you may have with a Strat pickup is that most of them are noticeably lower in output than a P or J pickup and you would be placing it in the bridge position, where there's less string travel. So there may be even more of an output mismatch than with the usual P/J setup.

[Aussie Mark]

My Vox Wyman came with a Strat pickup in the neck position.  Sounded surprisingly big and fat.

[Dave W]

There's no reason why it wouldn't be. It will sound like a bass pickup when the instrument is tuned to the bass range.

Besides the Musicmaster guitar pickup in the Musicmaster bass, The coils of Rick Hi-gains for guitar and bass are wound to identical specs, with 4 or 6 steel polepieces. The Rick toaster used in the neck of some basses has 6 magnet polepieces, same pickup used in some guitar models. And the Rick 650 guitar and 4004 bass use the same blade-type humbuckers. I'm pretty sure there have been others over the years.

[Pilgrim]

No reason it shouldn't work. A pickup is just a magnetic transducer that converts physical vibration into electronic impulses. As long as it's an accurate transducer, it should reproduce bass frequencies as well as treble frequencies.

[chromium]

The Rick toaster used in the neck of some basses has 6 magnet polepieces, same pickup used in some guitar models.

Illustrative pic from my recently-liberated s/8:



I have a few other basses with guitar humbuckers as well (blade poles), and they do quite nicely IMO.

[Dave W]

Illustrative pic from my recently-liberated s/8:

What did you liberate it from? Did I miss something?

[chromium]

What did you liberate it from? Did I miss something?

More like it was liberated from me, and resides with happy new owner (and hopefully it's getting more use).

[shadowcastaz]

I re did a Gibby SB 400. I originally put some LP  hobit pups. then I got some orig Gibby covers with the logo on them. I was advised to put some mustang pups in the covers. I had to trim the edges  but it worked sweet.

[wellREDman]

One issue you may have with a Strat pickup is that most of them are noticeably lower in output than a P or J pickup and you would be placing it in the bridge position, where there's less string travel. So there may be even more of an output mismatch than with the usual P/J setup.

is there anything I can do to counter this ,
I was thinking of having a blend pot to roll the snarl on to the nice growl i have with the Duncan P pickup and the what-the-f***-is-it-it-looks-like-atbird-ill-stick-it-in-the-neck but will that suck the life out of them without giving any snarl ?

[Dave W]

Not necessarily, it just depends on the particular pickups you have and their relative output. It may work out fine, I was just pointing out that it's a possible issue. You can always control output differences to some extent with separate volume controls.

[wellREDman]

I'm finally going to put this into practice, will I need a tone pot in the circuit?
I'm looking for the treble from it, its my understanding that a tone pot just rolls off the high end right? so no tone pot will give me the maximum treble output or am I all arse about face?

[Pilgrim]

I'm finally going to put this into practice, will I need a tone pot in the circuit?
I'm looking for the treble from it, its my understanding that a tone pot just rolls off the high end right? so no tone pot will give me the maximum treble output or am I all arse about face?

You are  correct. A normal tone pot just diminishes treble output.

When I finished my '64 EB-0 which has one mudbucker and one DiMarzio Model One,  I used the two pots for volume controls, one per pickup. I figured only a nut needed to reduce the treble output from either of those pickups, which are both noted for being massively bassy.

That's also a mod which you could add later if desired.

[Dave W]

Pilgrim is correct. You don't have to have a tone control. If you don't need the flexibility, skip it.

In factory Strat wiring, the two tone controls are for the middle and the neck pickups, the bridge pickup doesn't have one.