1980 Ibanez Blazer bass pickup

[GlennW]

Do any of you guys know about this thing? I haven't gotten it yet (that's a picture of a different bass with the same pickup).

I've read that it's a HB. I found a thread where two people measured different ones - one was 18.5+ Kohms and the other was 8.77 Kohms.

[David Schwab]

If it's a humbucker, it would have to be either a stacked pickup, or a side by side split pickup, like a DiMarzio Model J, judging from the single row of pole pieces. If it was a stacked pickup, that could account for it being 18K. The 8K version would be in line with a split coil humbucker. It could also be a single coil.

Does it hum?

[GlennW]

I've yet to see or hear it, hasn't arrived yet. I was hoping it was a single coil, but searched around and found people calling it a HB. The wide variation in the DCR readings made me suspect a stacked coil too, with one of them running on 1/2. I'll try to figure it out when it gets here.

[GlennW]

Here's a picture of the bottom. There's a baseplate screwed to the bottom of the pickup route, it has a wire grounded on the back of the volume pot. The pickup itself is all sealed up in epoxy or something. It looks like a couple of bar magnets on the bottom. There is a red and white wire in a braided shielding (3 wires) and all that's insulated - the red and shield are also grounded to the pot, and the white one is the signal lead.

Edit: had to replace the input jack and measured the pickup while it was still connected (can you do that?) and got 13.9K.

[David Schwab]

Here's a picture of the bottom. There's a baseplate screwed to the bottom of the pickup route, it has a wire grounded on the back of the volume pot. The pickup itself is all sealed up in epoxy or something. It looks like a couple of bar magnets on the bottom. There is a red and white wire in a braided shielding (3 wires) and all that's insulated - the red and shield are also grounded to the pot, and the white one is the signal lead.

Looks like a single coil... It's kind of like a Tele pickup.

Edit: had to replace the input jack and measured the pickup while it was still connected (can you do that?) and got 13.9K.

Output jack... not input jack. Yeah, you can do that if the volume is all the way up.. it will be fairly close.

Ibanez seems like to like to try new things all the time. I have an early 80's SoundGear 5 string.. one of the first ones they made. It had active pickups, they called them "Regulated Lo-Z". They looked like Jazz bass pickups. They were single coils, but under the pickup, under a copper shield, was a coil from a humbucker guitar pickup, with no magnets, acting as a dummy coil. Now keep in mind that these are active pickups, with the buffer inside the pickup. So they had a coax cable running into the control cavity, and then back to the dummy coil. Very odd.

It didn't work very well either. The pickups sounded good, but were noisy.

They soon changed to soap bar pickups on that bass.

[GlennW]

Thanks, David.

I'm puzzled about the red/white/braided shield wire.

I know enough to guess the white wire is one of the coil leads since it's the hot wire to the volume pot.

But why two grounds? I've seen a Hagstrom bass pickup that a brass or copper shielding wrapped around the coil - it went magnet/coil/tape/shielding strip/cover - and that was soldered to the baseplate. Only two wires left the pickup.

On this Blazer pickup the baseplate has its own ground wire. I was wondering why it has an extra wire.

Here's a pick of a Hagstrom shield. Do you think there might be something like this burried in the epoxy?

[David Schwab]

Thanks, David.

I'm puzzled about the red/white/braided shield wire.
...

On this Blazer pickup the baseplate has its own ground wire. I was wondering why it has an extra wire.

Here's a pick of a Hagstrom shield. Do you think there might be something like this burried in the epoxy?

Yeah, probably. You should keep your shield and your pickup's common wire separate. It's just good electronics practice. Also if you have two pickups and you need to reverse the polarity of one of them, you are all set.

The red is probably the common from the coil, and the white is the hot. The braid is the shield.

[GlennW]

Thanks again. I'm really liking this pickup. I put on some TI Jazz Flats and an Orange Drop 225 series .1 cap and it's done - one of the very few times the tone knob sounds good from 0-10. I had ideas, but no need, it's fine just like it is.