J-bass pickups - how to beef up the bottom end?

[Rodent]

Curious what the folks are doing to beef up the bottom end of bass pickups, without sacrificing the openness and clarity of a typical single-coil J with AlNiCo V magnets.

I wind mine a pinch shorter/fatter so that more of the wire is closer to the strings, and this seems to work nicely in keeping the mids lively and top end in balance. One of my customers is requesting a set with even more umph on the bottom, and curious what are some things people have done to achieve this.

[big_teee]

Has anyone tried a steel strip on the bottom of the bass strings?
You could try it with and without the steel on the bass strings, and see if it beefs the bass or not?
T

[Mike Sulzer]

Long ago a very famous maker of basses introduced active electronics into the bass in order to allow adjustability in the instrument itself. There are two reasons for that:
1. Although a filter affecting the lowest frequencies can be built with passive electronics it is difficult to do, and the results are not really great
2. You cannot do it with the pickup itself. At bass frequencies you get what the law of magnetic induction gives you. The inductance and capacitance of the pickup have essentially no effects at low frequencies. Two or more sampling points, such as a humbucker, affects high harmonics, not the fundamental and lower harmonics.

Curious what the folks are doing to beef up the bottom end of bass pickups, without sacrificing the openness and clarity of a typical single-coil J with AlNiCo V magnets.

I wind mine a pinch shorter/fatter so that more of the wire is closer to the strings, and this seems to work nicely in keeping the mids lively and top end in balance. One of my customers is requesting a set with even more umph on the bottom, and curious what are some things people have done to achieve this.

[Leo_Gnardo]

One of my customers is requesting a set with even more umph on the bottom, and curious what are some things people have done to achieve this.

Can his rig keep up with the extra umph? As Mr Sulzer mentioned, an active system can get you there, but it can also reveal the inadequacy of a bass rig if it's not really up to dealing with the extra power needed & speaker strain. Same goes for the PA.

That said, I've installed a couple Alembic P-J systems and all I can say is wow, I mean WOW OW WOW YOWSAAA !!!!! Mighty impressive! Very. Authorotative. Tone.

EMG and a couple other outfits make some darn nice active systems too.

Even an ordinary bass can sound terrific with a proper rig. I put together a 2600W rig with a pair of Cerwin-Vega 18" "Earthquake Bins" plus some top cabs for overtone definitiion. When you stood about 10 feet in front, hit a low G on a standard P-bass, retinas started to wobble, vision got fuzzy. And it was nowhere near using up the amps. That enough bass for ya? Heh, heh, heh.....

[David King]

The easiest way to add more low bass is to turn down all the other instruments.

[loudthud]

The G&L L1000 bass has a three position switch, one position gives a bass boost. The switch they use is an ON-ON-ON so don't be confused by the way the schematic is drawn. Apparently all they do is insert a capacitor in the ground lead of the pickup and short it out when boost is not selected.

Link:http://www.glguitars.com/schematics/...ic_drawing.pdf
Link:http://www.glguitars.com/schematics/...ockdiagram.pdf

[spichael]

I'd say keep the number of winds and losen tension across the p/u wire the loser the better witch will give the pickup a more robust lush responsive tone