Least mid heavy bridge pickup

[RoadToNever]

On my bass with flatwounds I'm trying to get a bridge position sound that's not typicaly mid heavy and thin sounding. I'm getting pretty close with a Bill Lawrence L500C(2.8Henry) dual blade in series, the lows are really solid and high end clarity is not bad either but the mids have a honky quality to them. I'm considering trying a higher output L500 in parallel but I'm not sure what to expect beside a sharper attack, which I'm sure i'd like. Would one aim for 4x output to retain low end responce? Is it reasonable it expect the honky mids to shift upward?

[RoadToNever]

It just struck me that Bills Q-filter would be useful for what I'm trying to achieve. Lows would stay unchanged while unpleasant mids would be attenuated and reasonant peak would be shifted up for more clarity. I guess the difference with parallel be more aggressive cut. I bet the latter would be more useful in the end as I'm aiming to emulate the sound of roundwounds on a flatwound equipped bass.

It would be nice to hear an expert opinion. David Schwab, are you out there?

[David Schwab]

You are using a guitar pickup on bass? Wiring it parallel will get less mids, but that's a very bright pickup.

Bridge pickups are honky because that's how the strings sound up there. I'd say you want a pickup that's not wound too hot. Hot pickups tend to use 43 or 44 gauge wire, and that increases the mid honk. Thicker wire gets more lows and has a more scooped sound. I make a pickup with 40AWG wire and it has a nice deep hollow tone.

I used to have a P bass with two P pickups, and the P at the bridge position sounds very different from a Jazz pickup. It was rounder and smother sounding without that honk.

Lately I mostly use my neck pickup. You get no honk down there!

[RoadToNever]

Yeah I'm also partial to neck PU on bass. For guitar it's the other way around for me, bridge PU is what I'll more likely to use. I'm reserving the neck position on this bass for simulation upright tones though.
The bass version Lawrence L500 pickup is identical to the guitar version expect the blades are longer to accommodate wider string spacing on basses.
This jazz guy uses the Lawrence pickup to good effect for ECM type jazz: Bruce Gertz Quintet on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

Anyway I'll try to present my main question as an example:
Humbucker #1 is 5K, humbucker #2 is 20k. #1 is in series and #2 is in parallel. Both are in the bridge position and of the same design.
ignoring other tonal differences would fundamentals of each note be the same volume?

[David Schwab]

Yeah I'm also partial to neck PU on bass. For guitar it's the other way around for me, bridge PU is what I'll more likely to use. I'm reserving the neck position on this bass for simulation upright tones though.
The bass version Lawrence L500 pickup is identical to the guitar version expect the blades are longer to accommodate wider string spacing on basses.
This jazz guy uses the Lawrence pickup to good effect for ECM type jazz: Bruce Gertz Quintet on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

The point I was making is guitar pickups are often voiced differently than bass pickups.

Anyway I'll try to present my main question as an example:
Humbucker #1 is 5K, humbucker #2 is 20k. #1 is in series and #2 is in parallel. Both are in the bridge position and of the same design.
ignoring other tonal differences would fundamentals of each note be the same volume?

20K in parallel? That's got to sound like crap! That much wire will give you all kinds of humps in the response. Try the 5K pickup in parallel.

[Rick Turner]

Am I allowed to suggest that some of these pickup choices sound like the inverse of someone's hearing loss?

And that there might just be a mistake in ID'ing series vs. parallel? Two reasonably matched pickups would have to be wound to 40 K apiece to hit 20 K in parallel! OK, factor in a little bit of pot loading, but... Could any of us even wind coils that high in DCR without resorting to 48 gauge wire or making huge coils? I guess if I let the machine run for a few hours!

Something is seriously wrong with what we're being told here!

But

[RoadToNever]

Guys the 20K pickup was fictional, I picked easy even numbers to present my question.
Anyways I sourced via eBay a Bill Lawrence designed dual blade of 2x higher output than my previous one and a corresponding single blade for the neck position .
The neck position is great now, does the "acoustic" and vintage tones perfectly. Previously had the low output L500 in there and it was too gritty for my intended applications.
As for the bridge position I'm giving up on using it alone for anything but solo type playing. But I'm getting decent rock tones in the middle position now.
Wiring the the dual blade in parallel really removes the honk and adds treble, take a listen:
LimeLinx - Preview - shapes.mp3
(Recorded DI, middle position bridge dailed down a notch and tone down 1/3.)

[RoadToNever]

I redid the recording above with the bridge hum-bucker wired in series, for the sake of comparison.
shapes series.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage
Also did a spectrum capture in these two recording and generated a curve of the difference in parallel mode vs series:

I think it goes without saying that I managed to achieve what I wanted and I was lucky enough to do so on a hunch as I my knowledge in electronics is very limited and and couldn't even present my idea to you guys in a understandable fasion.

There is still a matter of the bridge pickup being underpowered and my pot values are too high but I'm already able to realize an awesome versatility from this bass, I can go from warm vintage tones to heavy cutting tones just by adjusting my controls. 12k version of the dual blade to be ordered soon.

[David Schwab]

12k version of the dual blade to be ordered soon.

Keep in mind that will have more mids than the lower wound version.

You should do like the vintage Rick 4001 basses and run the treble pickup though a 0.0047µF cap to remove the low end. Then when you mix that with the neck you get your highs with no mids.

[Rick Turner]

David, what you're suggesting is nothing less than using one pickup as a "woofer" and the other as a "tweeter".

Totally legit.

But...the least mid-heavy bass guitar pickup I use is my "Reference Piezo" which has a smooth "whales to bats" kind of response. Mixed in with high Z mag pickups, it's really interesting. High Z mag pickups are essentially band pass filters. Piezos...properly designed and then properly buffered...are not. They're sub-sonic to infra-sonic, and can be frighteningly accurate throughout their bandwidth. I've had the opportunity to play with some of my individual string piezos with a fully DC coupled system...buffer to power amp...and they are amazing at those really low, sub-sonic frequencies. They're also quite unusable, practically speaking as that below 10 Hz stuff just gobbles up a lot of power and cone excursion and doesn't deliver much music...but it is good to have "gone there" to really understand that.

I do have this desire, though, to develop a sub-harmonic contra bass marimba for Dame Evelyn Glennie, one of the three best musicians I've ever met...

[David Schwab]

Right. Based on him saying he wanted the neck pickup to sound like an upright, and he wanted no mids from the bridge, I assumed he wanted treble from that one.

I always liked marimbas.

I've been wanting to mess around with piezos. Way back in about 1972 I had a broken nylon string guitar sitting around, so I removed the neck and made a body from a pine shelf I found in the basement. Barcus Berry Hot-Dots had just come out, so I had planned on sticking a couple of those in the bridge. I ended up with a single piezo disk I got from somewhere instead. I used an external BB preamp. It had an interesting tone. I added a tail piece in the 80's because it sounded better that way.

I beat Gibson to the Chet Atkins CE by nine years!

Here it is today.

[RoadToNever]

I like that cap on bridge idea, David. I'm sure it would make a fat yet clear cutting tone with the neck blended in. I'm sticking with bridge humbucker wired in parallel as it seems to bring me the closest to the sound of round-wounds.
It's all about convenience really. And not sounding like yet another Jaco wannabe. I'm basically a guitarist and I don't see my self getting a real upright or Rick even though I like playing in settings that would require either of those sounds.
Here's a clip of my bass in "upright mode" ie Neck PU alone:
upright.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage
I employ two tricks:
#1 - I try to get as much flesh on the string by angling my finger perpendicular to the strings as I pluck over the end of the fretboard.
#2 - I use a shorter patch cable for a higher "acoustic-like" resonance. I plan to wire two caps to a switch so I can chose between a standard and "upright" tone with a standard 10 ft lead.

[RoadToNever]

@David:
Your classical hybrid is really cool.

@Rick:
Your guitars are one of if not the coolest I've seen in production.

What I'm doing is is just stumbling over very basic wiring mods and pickups swaps that are useful to me personally.
So far I'm I'm very pleased with the results but I realize it's measly compared to the work that you guys do.

Hats off to you grumpy old timers!

[David Schwab]

That sounds good.

#1 - I try to get as much flesh on the string by angling my finger perpendicular to the strings as I pluck over the end of the fretboard.

I also do that when I play fretless and want to get a nice round tone.

#2 - I use a shorter patch cable for a higher "acoustic-like" resonance. I plan to wire two caps to a switch so I can chose between a standard and "upright" tone with a standard 10 ft lead.

Just install a JFET buffer. That will eliminate the effect of the cable. The highs will go higher and the lows get deeper and tighter.

[Rick Turner]

If the pure and basic sound of a pickup doesn't do it for you, no EQ will make it better. You can certainly filter out some unneeded stuff, but the core tone has to be there or you don't have shit. Think microphones in studios...and it all starts with the instrument itself. Pickups are windows into the tone of the instrument; they're not the source of the tone.