PJ pickup

[Rodent]

for those who make a PJ pickup with a single-coil J, what's your preferred wind count for the J?

I paired one of my standard split-coil P4 pickups (a bit under wound and will fully charged A5's) with a standard wound/charged J4 bridge pickup, and the J is noticeably quieter than the P set resulting in a diminished signal level when blended into the pickup mix or operated solo.

curious how others have resolved this

all the best,

R

[big_teee]

Anyway you could do a little body routing, and add one of these?
I never did like mixing single coils, and buckers for bass.
Mojotone Double Jazz Bass Bridge Pickup Cover Black

[Rodent]

hey T -

not on this one - with exception of getting the bridge J worked out, this one is ready for the show floor at NAMM next week. thinking of winding a new coil 5% over to see how it plays with the split P from a volume perspective. I'm not a big fan of the overwound coil sound, but I'm sure any tonal nuances will be lost in the sea of noise on the show floor

I snagged one of those covers on my last order so I could experiment some after NAMM

R

[big_teee]

Good Luck at NAMM.
T

[Lucas]

I have similar circumstance. One possible suggestion would be to lower P pickups and raise J pickup.

[Rodent]

I have similar circumstance. One possible suggestion would be to lower P pickups and raise J pickup.

I did a lot of tweaking last night, and this raising of the J coil is the solution I arrived at. the bridge J coil setup on the PJ is now somewhat higher than how I setup a typical JJ, but not so high that it looks/feels weird or out of place. The P coils are exactly where they need to be, so I prefer not to tweak them any. I followed this setup on my other PJ's and have consistent results so I have a valid shooting solution for NAMM

I'm glad to have arrived at this since I really like the sound of my bridge J coil as it's currently wound, and my JJ set is getting a lot of compliments from several local studio engineers where a client of mine does a lot of session work with his otherwise stock '69 J loaded with my JJ set

R

[Lucas]

good. my suggestion was merely to give a quick solution to get you to NAMM.
I have seen a lot of your work on Talkbass - very nice. I always keep an eye out for your activity and contributions on TB.

[David King]

I wrote on here yesterday but apparently lost focus before i could hit the "post" button.

Rod, What magnet lengths are you using? You could try 5mm, .196" dia mags in the J or bump the lengths out to 20mm or .800" (I stock all these variations). Have you tried A2 or A4 in the Ps? That's pretty obvious too I guess.
Can you fit 10k turns on your J bobbins or just wind the P's to 8900 or 9300 turns instead?
There's nothing wrong with raising the J and lowering the P until you get a balanced output.

[Rodent]

as you can see, there's nothing stunningly groundbreaking with this build design outside of subtle things like better upper register access, etc ...

and you can see that the bridge pickup height is by no means extreme - the ears are about 3/32" higher than the front face


David - nothing super original on the magnets either, just .187" x .781" A5's. I'll have time post NAMM to toy with a few things on this pickup pairing, as I'd really like to get my stuff together with a split coil J bridge to pair with the P coils ... I simply ran out of time this year (so I have something 'new' to offer next year )

R

[big_teee]

I want to take a standard P-Bass, and route a MM or soapbar Humbucker, right below the Pickguard.
T

[David King]

So you're using .781 length on the Ps as well? A standard P mag is .531". That's a significant difference in Gauss.

[Rodent]

So you're using .781 length on the Ps as well? A standard P mag is .531". That's a significant difference in Gauss.

sorry - thought you were only asking about the J coils. confirmed that I have .187"x.531" A5's in the P coils. nothing fancy on the winding or magnet charging on the P's either.

it took a bit for me to find a tension and layer fill percentage I liked the sound of, but once I did it's been amazingly consistent from one pickup set to the next.

R

[David Schwab]

I want to take a standard P-Bass, and route a MM or soapbar Humbucker, right below the Pickguard.
T

Below the pickguard? It will sound like crap; dull and weak.

[David King]

I think he means where the P pickguard stops, about 3" from the bridge...

[David Schwab]

P/J pickups never balance. They can't. The P is about 11k. If you wind a very hot J, it might help, but won't have that bright tone people expect from a J. The better way would probably be to under-wind the P a bit, and over-wind the J a bit.

What works REALLY well is two P pickups. You hardly ever see it done, but a P at the bridge sounds way better than the J.

Like T said, I did one of these for someone, and he wanted a very dark sounding bridge pickup, so it has two regular wound J's in it, run in series. This balanced very well, and the bridge pickup sounded great soloed.