Could I fit a p pickup and a mm pickup in their respective positions on the same bass?

RumbleMan3

RumbleMan3

Apr 14, 2018
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#1
As the title states. Could you have both pickups in their respective positions (mm in the stingray sweet spot and p in the precision bass sweet spot) and have it fit on the same bass? Or would they overlap each other?

Is there a way to fit both pickups on the bass, without being in their sweet spots, but still getting a stingray tone and a p bass tone?
 
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#6
Thanks for that @Yahboy

If anyone can give me some tips on wiring and actually installing the pickups and stuff... will any p bass pickup work, or does it have to have certain specs to be compatible or something like that?

How would I go about adding a 2 or 3 way switch for pickup selection?

I have literally no experience with poring pickups, installing pickups or electronics at all so any advice I can get will be much appreciated, and going towards a very good cause! (Hopefully it turns out to be one of the coolest basses ever)
 
#7
Just install the P pickup on a Stingray and nudge it as close to the MM pickup as you can. The P pickup will only be about 1/4-3/8" off from it's usual position, not a big deal, it will still sound like a P. Moving the SR pickup towards the bridge will thin it's tone out.
There are a couple caveats...
1. It can be rather tricky to implement the controls, as the archetype of a Stingray tone is a parallel wired humbucker going into a preamp and the iconic P tone is a series wired split coil going passive. There will be some compromise if you choose to run the SR pickup passive or the P pickup active. There will have to be decisions made on what's most important, tonally.
2. Sometimes, pickups that are really close together have magnets that interfere with each other. Not always, but it's a possibility.
3. Since you have no experience with this stuff, it's gonna be a longer process, but you will learn some stuff.
 
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#8
bigtone23 said:
Just install the P pickup on a Stingray and nudge it as close to the MM pickup as you can. The P pickup will only be about 1/4-3/8" off from it's usual position, not a big deal, it will still sound like a P. Moving the SR pickup towards the bridge will thin it's tone out.
There are a couple caveats...
1. It can be rather tricky to implement the controls, as the archetype of a Stingray tone is a parallel wired humbucker going into a preamp and the iconic P tone is a series wired split coil going passive. There will be some compromise if you choose to run the SR pickup passive or the P pickup active. There will have to be decisions made on what's most important, tonally.
2. Sometimes, pickups that are really close together have magnets that interfere with each other. Not always, but it's a possibility.
3. Since you have no experience with this stuff, it's gonna be a longer process, but you will learn some stuff.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I was thinking this was gonna be a great idea... a p bass and stingray in one bass, but it looks like it’ll be much easier to just buy a p bass and buy a stingray.

I think that’s what I’ll do.
 
#10
RumbleMan3 said:
As the title states. Could you have both pickups in their respective positions (mm in the stingray sweet spot and p in the precision bass sweet spot) and have it fit on the same bass? Or would they overlap each other?

Is there a way to fit both pickups on the bass, without being in their sweet spots, but still getting a stingray tone and a p bass tone?
Click to expand...

Like this?

IMG_20191022_175329.jpg
 
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#12
RumbleMan3 said:
Yes, but with the mm pickup in the sweet spot. That looks too close to the bridge. The p pickup is in a good spot. I just prefer the sound of the standard ones, not reversed, with the 8 small poles instead of 4 big ones.
Click to expand...

I’ve seen the sandberg vm’s but they just don’t do it for me. They sound great, but they just don’t sound like a p bass, or a stingray.

That’s why I want a bass with the proper pickups in their proper positions, hopefully on the same bass to save me having to buy 2 different basses.
 
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#13
RumbleMan3 said:
I’ve seen the sandberg vm’s but they just don’t do it for me. They sound great, but they just don’t sound like a p bass, or a stingray.

That’s why I want a bass with the proper pickups in their proper positions, hopefully on the same bass to save me having to buy 2 different basses.
Click to expand...

Yes you're right, but I don't think they are meant to, either.

The MM pickup has a different sound, not like a Stingray, but the P pickup sound like a P, in my opinion.

Anyway, found this online:

Bass_Pickup_Comparison.thumb.png.3501af040fd7ff4bbe0d6e4cb0a4818d.png
 
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#18
Anyway, found this online:
Click to expand...

I have to respectfully disagree that these pickup locations don't overlap. I'm guessing that photo comparison has been mashed up from three different shots. Perhaps the Stingray is laying back on a stand and there's some parallax error. IME, when you install a Stingray pickup on a P body in the "sweet spot", it bisects the rear pickguard edge. OTOH, perhaps the stingray pickup location has moved around a bit over the years. I'm not sure. When I routed a P body for a ray pickup many years ago, I think I just went into a guitar shop with a ruler and measured an old stingray that was on the wall.

This is my "P-ray" bass...

20200302_120606.jpg


As others have mentioned, I would just route for a reverse P, with the EA coil in the original position, and the DG coil, further from the bridge.

The real problem will be getting them to work together so they both have their classic sounds. If you go with a passive blend setup, I'd experiment with the Ray p'up in series perhaps.

My choice would be an active (twin buffer) blend. I'd experiment with the load on each pickup. The P could have say a 500-600p cap and a 100-150k resistor across it to emulate the pots impedance and the cable capacitance that would normally be in their path. And on the ray side of the blend, I'd try a 2n2 cap if you like the aggressive treble tone of the 3-band or if you like the cleaner treble tone of the classic 2-band stingrays, perhaps a resistor to drop the z to around 100k.
 
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#19
How about adding a MM to a Jazz Bass, like this gentleman has done here. I’ve heard it, and it’s not %100 stingray, I have to say it’s at least %90 there, and if I was blindfolded I would swear it was a stingray. Perhaps u would only distinguish the difference if u played back to back with a stingray.

9DD2879A-E4B2-4922-84B2-F8BFE030D9EF.jpeg
 
#20
I have a passive P bass that I like the way it sounds. Long story short, I also have a Nordy MM 4.2 pickup laying around. I was thinking about installing it right next to the P pickup as close as I can get it. Just like the Nordstrand DL5 above. I'm thinking about V/B/T for controls. I already have a Noble 250k MN blend I could use. Also, want to put in a switch for series/parallel for the MM pickup.

My question is how will this affect the existing P sound? Is there any unforseen problems with this setup? String pull?
 
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