Rail/blade J pickups

A

-Asdfgh-

Apr 13, 2010
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#1
I am tidying up an old Peavey bass as a gift for a friend.

The good parts are it's lightweight, I've levelled and crowned the frets (a couple I might tweak the crowning off, and polish a bit more), shielded, and set up. It plays pretty well with .105s on, which is a little heavier than I'd personally use, but it will be used in his jam room.

The issue is pickups. The bridge may be a hair off, but the strings mostly line up with the bridge pickup poles (J pickup), but are about 2mm off at the neck (also a J pickup). I don't think threaded saddles can really solve this issue. I could butcher the pickguard and move the pickup 2mm, but it would leave a 2mm gap.

The other alternative might be rail/blade pickups. Are they any decent ones that are reasonably inexpensive (under £50/$50 a set)? There are some locally, with ceramic magnmets, going for £28, but a no-name brand with unknown properties.
 
#3
If you mean that the strings are 2mm off the middle between the two pole pieces on the pickups for each string I honestly wouldn't worry too much.

I got a bass where both the low E string and high G string are considerably more than 2mm off center of the pole pieces for the respective strings and to my ears it doesn't influence the tone of the bass in any negative way by one bit.

Unless I misunderstood what you wrote or you are able to actually hear something wrong with the tone of the strings this effects I would just leave it as it is if I was you.

Though if it is indeed a real problem then I think you are on to the right solution getting pickups equipped with blades.

Actually I just recently made a thread on this forum asking for humbucker pickups in a J pickup housing, which would work for your application.

Be aware that these or dual blade humbuckers though and not your standard single coil J pickups, which might be an issue for you.

I got these suggestions in that thread:

Joe Barden (JBE) and Reverend.
J-Style Bass Pickups for J-Bass | JBE Pickups
Pickups

Also as already mentioned a company called Lace makes a type of blade pickups, some in the J format as well:
Electric Guitar Pickups | Lace Music Products | guitar sensors, best guitar pickups, Alumitone Sensors, Dually Sensors, bass pickups, acoustic pickups for any style of music.

(Look at my edit note before you do an Ebay search) If you want a cheaper option I've also seen some budget blade J pickups on Ebay.

Can't remember what they were called, but if you do a search on bass pickups they should pop up somewhere on the list.

Edit!: Just did a search myself on Ebay to see if I could find the pickup I was talking about, it's called Janika Hotrail, and while it is dead cheap, apparently it only comes in a format that fits 5 string basses, sorry.
 
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