Soapbar pickup help

[EliteRob]

Needing some advice and/or help. I'm not very familiar with the electronics side of bass.

I have a Shecter Damien 4 with passive EMG 35HZ pups and an active eq, which I'm not opposed to eliminating. This bass is tuned DGCF. I'm wanting to upgrade the pups. I've been looking at Seymour Duncan SSB NYC, which would require me adding 2-on/on/on switches to allow me to utilize the pups fully. I'm not opposed to doing that. I've also considered the Delano SBC-E Series. They make an SBC 4 HE/S-E (dual equal humbucker) and an SBC 4 HE/S-4 E (quad coil humbucker). I know they make several soap bar style replacement pups but was hoping for some input from people who have similar setups.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ctmullins]

Duncan makes a great product.

Delano SBCs are fantastic.

You don’t have to use the switches if you don’t want to.

There are lots of other 35-sized soapbar pickups out there.

What exactly are you looking to change? Change for change’s sake is an exercise in frustration, or at best, lengthy exploration. It’s recommended to approach modifications with a specific goal in mind (crisper treble, thicker mids, tighter bottom, more flexibility, etc.).

 

[EliteRob]

Duncan makes a great product.

Delano SBCs are fantastic.

You don’t have to use the switches if you don’t want to.

There are lots of other 35-sized soapbar pickups out there.

What exactly are you looking to change? Change for change’s sake is an exercise in frustration, or at best, lengthy exploration. It’s recommended to approach modifications with a specific goal in mind (crisper treble, thicker mids, tighter bottom, more flexibility, etc.).

Thanks for the reply! I guess I'm looking for higher output, thicker mids, but don't want to sacrifice my bottom end. I was told the Duncan NYC sound more J bass and the Delanos sound more P bass. If I had to choose based on that, I'd rather have a P bass sound over J bass sound. I also watched a video on YouTube with the Duncan NYC's with switches on both pups and they sounded pretty good, considering it was not in person. Had a lot of different tone options with them. I'm guessing I could do something similar with the Delanos as well. I also have a couple Ibanez SG with Bartiloni pups and really like the tone control I have with them. Wasn't sure if the Bart soapbar pups would sound similar. I just am bored with the sound of emg 35hz's.

 

[ctmullins]

Here's the thing - you can listen to demo videos all day long and still not know exactly how a given set of pickups will sound in your instrument. Aside from the widely varying audio quality amongst those videos (most of them range from downright crappy to just skewed), each and every instrument is a unique assemblage of components, all working together to produce a unique voice. So you can never really know whether or not a set of pickups will be what you're looking for until you commit to buying, installing, and playing them. I don't know of any way around that.

If you're looking for higher output and thicker mids, then you should consider wiring the soapbars (whatever brand/model you choose) in series. You can then, if you want, install a switch to choose between series and parallel, or series and single-coil. If the latter, then the quad-coil models will avoid single-coil hum.

It's also possible that the circuitry in your Schecter could be masking some of the potential of the 35HZs. If you want to hear just the pickups, without all of the other wiring, you can experiment with wiring the pickups (one or both) straight to the output jack. You might be pleasantly surprised, at which point you can modify your control wiring to try and preserve as much of that character as possible, using either passive or active components.

Lots of this has been discussed already here, so I recommend spending a few hours reading past threads on similar subjects.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

 

[NigelD]

Consider changing the preamp before changing pups.