Hi,
here's a sound demo I'd like to share with you:
a couple of months ago I bought a great new bass, a Yamaha BB1025X. 30 years ago I bought my first BB, a BB400, and later added a bridge pickup. This bass sounded so good that I wanted a 5-string BB.
Although a standard BB1025 sounds very good, I made some changes:
- I added a series/parallel switch. This added clarity to the split pickup (the bridge pickup is single coil on the BB's)
- I wanted a more focused B and E string, so I reversed the split pickup. That helped a lot. The B is just perfect
- I found that the bridge pickup didn't have the snappy highs of, say, J-basses. So I asked 4 Seasons Pickups to build me a dual coil (side-by-side) pickup, so that it also could be switched to series/parallel, and be humbucking at the same time. The pickup looks like a classic '54 P-bass pickup with one-magnet-per-string, but it has a kind of MM high end sparkle in it. In combination with the neck pickup it gives a sound that seems to combine P-bass, J-bass and MM.
Initially, I planned to build a preamp into this bass, but this lucky combination of pickups doesn't need it... very happy with it.
Nice surprise: the custom pickup was in the same price range as, say, an EMG or Bartolini. Great job!
here's a sound demo I'd like to share with you:
a couple of months ago I bought a great new bass, a Yamaha BB1025X. 30 years ago I bought my first BB, a BB400, and later added a bridge pickup. This bass sounded so good that I wanted a 5-string BB.
Although a standard BB1025 sounds very good, I made some changes:
- I added a series/parallel switch. This added clarity to the split pickup (the bridge pickup is single coil on the BB's)
- I wanted a more focused B and E string, so I reversed the split pickup. That helped a lot. The B is just perfect
- I found that the bridge pickup didn't have the snappy highs of, say, J-basses. So I asked 4 Seasons Pickups to build me a dual coil (side-by-side) pickup, so that it also could be switched to series/parallel, and be humbucking at the same time. The pickup looks like a classic '54 P-bass pickup with one-magnet-per-string, but it has a kind of MM high end sparkle in it. In combination with the neck pickup it gives a sound that seems to combine P-bass, J-bass and MM.
Initially, I planned to build a preamp into this bass, but this lucky combination of pickups doesn't need it... very happy with it.
Nice surprise: the custom pickup was in the same price range as, say, an EMG or Bartolini. Great job!
