I recently bought a couple of bass pickups at the China music fair.
https://steemit.com/music/@owain82220/music-china-fair-shanghai-2018
And this week it was time to get it set up!
I thought about setting it up myself this time cause the luthier I used last time did a terrible job on my bridge. But that's another story.
So I got a contact of a different luthier and thought I’d give him a go.
He was surprised I didn’t have the bass with me. I have a Charlie Chadwick foldable, so I just took the bridge cause its easier. This actually has 2 pickups, one for the fingerboard and one for the bridge. The fingerboard pickup has a sticky side, so I can install that myself. The bridge pickup needs to go between the ‘wing’ (i believe), not too tight, and not too loose to get a good sound.
Seriously…...this guy spent about 2 minutes! Just looked at it a little and then just cut it. It fits…. But it’s not the best job. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think of this kind of woodwork as like a fine art. You need to take your time, get it perfect….
He also put it on the wrong side, but like I said…. it works. I might go back and get him to put it on the other side just to see how it sounds.
After getting it back home and trying it with my amp, it sounds quite synthetic. And also has a lot of volume.
I’ve been using a realist these past couple of years. I like the sound, but I find that in a lot of venues it just doesn’t cut through, and it is rarely loud enough. With this rockabilly pro at least I’ll have enough volume because it has the preamp right there hanging off the tail.
I’ve got a couple of gigs at La Moda tomorrow and the day after, so I’m just going to play around with the bridge pickup first and see if I can get a sound I like.
This afternoon I was messing around with the fingerboard pickup. I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t work unless the bridge pickup was in (mono). Noooob! That killed an hour or so…. I even sent a msg to shadow support..... Well at least now I know.
I have had this idea about putting the fingerboard pickup on the body instead for a while now. I wanted to know if the fingerboard pickup would work on the body also.....
I made a vid with some bass and percussion on both the fingerboard, and then the body.
Once I stick that pickup on, it probably won’t come off so easily so I want to get it in the right place. I’ll take my time over the next couple weeks.
At the moment I’m leaning towards having it on the body. I’m not a rockabilly player, but I would like to experiment more with percussion on the body.
I also tried some recording direct into Reaper. It goes:
1st: fingerboard pickup on fingerboard + bridge pickup
2nd: fingerboard pickup on fingerboard
3rd: fingerboard pickup on body + bridge pickup
4th: fingerboard pickup on body
5th: fingerboard pickup on body + tissue and tape to try stop the rattling from the cable
This didn’t work quite so well on the body as it was picking up the cable moving around. It does however make it more “low fi”
But if I am to put it on the body, I’ll have to find a way to stop it from moving around...... perhaps inside the bass??