Best place for a bass pickup?

[fender3x]

This is in reference to my nutty idea of putting a Fender J-type neck on an ES style guitar. I am thinking about pickup placement...and reconciling myself to the fact that I will probably have to do some routing...

I have a 75 Fender P bass. the bass side pole pieces are 11.125" from the 12th Fret. I have two basses (a p and a franken jazz) that both have a p-style pickup in this place. There are other bass sounds I like, but this is the one I most consistently gravitate toward. I noticed that the neck-side pole pieces on the neck pickup of my G&L ASAT are in the exact same location. So is the neck pickup on a Jazz.

The ES4-B that I got from PB is different... The center of the rout is 9.125" and 13.25". Interestingly enough, the center point between those two routs is almost exactly where the bass-side pole pieces would be on a p-bass. The both-on position sounds best on this bass (maybe because both pups are in series then, and that often sounds best on danos...).

I just figured out that the bridge holes on my Fender/ES hybrid will need to move a bit, which brings me yet another step closer to making the top a solid color. If I do that, I may fill the pup routs, and make one or two news ones. At least this has crossed my mind...

So what is the ideal placement of pickups? And what pickups should I be thinking about?

I had been thinking about t-bird pickups. I played three T-birds (cheap Epiphone, expensive Epiphone and cheap Gibson). I was startled at how different they sounded--and not too impressed. Range was from muddier to honkiner than my taste tends to run...

So what should I be looking at? Part of me thinks I might be better off to put a nice P-bass pup in the middle and be done with it...

[neverwas]

This article on pickup placement should give an idea of the principle involved, though no hard and fast measurements because scale lengths change between instruments

http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resou...nato/index.htm

A little bit of interesting reading if nothing else.

Grant

[fender3x]

Agreed. Food for thought

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[Simon Barden]

I've still got to choose where to locate the pickups on the ESB-4. I was going to put the bridge one in the rough position that the bridge pup on a jazz bass would be, but will probably move the neck one a bit further forward than that of the jazz neck one, so there's more of a range of sound available, especially in the mixed position. If it was a true Gibson EB2 copy, it would be right up by the neck, but I'm not going quite that far.

[fender3x]

I think Gibson is hedging its bets. The new ES-335 has the neck pup closer to the mid position. Both seem to be guitar sized humbuckers. The new Midtown (update of the EB-2) has a mudbucker bumping up against the neck and a mini down by the bridge. On YT the latter has a more traditional Gibson thunk. The ES-335 had a large range of sounds. Nothing like an EB-X, but nice....

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[Fretworn]

This is pretty standard for how those pickup types were used traditionally. The bid EB-0 pickup was always up near the neck. Basses with the other humbuckers had them more in middle and bridge positions.