Pickups Choice and Placement

The Stratocaster has three single coil pickups. If I wanted to stay true to form, I could use three single coil pickups like the pick ups used in the '51 telecaster bass.

Without going into my calculations, the middle and bridge pick ups on the stratocaster fall roughly within the positions of the bridge pickup of a jazz bass and the middle in the neighborhood of a precision pickup.

The neck pickup would be similar to some of the older Gibson basses.

I seriously considered going this route but Ebay changed my direction. I was able to buy two dual coil EMG pickups for a reasonable price. Again, these EMG pickups are a complete set each and will be combined for an eighteen volt system per recommended by EMG.

With the red bass I consider this type of pickup for the bridge pickup to get a "musicman" type of sound if I wanted it. I never own a musicman bass and thought it would be something different to experience.

The pickups I bought are exactly like the one I was considering for the other project. With a push/pull pot, the pickup can be used as a sigle coil or a humbucker. With the bridge pickup in the area of the jazz bridge/musicman pick up and the neck pickup in the region of the precision /jazz neck position; I believe I might be able to create the sounds of several different basses.

Neck: humbucker only - Precision bass

Neck Humbucker/Bridge Single coil - PJ bass

Dual single coil - jazz bass

Bridge humbucker only - musicman.

I will place the pickups where the single coils will be closer to the bridge and neck than the humbucker to get a more authentic jazz sound. The jazz pickup (single coil) is closer to the neck than the precision and closer to the bridge than the musicman.

Keeping with the three control knobs of the stratocaster, I will use the two push/pull pots to control volume and use a EMG BTC tone control.

EMG-35TW PickUp

EMG BTC Tone Control