![]() ![]() Some of that comes from the traditional placement of split coils - roughly midway between the end of the fretboard and the bridge (as in the Yamaha TRBX204 shown below), where the string vibrations are more active and harmonic. Compared sonically to the single coil, the split coil sounds juicier, with bouncier lows and punchier mids. Instead of running straight across the full width of your strings, those two individual coils are staggered, resulting in a signal that’s attractively out-of-phase, which in this case is a good thing. Split CoilsĪ split coil is pretty much what it sounds like: a single coil split into two parts, each with its own smaller coil. More usually, you’ll find them coupled with another single coil pickup in the neck or middle position (as in the Yamaha BBNE2 Nathan East Signature Model), or paired with a split coil (see below) in the neck or middle position - the configuration used in all Yamaha BB and RBX Series basses, as well as Yamaha TRBX 200/170 Series basses. Bright and aggressive-sounding, you’ll typically find single coils installed close to the bridge, but you’ll rarely encounter a bass with only one single coil pickup. Single CoilsĪ single coil pickup, as its name suggests, is a solitary straight copper wire wrapped around magnetic pole pieces aligned beneath the strings of your bass. Let’s take a closer look at each type, and their common configurations. – Optical pickups rely on light that’s shined onto a vibrating string - and the conversion of the resulting shadow caused by those vibrations - to create an amplifiable signal. – Piezo pickups react to pressure, rather than a change in a magnetic field. They include single coil, split coil, double coil (aka humbuckers) and other minor variations on each theme. – Magnetic pickups are where it all began, with magnets wrapped in copper wire, and are still the most common type of electric bass (and electric guitar) pickup. Today, there are a number of different types of pickups - magnetic, piezo and optical - and several intriguing pickup configurations, each with its own subtle but unique set of qualities and characteristics: Pickup design and construction have steadily improved since those early days (although some vintage pickups are highly sought after today and often serve as the inspiration for modern designs), giving us lots of great options to choose from. The magnetic field around these windings would react to the vibrations of a moving bass string, creating an electrical voltage that could be amplified. The earliest electric bass pickups were magnets wrapped a few thousand times in very fine copper wire. What Is a Pickup?īasically, a pickup is a transducer - a device that converts a signal of one type of energy into one of another type of energy a good example is a microphone, which converts physical sound waves traveling through air into an electrical signal. But it wasn’t until the early 1950s that essentially the same invention helped the poor double bassist to be heard. But there’s no question that the technological catalyst required to make the concept a reality - a pickup installed to enable amplification of the bass - was a game-changer.Īs my old friend and former bandmate/colleague Mac Randall has written about here on the Yamaha blog, guitars first started using pickups back in the 1930s, helping them project from the bandstand. Music historians may disagree about whether the electric bass was first invented in the early 1920s, the early 1950s or somewhere in-between.
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