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29/12/2009 9:02 pm
I have a beautiful EB Musicman Stingray 4-string bass, but I'm not crazy about the stock pickup. I LOVE the MFD pickup and passive electronics from old G&L basses such as the L-1000 and L-2000. How hard would it be to swap in the pickup and passive electronics from the G&L into my Stingray? Can you anticipate any issues, particularly with the replacement of active electronics with passive electronics? If there's anyone familiar with the G&L pickups, do you know if the G&L MFD pickup will fit in the existing cavity on my Stingray?
Thanks!
30/12/2009 4:23 pm
switching from active to passive is not going to be difficult, unless you decide to mix active and passive in a two pup configuration. that will require some circuit knowledge to get high-Z and low-Z (active) pups working together -- however, does not seem to be your case: so no issue there.
the difficulties and complications are going to be mainly ...
mechanical: mounting, drilling and fitment. on the last, you really are going to have make some measurements of the pup(s) and cavity(ies) to understand that. I realize you are asking us, but it seems unlikely you will find anyone here who has done exactly this or has enough measurement info to advise you. you may be trailblazing. if so, we will be interested to know how it goes.
sound: any amplified instrument is a system of the acoustic instrument and the electronics. in particularly successful instruments, the two are often designed or tailored to each other for the best overall result. the timbre of the Stingray may work very well with the MFD pup ... or it may totally suck for reasons such as the pup is designed for a different position under the strings or the MFD field damps the strings differently than the original pup, changing the basic attack and sustain. I don't want to discourage experimentation, but understand going into this, that a lot of the great instruments are the culmination of a lot of trial and error work. you may hit upon a great, new combo ... or the it may just be 'okay' ... or it could even be a sonic disaster. but nobody finds cool new configurations without trying. consider all this especially if there is a lot of mechanical work entailed (how reversible?), and esp if you have only one bass.
(BTW I have a G&L guitar with MFDs that sounds great. so great, that when I bought the guitar back in the 80s, I bought a spare bridge pup -- tho I don't recall what I intended to do with it. today, that spare pup is part of a lap steel I built from scratch. works pretty well!)
-=tension & release=-