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OLP Pickup question

chyde

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Messages
62
Location
Tulsa, Oklahoma
What's the big difference btw the pickups in the OLP basses & the ones in the Stingray? I figure active electronics come into play here but what else? Is there a better passive type pickup I could use?

I bought an OLP as I needed to start playing some bass in my band & didn't want to spend a lot of money right now. It's a great bass for the price but I'm thinking about switching to better tuning machines & considering a pickup swap. Thanks.

Chris
 
chyde said:
What's the big difference btw the pickups in the OLP basses & the ones in the Stingray? I figure active electronics come into play here but what else? Is there a better passive type pickup I could use?

I bought an OLP as I needed to start playing some bass in my band & didn't want to spend a lot of money right now. It's a great bass for the price but I'm thinking about switching to better tuning machines & considering a pickup swap. Thanks.

Chris

By the time you swap everything out, you'll probably have spent enough to buy a used SUB.

Which is something you might want to think about for a while.
 
dlloyd said:
By the time you swap everything out, you'll probably have spent enough to buy a used SUB.

Which is something you might want to think about for a while.

+1.

I have a friend who suffers from this same disease. He bends over backwards to save a few bucks buying something, then bends over backwards modifying it.

Silly. Buy the best stuff to begin with and be done with it. In a year you won't remember the price difference.

It's the mixup of "value" versus "price."

OTOH, often even expensive stuff isn't exactly right for your tastes. The Bongo is one of the very rare exceptions to this...I have NO desire to change anything about it.
 
I've compared the pickup from a modern Musicman to an OLP, both without preamps. The OLP has full mids and raw hot output. The Musicman has more treble with better clarity and sounds more refined. I actually like both pickups.:eek: The OLP is good for overdriven sounds. You can't go wrong with a Nordstrand pickup.
 
sultrabass said:
I actually like both pickups.:eek: The OLP is good for overdriven sounds. You can't go wrong with a Nordstrand pickup.

On the current Tony Levin Band album, the track "What Would Jimi Do?" was recorded using an OLP TL signature bass, possibly for that reason.

Samples here:

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EOTF30/sr=8-1/qid=1150230026/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3578619-9940826?%5Fencoding=UTF8"]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EOTF30/sr=8-1/qid=1150230026/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3578619-9940826?%5Fencoding=UTF8[/ame]
 
i know a guy on another forum that dropped an eq and a sc pup into an olp, added a pickup selector switch, and made recordings of it. it came crazily close to sounding like a real ray.
 
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