faq
How do I pick a Music Man style pickup for my bass?
4.2, 5.2- This is as close as we could come to an early Music Man pickup with the shorter magnets. I analyzed a real one and made our pickup match it as much as possible. If you want an original Music Man tone, this is as close as we can get. It is a traditional hum-bucking pickup and can be run in series, or parallel, which is the way they were run in OEM installations. A single coil setting will be true single coil and have 60 cycle hum like any other single coil.
4.4, 5.4- This is the pickup you want if you'd like to have a silent single coil setting on your bass. This will also work best in Lakland installations where you want to maintain the original switching for the MM pickup. This pickup has four coils arranged in two linear hum cancelling rows, one set for each row of magnets. You can run it series, parallel, or split it to the front and/or rear coils and maintain silent operation in all modes. It's the most versatile pickup we make in this style. It does sacrifice a little high end because of the extra coil wire required for the hum-cancelling design.
So, to sum up...
If you want the old school no compromise Music Man tone and don't place a priority on single coil mode- get the 4.2 or 5.2.
If you need to have a silent single coil setting and don't mind or want the slight compromise in high end response (darker sound) - get the 4.4 or 5.4.
please note this page is currently a work in progress...
schematics
Pickup Wiring:
All single coils and split coils - the black wire is ground and the white wire is hot. The gray wire also goes to ground unless a buffered input preamp is used like an Audere, in which case the black wire goes into the preamp common and the gray wire goes to ground.
All dual coils and humbuckers except Music Man replacement - for series: black = hot, green plus bare = ground, red and white together and taped off. For parallel: black and red = hot, green, white, and bare = ground. Black and white are the bridge coil and red and green are the neck coil.
All stack pickups - the white is hot, the black is ground, and the red is the tap. This means to run the pickup in single coil mode you need to short the red wire to ground and this can be done easily with a switch. For normal hum cancelling mode just leave the red wire taped off and not connected to anything. If there is a gray wire, see below. Here's a diagram for switching the stacks to single coil mode.
Where does the gray wire go? The gray wire is for grounding the pole pieces. In an installation with a buffered preamp (Audere) where the common out on the pickup needs to be separate from the system ground the gray wire will be ultimately connected to the sleeve on the jack. This can happen by connecting it to shielding foil, the bridge ground point, or the appropriate connection on the preamp. On a non buffered preamp, which is pretty much everything else, or a passive installation, the gray wire can simply be tied into the black wire and connected exactly where the black wire is connected.
Preamp Schematics:
Blend Pots! This diagram explains how a blend pot works and how to make sure you have yours wired correctly, because they do not all work the same...
Basic 3B Basic module with pots
Kitchen Sink 3B installation. This shows the preamp with all the bells and whistles including an active passive push pull on the volume and 2 mid frequencies on a push pull. It also has the chart of the mid frequency capacitors and shows how to set up any 2 frequencies you may want on the switch. We do not sell the preamp prewired in this manner, but for those who want to have all the options we offer this diagram.
3B-3 3 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), mid(pull frequency switch), and treble/bass stack (coming soon)
3B-4a 3 band bass preamp with volume/volume stack, tone(pull passive), mid(pull frequency switch), and treble/bass stack
3B-4b 3 band bass preamp with volume/tone stack, blend, mid(pull frequency switch), and treble/bass stack (coming soon)
3B-5a 3 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), blend, treble, mid (pull frequency switch), and bass (coming soon)
3B-5b 3 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), blend, tone, push pull frequency selector on mid, and treble/bass stack (coming soon)
2B 2 band bass preamp with 2 eq pots (coming soon)
2B-3a 2 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), treble, and bass (coming soon)
2B-3b 2 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), blend, and treble on bass stack (coming soon)
2B-4a 2 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), volume, bass and treble (coming soon)
2B-4b 2 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), blend, treble, and bass (coming soon)
2B-4c 2 band bass preamp with volume(pull passive), blend, tone, and treble on bass stack (coming soon)