AXY vs MXY vs SC-1 pickups

[Mlazarus]

So, my 82 series 1 i believe have SC-1  pickups. Were/are all series bass made with the SC-1? What are the differences in sound?

[adriaan]

A Series instrument will have 2 SC-1 single coil pickups, plus an HX humcancelling pickup in the middle, and the preamp adds the humcancelling signal to the pickup signals. The single coils are wound around a magnet that fills out the entire pickup shell, so the pickups are wide aperture.

The MXY is the same as an AXY, but in a shell that isn't oversized for the magnet. They are both essentailly a single coil with a humcanceller coil underneath, and the humcancelling happens within the pickup shell. They are regular aperture.

A FatBoy is an AXY with the same magnet size as an SC-1, but again with the humcancelling coil built in. This is again a wide aperture pickup. The wide aperture pickups sound a little less bright, with perhaps a bit of a low-mid boost - at least compared to AXY/MXYs.

There are a small number of MXY FatBoys out there (Mica said they were tricky to build) and they do sound different from MXYs (I have a set in an Epic).

[Mlazarus]

Which type of pickup seem to have the strongest Bassy punch to them? My 80s Distillate had a nice low growl to it. Deep and warm. I try to emulate that "distillate sound" on my series 1 with the controls.

[mica]

Your bassy tone is going to come primarily from pickup position. The closer the pickup is to the fingerboard the bassier the tone will be.

Comparing just the pickups isn't useful because you can't use the SC-1 pickups with the Distillate circuit (though you can technically use the AXY/MXY pickups in a Series I/II). So beyond the physical difference of the XY family pickups having have the aperture of the SC-1, there's a host of other components and engineering decisions that shape the sound of the two models differently.

Also keep in mind that in our pickups and electronics systems we tend to de-emphisize the pickup's role in tone shaping. My dad always says, "you can't change your pickups in the middle of a song" and tone shaping via pickup largely is a limiting factor - I mean that you are only taking things away from possible sounds when you start the tone chain at the pickup. This is one of the reasons the low-pass filters are so well suited for electric guitar (including bass guitar). When people were asking my dad to make different pickups for different tones, they really were asking for a different amount of high-end information. My dad says the low-pass filter is like having the ability to change your pickup many times in a song.

[StephenR]

The way I use and see the low-pass filters functioning is to be able to select the resonant peak of the pickup(s) then adjust the amount of peak with the Q. To me it is like having an infinite amount of "pickups" to choose as a starting point. For a long time I would turn up treble at the amp or keep the filters wide open for more treble response whenever I had trouble hearing myself on stage. Over time I realized that what I personally need to hear is a bump in the high-mids when I am having difficulty hearing myself onstage, boosting the treble never accomplished what I need for my compromised hearing. On my Series II bass I use the variable-Q to boost the high-mid frequency I have set the pickups at. Rolling the Q completely off gives me a "bassier"  warmer tone and boosting the Q gives me more of the high-mids when I want a sharper tone with more attack.

What is amazing about the Series circuit in particular is how many ways you can get to essentially the same sonic space, none of them wrong. I also frequently move the center frequency slightly if the guitarists are playing with a distorted tone and I need to hear a bit more of certain frequencies to punch through the distortion mud on stage.

[edwin]

What Stephen said. I use my filters to adjust pick attack and it's extremely versatile. The frequency knobs generally live about halfway open to a little more. they get adjusted a fair amount.