Slanted Pick-ups

[funkyjazzjunky]

Warrick and few other builders slant or angle the pick-ups so the treble side is closer to the fretboard than the bass side.  
 
Does this improve the tone?  It is just a gimmick?

[eligilam]

I'm pretty sure the_8_string_king's custom Europa has a slanted neck pickup as well.  (Search board for Most Awesome Europa in the Universe in the title...)Maybe there's something to it...

[FC Bass]

You mean like this?:

[white_cloud]

Pick-up positioning is important - my guess is that the kind of location shown on the previous thread would have a subtle effect on the sound!
 
A gimmick? You would have to make your own mind up after hands on experience with such a pick-up configuration!
 
John.

[eligilam]

Here's the one I was thinking of.

[white_cloud]

Well, lets put it this way;
 
If that custom Europa is wrong I dont want to be right
 
John.

[tbrannon]

I asked Mark about the angled pickup on his bass- here is his response:  
 
It was a matter of form accomodating function.  
 
You see, for many years, my fantasy, my dream bass was a 7-String with a 3-octave (36 fret) neck.  
 
Then one day, lo and behold I saw a picture of such a beast -a Conklin Sidewinder with 7 strings and 36 frets.  
 
When I looked at the picture of this bass, I found that it had only one pickup; and there wasn't really much of a place for a second pickup... at best, a second pickup might be able to be positioned right next to the... well, it was more a less a bridge pickup... positionwise. And then, what would be the point?  
 
So, when I decided to commission Alembic to make my dream bass, I modified this original concept slightly -by adding an extra string, and cutting back the fingerboard 5 frets.  
 
So my bass has the same range as a 7-string with 36 frets. Now, I wanted to leave my bridge pickup as close to the normal spot as possible... but the treble end of the pickup is displaced by the extended fingerboard.  
 
So that's it. The slant is just the result of pushing the treble end of the pickup out of the way of the extended fingerboard.
 
I'm not sure of the effect on other basses (like the Elan posted above).  It'll be intersting to see what some of the knowledgable Sound/Engineering guys have to say.
 
(Message edited by tbrannon on February 25, 2008)

[dannobasso]

My almost short scale Essence 5 has slanted pups. It sounds a lot bigger than a 31 scale bass. It's currently getting refinished here.
 
http://club.alembic.com/Images/631/36334.html?1202170831

[David Houck]

I would think that the question of slanted pickups would fall under the category of pickup placement.  There is a post in the Must Reads section that talks about pickup placement.  The Must Reads post references three very informative posts from the same thread, but there are other posts in the thread that are interesting as well.  The thread also references Donald Tillman's Pickup Response Demonstration Applet; which is a pretty cool interactive graphic demonstration of the effect pickup placement has on tone.  Playing with the applet, you can see the resulting effect of a pickup location for each string.  Thus to give you an idea of what a slated pickup would do, you could change the location for each string, looking at each string individually, and compare that with the results from the straight pickup.  It seems to me that the effect of a slanted pickup will depend on the distance that pickup is from the bridge.  The graphic and the above referenced board discussion go a long way in explaining why neck pickups and bridge pickups sound so different, and why moving the location of a pickup a little can change the tone of an instrument.
 
[edit:  btw, at the bottom of the page of the pickup applet there is a list of string freqencies to use for changing the string parameters.]
 
(Message edited by davehouck on February 25, 2008)

[funkyjazzjunky]

Thanks for the info.  
 
(Dave, the link was what I needed)