MXY56... Humbucker!

[count]

Sooo.. I recently acquired an OLP Musicman 5 string. Or at least think that's what it is. The bass has no history whatsoever. But anyway!
The (passice) electronics are preetty shait, but the woodwork and mechanicals are great.
I have a pair of MXY56's lying about, complete with dual filters..
I'm putting two and two together, and making an Alembicman or Stinglembic seems like the most sensible thing to do.
Any ideas/thoughts as to how I should set this up?
I'm very competent both with a wood router and a soldering iron.

[Zut8083]

I cannot wait to see how this turns out!  I have no useful technical input, but I have enough zeal and enthusiasm to watch like a hawk to see what you do with this!

The only thing I wonder is could you turn Anniversary, SC, or Mark King electronics around to suit your needs instead of your existing filters, and do you want stereo outputs like a Series bass?

This is such a cool project, best of luck!

[bigredbass]

IF Alembic were ever to update the Activator range of replacement pickups, to me, #1 on the list would be AXY's or better yet, FatBoys installed in a MusicMan shell.  The idea of a neckthru StingRay Five with a FatBoy plus circuit is a truly delicious possibility to contemplate.  Just sayin' . . . . . .

[edwardofhuncote]

Cool project. 


Somewhere in these pages is an Excel with two MXY56's stuffed up close together and positioned bridgeward. I'll look for it in a bit, but sounds like that's where you're headed with this one. 


*found a couple in the Excel Showcase... this one has two AXY56's (maybe Fatboys) up against the bridge, and what looks like Elan/Essence controls with a Q-switch: http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=9155.0


Here's another with an AXY/MXY pairing: http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=9165.0




I second Joey's post, and they just might do it too... a Fatboy drop-in for EBMM would be monstrous. I think they might could sell enough to make a small run worthwhile.

[gtrguy]

I know Strats have single coils that are humbucking in 2 positions on the 5 way switch. Those pickups are not right next to each other. The middle one is reverse wound though and not just the same pickup mounted backwards. Would it be possible to mount your 2 pickups a ways apart (that would get you more tonal options) and still make them reversed so that with a switch they would be humbucking? Would they be out of phase? Could you make your bass stereo too?

Just tossing some rambling thoughts out there.

[StephenR]

Don't think the Strat pickups act like humbuckers in positions 2 and 4 of the five-way switch, those positions put the pickups out of phase. Personally my favorite sound on a Strat is position 4 between the middle and rear pickups.

Cool project, good luck with it. At one point I was going to put an Alembic pickup in my Musicman Stingray. It would have sounded great but I own a 1977 Leo Fender Musicman Stingray, second year they were made so keeping the electronics original was a better choice. I stopped playing the Stingray in 83 when I got a Distillate and it has sat in the closet since then.

[xlrogue6]

Non-series Alembic pickups are all humbuckers.

[cozmik_cowboy]

Non-series Alembic pickups are all humbuckers.

No, they are hum-cancelling.  Humbuckers have 2 magnets with 2 RW/RP coils.  Alembics have 2 RW/RP coils, but only one has a magnet.

Peter

[gtrguy]

I thought  'humbcker' was a marketing word for hum-canceling? On a Strat, the middle pickup linked to either of the outer pickups cuts hum. Try it with a cranked amp and you will see. On a gibson humbucker (and a Leslie 122 for that matter, with 2 positive signals traveling down a long cord from the organ to the amp) the linked out of phase condition of the 2 internal pickups re-combines to reject 60 cycle hum but pass the guitar signal. Alembic has stated that the placement of the hum rejecting middle pickup on a series instrument is not all that critical. Early ones were even stuck in the body and were not where you could see them.

[lbpesq]

As Peter explained, a humbucking pickup is made of two single coil pickups wired together.  Depending on the wiring, you can indeed obtain this humbucking effect using the  two or four position on a Strat.  Humcancelling pickups, like Alembic non-series PUs, are composed of one single coil PU and one "dummy coil" which is like a single coil pu except with the magnet removed.

Bill, tgo

[gtrguy]

“A successful early humbucking pickup was the so-called PAF (literally "Patent Applied For") invented by Seth Lover in 1955.[6] Because of this, and because of its use on the Gibson Les Paul guitar, popularization of the humbucker is strongly associated with Gibson, although humbuckers had been used in many different guitar designs by many different manufacturers before. Humbuckers are also known as dual-coil, double-coil, or hum-canceling pickups.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbucker

[count]

Alot of good input here.
Like most of you have already established: The MXY's are hum cancelled single coils. With an additional coil (w/o magnet). A big contributor to why they are so awesome.

My query is how to wire them up.
Two separate signal chains all the way up to a resistor summing circuit on the jack? (My initial idea)
Add the signals in a parallell/series switch before ONE filter and volume?
Daisy chain the two filters/volumes? (Can't see what benefits this setup could have though..)