Alembic Series 2 bass with Quad Pickup

[tmoney61092]

So i've been doing a lot of thinking later about if i had an unlimited budget, what would I want on a bass? Well i think i know...
 
I'd get a Series 2 bass in the shape of a Balance K Point. I would want zebrawood as the top, mahagony body, ebony fretboard, and a 7-piece neck going as follows: maple, ebony, purpleheart, ebony, purpleheart, ebony, and maple. I'd also want an Orion or Europa headstock.
 
It'd have the normal Series 2 with filters and variable Q's for each pickup but only one master volume for the Series 2 part. Now for the Quad controls, I'd like it to have a volume controling the entire Quad so that no string would be louder than another, there'd be filters for each string with bass, treble, and mid controls as well. There'd be a mode slector switch that would choose between the Quad and the pickup(s) that are selected to get any prefered sound. Just to clarify, there'd a volume controlling the Series 2 electronics, and one controlling the Quad. There'd be a pickup selector as well as a selector between the pickup combination and the Quad  
 
I came up with this because on the basses that i have, I wish that i could get more mid's out of my A and D strings but not affect the E and G strings, or more treble on my D and G but not my E and A. This way, i'd be able to adjust the sound of individual strings and not worry about effecting the others.
 
I'd like to see what everyone thinks of this and what'd you'd do with it, Happy Holidays everyone!!!
 
~Taylor Watterson

[David Houck]

I'm counting 24 knobs; is that right?

[tmoney61092]

Mmmmmm, good point Dave, didn't think that through.  
 
What i was thinking is kind of something like John Entwistle's Hamer Quad bass( http://www.12stringbass.net/master.htm?http://www.12stringbass.net/EntwistlesQuad.htm), having the 3 switches going down be the bass, treble, and mid controls in the four colums like his, and below that have one filter for each pickup in the Quad.
 
The body will have to be changed or made even larger, i think a larger Exploiter shape would work well, i'd want the Quad controls in the same place as John's 12 string with the master volume close to the back edge of the body(opposite of the lower horn, as in the near the bridge), and would want 1 filter, 1 variable Q, and the pickup selector and mode selector on the lower horn for the Series electronics. Just to make sure, is it possible to have a Series 2 with just one volume, one filter, and 1 variable Q or even just a 5-pin output to be able to power this along with the one volume, one filter, and 1 variable Q and it not be a Series instrument?
 
~Taylor Watterson

[dfung60]

If you really wanted to do this, the best was was probably to have a regular Series II from stem to stern, then have a second multipin connector to bring out the individual string signals from the quad pickup with no knobs.  
 
To really take advantage of the individual string outputs, you need at least 4 mixer channels, and, if you were really going to go crazy, you'd want four full amps and sets of speakers (this was how Phil's quadrophonic bass was amplified back in the 70s).  Since you need 4 input channels anyway, life will be much easier if you control levels, eq, and balance at the mixer than on the instrument.
 
I think the Hamer Quadbasses were just going for full insanity with the onboard knobs.  What are the chances that you want to turn one string up or down relative to the others or set the eq radically different?  Incidentally, the sets of knobs on a 12-knob Quadbass are (for each string)volume, treble, bass, and there's a switch to activate a treble booster.  There's no mid knob.
 
Tom Petterson and Rick Nielsen really liked crazy with their custom instruments.  Even the regular 12-string basses had a very unusual control setup.  I bought a 12-string bass from Rick Nielsen (it was the main bass that Pete Comita used when he replaced Tom P. and was used on stage by Jon Brandt as well).  Unlike the production instruments, this was had two specially wound (actually unwound) DiMarzio X2N guitar pickups mounted right next to each other and all the electronics were in parallel and independent - two volume knobs and 2 bypass/boost/treble boost switches that went separately to a stereo output jack.  The two pickups pretty much sounded identical and never mixed coming out of the instrument.  This was a Tom P mod - at that time he played with a clean amp and a dirty guitar amp and mixed the tones with the volume knobs on the bass.  That was a crazy bass, but it really showed it's pedigree - even with all those strings, it had very low action that was really not much harder to play than a 4- or 8-string.  
 
Incidentally, my bro is a huge Hamer collector - many of the Quadbasses that don't have attribution on the 12stringbass site belong to him - I believe he has 3 of the 10, although only one 12-knob.
 
A quad bass pickup has separate coils and output for each string.  Series basses have single coil pickups built in a matched set with a hum-cancelling coil so they don't buzz but keep all the high end.  I guess if you really wanted to go whole hog, you'd want the quad pickup to have four coils and opamps and have a quad dummy canceller with four more opamps.  The regular canceller wouldn't really work for a quad pickup, although it would work fine if you had only one Series pickup.
 
In case this isn't expensive enough, then I guess you could bump it up a bit by getting 5 FX-1 and SF-2 sets for your amp side!
 
David Fung

[mario_farufyno]

Oh, so good that you are writing here again David, you are one of our fellows that I've always read coments and explanations...

[room037]

I'm also Quad phonic follower.
 
I heard the first bunch of Quad PU had some serious trouble.
 
1: Single coil PUs had noisy sound.
   12 strings bass was requierd simulated guitar sound.  
   High gain amp would produced noisy sound.
 
2: Magnetic field width for multi strings
   Quad PU has inline 3 pole piece, because magnetic fields are narrow.
   I think rotat PU will be fit for magnetic field control.
 
Following PU is for example.

Humcancelling circuit of series instrument will be fit for multi single PU.
(4 single PU for each strings, 1 humcanceller will fit for mutching PUs.)
Series instrument has amp with enough gain for each PU.
 
By the way, many 12 string bass players use  multiple amp.
Bass amp provide fat low end with high cut tone by equalizer or divider.
Guitar amp is used as overdrive rhythm guitar sound with low cut.
It means the fundamental for bass sound and octave strings for guitar sound.
But divided points are diferrent for each strings.
Only solution is Quad PU with 4 divider.
Then each fundamentals are mixed to bass amp, octaves are mixed to Gtr amp.  
 
I wish to make such system for my Hamer 12 strings.
 
Eiji