Friday, April 10, 2009

The Magnus Fredholm Bass Humbucker


Jared over at JC Basses is working on another of his fantastic master work basses. This time it's a 5 string Black Widow that is just staggeringly beautiful. The guy who ordered the bass is from Jared is Will R. , a long time Searcy String Works pickup user. Will has a Benford guitar with some SSW pickups and wanted to be sure his new bass was just as packed full of tone.
I am extremely proud of the Magnus bass humbucker. Originally introduced in 2004, this brilliant pickup design was the result of a discussion with Swedish bass player Magnus Fredholm. Magnus was looking for a 5 string bass pickup that would offer a modern humbucker sound but that could also be split to offer a vintage J-Bass sound. The more I thought about this project the more excited I became with it.
To fully realize this concept I decided that vintage components would be used. The bobbin shape was made to fallow vintage specs exactly. They are loaded with Alnico5 magnets, and then wound to around 7.k ohms with vintage style magnet wire. Each pickup contains two of these coils arranged in reverse wound / reverse polarity manner. This is all wired up to a four-conductor lead that allows for a wide array of switching and phasing options. Finally the entire assembly is wax potted and cast in wood grained epoxy for a feed back free pickup that looks as great as it sounds.
The do require a propriatart rout and are not exact replacments for anything. I have gotten them to fit into EMG routs with some slight clearancing but if that bothers you I am working on a more direct replacment option.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What are you looking for William?

Clint Searcy