Lollar Pickups Blog

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Tag Archives: bass

Let’s Talk About VI

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Fender unveiled the original Bass VI back in 1961 (though, officially, its original name was simply the Fender “VI”) as an answer to Danelectro’s six string bass of a similar style of the era. The instrument was unique. Compared to a standard bass, it had a shorter scale, six thinner strings tuned E one octave below a guitar, and, of course, a floating tremolo system; something not usually seen on a bass guitar.

The Fender “VI” underwent a few small changes by its first birthday in 1962, settling on the design we know today as the Bass VI. This latest version featured aesthetic and functional similarities to another Fender favorite: the Jaguar. The most notable similarity between the two was their pickups. The three-piece set of Jaguar pickups featured in the old Bass VI instruments have been heard on countless classic songs from artists such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Cure, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Cream, Placebo, Cocteau Twins, The Hollies, Guns N’ Roses, and Wes Montgomery – just to name a few. Chances are, you’ve heard them at work. And the most incredible thing about these pickups? They weren’t even intended to be installed in a bass instrument!

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Welcome To The DULLhouse

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We get asked all the time, “Why does my old pickup sound dull?” There are many reasons the tone can suffer on vintage pickups.

These p'ups aren't just *playing* dead... They're dead!
These p’ups aren’t just *playing* dead. They’re actually dead!

We can’t resurrect or improve every beaten, tired, old pickup that we come across. Some of them, like the ones seen above, are just too far gone. Only a complete rebuild, with brand new parts could bring them back to life, but at that point, you may as well just replace it! You can’t shine a turd, as they say — and even if you could, you’d still just have a shiny turd. But, just maybe, your dull sound isn’t the turd you thought it was, so in this edition, we’ll address the possible causes and potential solutions.

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Tone Chasin’: The Skinny on Capacitors and Potentiometers (Or Caps and Pots)—Part 1

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Tone Chasin’: The Skinny on Capacitors and Potentiometers (Or Caps and Pots)—Part 1

By Jason Lollar

Finding your guitar tone involves a mix of science and voodoo. This alchemy includes the role of capacitors and potentiometers, also known as caps and pots. In this article, we focus on pots, and separate fact from fiction and explain how they are typically used to give you greater tone and volume control.

Choosing the Right Control Pot

There are some standard assumptions concerning pot and cap values and their use for different pickup designs, like single coils or humbuckers. These conventions can be useful, but you don’t need to blindly follow them.

Take the pot values first. Pots with higher resistance — like 500K compared to 250K — prevent higher frequencies from bleeding through to ground more than lower ohm pots. This means a 500K pot provides a brighter overall tone than a 250K pot. Higher ohms also give you a cleaner and punchier sound on the bass strings.

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