Annoying pickup popping on jazz bass

  • Thread starter Thread starter ZoSo58LP
  • Start date Start date
i took the foam out of the pickup, decided to try to re-set it up a bit.

played with the microtilt to add some shim (as i previously negated it completey in the last setup, despite the fact before that it had the shim going on; wanted to see if it played better straight, guess it didn't!)

i lowered the front pickup A LOT, it helped a bit......my main problem? strings. hahah i forgot to mention the fact that the strings on the bass were about oh, 6 years old. yeah, being a poor college student really makes me have to pick and choose which bass to get strings on, so i always preferred playing the G&L and schecter, so they got new strings last year. so i decided to throw on some nice ernie ball hybrid slinkies and damn this thing played/sounded much better. no popping, and i was playing HARD, even slapping pretty hard. so, with my saddle/truss/microtilt/pickup adjustments today, i finally got the sound i like back! here's a quick little youtube of me playing some slap, it's Pow by graham central station!

YouTube - Graham Central Station - Pow!

and here's another video of a bass solo from our opener song for the setlist, i mess up in it but whatever, i liked the tone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsSEDa7xeQA
 
I mean this seriously and mean only to find out the cause of the problem:
What are you doing to get the string to move that far towards the PU?
Based on the distance described in the photograph it would appear that your technique is a little odd to get the string to move in that direction that far.
 
well, on the old set of strings the popping was much more prominent. i didn't even think that string age would honestly effect this whatsoever. when i play finger style, i tend to play pretty hard. keep in mind, before i did this setup last week, the bass played fine, except for the fact the neck was shimmed with the microtilt, so playing around the 15th-19th frets was really buzzy, and sometimes you couldn't distinguish the notes on the A/D strings, since the neck has that round radius. when i re-adjusted the bass, i re-adjusted EVERYTHING. i took the neck off, made the shim dissapear completely, and changed the pickup saddles. in retrospect, i really shouldn't have...i should've just fixed my damn intonation!

so today i went back, adjusted my pickup height to where it was previously, adjusted my saddles, adjusted my truss again, and added a bit of a shim, all with new strings on. now, i'm not getting it to hit. i think i really just messed up my setup last week, as a few guys pointed out above. they were right in that i should've gone back and re-did it. as in the videos, i'm definitley not popping on the pickup and i'm slapping pretty hard, so i think i finally set her up right!

NOW, i just wish i could figure out what's up with dating this bass. it's a MADE IN JAPAN 1975 fender jazz reissue. from the serial number (A plus 6 numbers), according to fender and everybody, it should date to 1985. the only way it could date to 1997-1998 is if it said CRAFTED IN JAPAN on it. however, it clearly says MADE in japan. and, the neck/body are both dated 1998. obviously it's a 98, but it just sucks that fenders dating system is so wonky..i thought i had another 80's bass on my hands here :\
 
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