The CD won’t be available until August. His website is here: Hunter Johnson
Check in there mid-august sometime and you should be able to get one. You can sign up for his mailing list, too, which I’m sure will put out a release email.
And here’s his soundcloud profile where he’s streaming a couple more songs off the album: https://soundcloud.com/whoishunterjohnson
Thanks for the interest!
I like the P pickup. I think it was a stroke of genius on Leo’s part. It’s “split coil”. Actually, it’s 2 pickups. One is for the 1st & 2nd string and the other is for the 3rd & 4th string. The coils are wired togther out of phase, so they cancel out any hum. But since the coils/magnets are used on different strings, they don’t have to reverse the polarity of any of the magnets. If I wanted a 2 pickup bass, I’d probably prefer 2 P pickups. But I find nothing wrong with the sound of a stock P bass.
Cool, I’ll keep an eye on that link for the album. BTW, is he levitating part of a motorcycle, or is that just what’s printed on his t-shirt?
I’m primarily a guitarist, but I’ve always loved bass as well, and I’ve developed a bass style that’s pretty distinct from my guitar style. I think of them as two different instruments with distinct roles to play. I can’t effectively fingerpick on guitar, but I almost always play bass without a pick.
Like guitarists, you’ll find that bassist cover the whole range of possibilities; some like to tweak everything, some like to keep it simple. Bassists can be just as obsessive about gear as guitarists, maybe even more so. I’m not a fan of extended range basses: I can see the point of 5 string basses, but 4 strings were good enough for Jamerson, McCartney, et al. For whatever reason, some bassists - particularly in the jazz fusion genre - like to overdo the hell out of the bass, and 7 or 8 string basses are not unknown. Sometimes with fanned frets. Me, I think if you’re doing that you should just buy a frigging keyboard.
Anyway, the first Precision Basses used a single coil pickup that was similar to a Strat-type pickup. In 1957, the design was changed to what we now think of as a P Bass pickup. Here’s what they look like.
It’s a split coil humbucker - one coil reads the E and A strings, the other the D and G. You’ll also notice that each string has two polepieces, one on either side of the string. It’s actually quite an oddball design, and while it has been adapted for guitars, it’s never really caught on in that area.
However, as a bass pickup, it’s a massive winner. While there have been plenty of other designs, the P Bass pickup is by far the most popular design of all. It works. It sounds huge and fat with as much bottom end as anyone could ever need. Combined with a 34-inch scale length (as in P and J Basses) it creates a huge THUMP that can’t be beaten.
The Jazz bass has two pickups. They are single coils, but with a similar two polepiece per string design. They sound good, but to my ears they lack the authoritative THUMP that the P Bass pickup delivers. They’re a bit more refined, and there’s more clarity and definition in the midrange, which some bassists prefer, but I always find myself wanting that THUMP. A neck J Bass pickup will get you 90% of the way there - it’s in the same position as the P pickup - but I always find them just a little disappointing. More tones available, but at the cost of my favourite tone.
For me - and for a lot of bassists - the P/J combination gives the best of both worlds. That’s one P in the standard position, and a J in the J bridge position. I know I said I don’t use the J pickup on my bass, but I actually do, on occasion, when I want more clarity and definition. I always run the P pickup full and occasionally dial in a little J bridge.
On a J Bass, the usual arrangement is one volume for each pickup and a master tone. P/J basses usually have the same layout. So, for me, I leave the tone on full and just try to get a nice sound on the amp. For tonal variations, I hit the strings in different places. My standard right-hand position is between the P pickup and the end of the neck, but I’ll move closer to the bridge for more clarity, and even pluck the strings over the neck around the 16th - 17th fret area if I want even more fatness.
No, they’re not “out of phase” - one coil has the opposite polarity to the other, IE one’s magnets are “north” and the other “south”. That’s how humbuckers work: one coil is wound in each direction, one magnet/set of magnets is arranged in each direction.
Pickups that are out of phase cancel a lot of the signal, they sound weak and “hollow”.
ETA: the basic design is the same as a PAF style humbucker, the fact that it’s one coil for half the strings makes no difference, and the magnets are opposite polarities in each coil.
Obviously Shakester’s answers might differ, but tone on a bass for me is similar to the tone on a guitar. Sometimes you want it to cut through, sometimes you want to boom along and meld in. How you set the knobs can depend on a lot of things.
With the Epiphone EB-3 in the surf band, I end up changing them per song a bit. For songs that I’m doing a normal surf I-IV-IIV bass part, or doing the pump on a Dick Dale song, I’ve got both pickups all the way up. It comes with two very different humbuckers. The tuna can in the neck is boomy, with no high end at all. With both of them all of the way up, it wins, with the bridge pickup providing a little attack. For more complex songs, like a the Ventures songs, I turn down the neck pickup to where it’s not smothering the bridge pickup. Even though it has a switch to select between the pickups, I don’t use either by itself at all. I leave the tone knobs all the way up on that bass, all the time. It is a muddy mess otherwise.
With a Jazz bass setup, both pickups are way more usable by themselves than the Epiphone, so the options are wider. I’d use the neck or the bridge all by itself. They’re both single coils, so it’s brighter than the Epiphone no matter how you set it. Usually, it’s got no switch, two volumes and a master tone. All of them are usable on that setup.
And I’m not trying to start a war or anything, but I’ve never liked how a P-Bass pickup sounded by itself. It has what is known as a “single coil humbucking” with split coils. If you put it through enough watts of Ampeg, it sounds good, but I think almost anything does at that point, including that old Sears bass I had (which had the worst version of one of those I’ve ever heard).
Then you can get off into the world of Ric’s, Music Mans, and Alembics, devices I’ve never had the scratch for, but are all tonally different from the above.
ETA: wow, that’ll teach me to leave the room, come back and blindly hit submit
Course, I want a Fender Jaguar Bottom Master one day.
It’s a variant of the Bass VI, with a built in fuzz switch.
But that’s for a ‘some day’ thing. Awesome bout your son, Wordman.
Surprise! He does, too! Way cool.
It’s an interesting expression. According to the Urban Dictionary, it could be derived from the fact that the woodshed was where you went to sharpen your axe. Or it could be from the fact that when a child was due a whuppin’, the woodshed was where that pain was inflicted.
One way or another, it describes the kind of intense practice that takes a musician or singer up a level from where they started off. “After getting booed off the stage at an open mike night, he woodshedded for a month and grew some monster chops. That kid’s an animal, now!”
And so it has been with me (Well, the going up a level - I don’t think I’ve attained either monster chops nor animal status!) I’ve been recording the week’s playlist at home on the Mondays and used the resulting tracks as a guide to what needs the most work. One of my newest exercises is something I call ‘interval training’ - just like a runner will alternate sprinting and walking back, I alternate playing at a tempo which is slower than half-tempo followed by immediately playing at the target tempo plus 10%. It helps to teach your fingers to find their next position, and then go directly to it, doing it quicker than they will actually need to.
Put it this way: a period of woodshedding is best depicted using a montage in movies.
Lots of “wax on, wax off” going on for those of you who watched the Karate Kid…
The woodshed is the place you go to practice so nobody can hear how bad you are until you get good.
Different strokes for different folks, you know. But I’d say the P Bass is the most popular/widely copied bass pickup design, so clearly they are well regarded in general.
Yeah, I’m not going to argue against their success, even I own a bass with a p/j setup in it. It absolutely is better than its early competitors, but it’s not my flavor. The worst part about my objection to the P-bass pickup is that I can’t even articulate what it is about them I don’t like. It just sounds dull to me when you compare it to a lot of modern options.
You say tomato, I say “That’s a member of the deadly nightshade family! It’s gotta be poisonous!.” It’s not a productive argument to even get into, trust me.
New question for the group: what is a “Texas” pickup? I tried crawling through some of the music sites like HarmonyCentral etc, and everybody seems to know the definition already, so I haven’t found the answer. Is the name a nod toward SRV, or someone/thing else? My guess is they are medium-hot single coils, just a little overwound, not truly hot. Is that about right?
Also, I should have posted earlier: thanks to Shakester and scabpicker for the bass discussion. It’s really interesting to hear the pickup and tone details you two threw out above.
To my knowledge, yes. Fender has Texas Specials that are basically as you describe - their attempt at branding pickups that are meant to deliver the Stevie Ray Vaughn sound. I know other pickup winders invoke Texas in different ways to stand for hotter-than-clean single-coil winds…
Hell, I’m a bass player, I’m just glad anyone is interested.
As far as “Texas” pickups go, I’ve only heard it in reference to a strat set with an over-wound bridge pickup. I remember hearing the term in Guitar Player while SRV was still on his rise to stardom, so I’m not sure if it’s in reference to him or not. There are quite a few guitarists from Texas known for playing a strat (I can think of three including SRV off the top of my head), but he is by far the most famous, of course.
I very rarely post, but I’m so excited that I had to come out of lurk mode.
New Guitar Day!!!
Was hunting pawn shops today, and the lady at the counter asked me if I might be interested in something from the back. Of course I was.
She brought out a 2008 Gibson SG Standard that had hardly been played. Still even had the plastic covering on the pickguard. Included a Gibson hard case that is also mint, most money I’ve ever spent on an instrument, but so worth it.
Don’t know the reason why, but I’ve played for 10 hours since I got it and I don’t think I’ve ever sounded better. My Strat is in the corner looking very jealous.
Welcome to the GOGT, Glass Joe (love the username, btw). Very cool guitar - can you share how much you got it for? Sounds like a great complement to have to the Strat.
So according to this, hot bridge, vintage middle and neck.
Thanks for the welcome, I don’t mind sharing, 900 tax included. I priced a new one out a few months ago at Long and Maquade (in Canada so prices are a little higher) was 1399 and 200 for the case. Plus 10% tax. I’m happy with what I paid.
My Strat is a 1984 Japanese. It’s far from mint, and has been modded so many times it doesn’t know what it is anymore. But damn, the neck still just feels right.
I’ve been pining after an SG since I was first introduced to Derek Trucks (strangely enough, by you and Twickster, before I had even registered here.) So I’m excited to say the least.
Now the search is on for a Tele, need to keep adding to the guitar food groups. So this is what GAS feels like?
