Pick-Ups & Harmonics

[vertical_blue]

I know nuts about gear so i need help on this matter.
Firstly, i own a Yamaha RBX-A2 and the harmonics that it produces are all very soft.
How do i get louder harmonics out of it?
I've been told it has something to do with the height of the pickups.
Or is it that the Yamaha single coil pickups are not powerful enough.
Will changing the pickups to better ones help?

 

[shinobi]

solo the bridge pickup. pluck closer to the bridge. a compressor will help

dont worry about the pickups

 

[itzs]

This might help. =)

http://www.q-tuner.com/bs.shtml

 

[shinobi]

holy crap... that's precision tuning

will it fit a jazz?

 

[vertical_blue]

that's a damn cool pick up man.

shinobi:

even with the proper eq-ing and solo-ing the bridge pick-up the sound is still rather weak.
i realised this when i heard the difference between my warwick rockbass and my rbx-a2.
what i do is tap on the 12th fret while holding a finger lightly on the string at the fret which i want the harmonic note played.the rockbass produced much louder and stronger compared to the rbx-a2.the rbx-a2 has floating pickups or something like that.not sure whether that has anything to do with it?

 

[shinobi]

i dunno what floating pickups are... sounds funky

sometimes its just the construction of the bass lah

if not, you can try raising the pickups. raising the pickups will just make your output louder. but if the pickups are too high, the tone will get muddy. gotta find the sweet spot

but that might not work if the harmonics are much softer than the normal tone

 

[vertical_blue]

ok thanks man.have a better idea of stuff now.

 

[lordie]

is your yamaha has active electronics?

 

[vertical_blue]

nope passive.its the bass that is on showcase at the yamaha outlet at plaza singapura.the ipod looking one.

 

[Evangion]

Compression.

 

[yuujin]

hey, are you placing your fingers right on top of the fret?
should sound louder when you do.

 

[lordie]

whats a good transparent compressor exclusing the ebs multicomp?

 

[exin]

just a little on harmonics ...

they are produced by sub-dividing the strings .. i don't exactly know how to explain this but there are mathematical divisions for harmonics .. e.g. by dividing your string into half (at the 12th fret) you get a harmonics that vibrates twice as fast as the fundamental frequency the string is vibrating at ..

the A is at 440hz so the 12th fret harmonics or 1st node vibrates at 880hz .. if you subdivide the strings into 3 parts the harmonics (4th fret, 15th fret i think and somewhere beyond the pickups) vibrates at 1320hz .. so on and so forth .. so technically if you follow the subdivisions you can play harmonics off the frets ..

but when you subdivide the strings into too many parts the harmonics gets harder to play .. due to the nodes being smaller and smaller ..

hope that little technical knowledge helps .. btw i don't know if i explained it correctly. if anyone has a clearer or better explaination please feel free to post it up .. =)

 

[shinobi]

whats a good transparent compressor exclusing the ebs multicomp?

i think the aphex punch factory is a good, transparent compressor. but i dont like how the jacks for aphex pedals are soldered straight to the PCB.. not as solid