Jazz bass pickup locations

[Kurt Veltman]

HI all, thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm just looking for locations for '60's and '70's Jazz bass pickup locations. I have seen countless articles online about how the '70's are .4" father apart, how they do or don't sound much different than the '60's spacing, etc. but can't find anywhere that it says "From the nut" or "From the 12th fret, it is this far to the center of the neck pickup, and this far to the center of the bridge pickup." Can anyone help me with this? Never imagined it would be this difficult to find.

Thank you!

[Peter Wilcox]

Find the jazz bass pdf here: https://sites.google.com/site/guitarpla ... fender-ish

You can measure the distance from the 34" scale line to the pickups to find their location. 2 1/16" for the '75 American Vintage bridge pickup, 2 11/16" for the vintage bridge pu, and 6 1/8" for the vintage neck pu. So it looks like the '75 AV pups are about 5/8" farther apart.

If you need to know the distance from the nut, just subtract from 34, but I'm sure you know this.

[David King]

The distances varied a bit from year to year. The original J bass is easily remembered as having it's pickups 2.6" and 6.2" from the center of the pickup to the G string saddle's witness point or the 34" mark. The 70's version moved them back between 3/8" and 1/2".

[Jason Rodgers]

As I'm building a bass right now which will have relatively J-positioned pickups, I must ask: was there a particular tonal reason Fender moved away from the original 2.6" and 6.2"? What's considered "optimum" or "best" nowadays?

[Joshua Levin-Epstein]

Fender moved the bridge pick up closer to the bridge to make sure it was covered by the bridge cover. Players thought that enhanced "popping". A lot of those basses were ash and very heavy. My opinion is the dense wood had a lot to do with that tone.

[Kurt Veltman]

Thanks for the input guys. And especially the link, Peter!