Can you get solid, beefy lows out of the Burns basses?
This quote from the John Rostill bass thread made me ponder about the position of the pickup(s) on a bass guitar.
As we know, a pickup mounted nearer the centre of a string will pick up more of the fundamental frequency - it will sound 'bassier'. Interesting, then, that the pickup for the Precision, the worlds most successful bass guitar (and the most copied), is 11 and 12 inches from the 12th fret (because it is a split pickup). Leo could have put the pickup as close as 7.5 / 8.5 inches to give a deeper tone yet he didn't. Why?
I don't have a Rostill bass, but I have a Burns Bison, which also has three pickups mounted in a similar fashion. The fingerboard pickup of the Bison is 9 inches from the 12th fret. Doing a direct comparison against a Precision-style bass the Burns (as you'd expect) has more fundamental.
The continuing success of the Precision suggests that deep bass tones on their own are not what is wanted for pop music. For Shadows music, Jet set the early style and his sound on record has very little deep bass. Jet, I'm sure, intended it to be heard even if it was coming from the little loudspeaker of a Dansette record player - essential when offering things like 36-24-36.
Of all the people who have played bass with The Shadows, the furthest from the 'Jet' sound must be Mark Griffiths. Where Jet used a plectrum, Mark uses his fingers. Where Jet wanted to be heard as a distinct instrument, Mark's soft tone merges into the background, heard best on wide-range audio equipment and lost on 'Dansette-type' plastic speakers. Neither could be said to produce 'solid, beefy lows'. For those you need Alan Jones.
Ray