3 PUP Lefties?

[pjmuck]

The PJ thread got me thinking about another option you rarely see, especially left handed, and that's basses with 3 PUPs. How many stock lefties can you think of? I'm talking a standard scale 4/5 stringer, not a 6 string ala Fender VI, Schecter Hellcat, etc. Off hand, I can only think of 2, and both are extremely hard/impossible to find:

Spear Flextool: These were offered for about 5 minutes in the US via Amazon. They still sell them in the rest of the world, and I managed to find a lefty one at Taniguchi Gakki in Japan, so I had it shipped to me last year. The neck had issues (i.e. sharp frets, hump in neck around 7th fret) that I've since corrected. The bass kind of misses the mark for me, as I would have preferred the J PUP closer to the neck heel and the Stingray PUP closer to the bridge, but it does offer useable tonal variety (Sorry, not lefty pix yet):

213_0.jpg (40.24 KiB) Viewed 17592 times

Burns Bison: Another bass that was offered for 5 minutes back around 2003-2004. I bought this one then from Southpaw Guitars. Even rarer are the white ones with gold hardware. I've seen at least one lefty. Great bass, love the neck and tonal variations, but it is extremely neck heavy so I ended up buying a weighted Heads Up strap (discontinued?) just to be able to play this thing:

Burns Bison.jpg (36.76 KiB) Viewed 17592 times

Anything else out there that's readily available?

[bobjones2260]

Funny, there was another thread about basses on Arni's site. As usual I started to scroll though his site and was checking out these Bodies made in the US that have 3 PUP's.

http://leftybass.com/secondhand_offer_54.htm

[Addison]

3 p'up basses aren't exactly super common in the righty world either, so I'm not surpised that they'd be less common in the lefty world.

Coincidentally, the Zon Legacy Elite 5 that is now a couple weeks away from completion was going to be a 3-pickup bass for almost two years (yes, I've been waiting that long) until Joe talked me out of it, literally last minute.

The reasons were two-fold for me... the first is because of the control setup I was going for, which was always going to be a single volume with a pickup selector switch.

With 3 pickups, Joe usually goes with a 5-way rotary knob... and I just didn't want two knobs on deck. It also didn't make sense to have all the tonal shaping that 3 p'ups gives you without having EQ functionality on deck, since more combinations typically require more tonal adjustments to compensate.

The other reason is that I just can't see the 3-pickup idea getting a lot of use from me. I'm just not really a knob or tone tweaker. Not live, anyway. I've tried really hard to get into tone shaping for individual songs, but, other than switching to the bridge pickup for certain tunes (Don't Stop Believing, etc), I've found I get more useful and practical tone-shaping from changing picking hand positions. It's also a lot easier than sitting there and tweaking knobs through an entire song, trying to nail what you're looking for on the fly. To me, anyway... YMMV.

I see some dudes playing with their knobs through an entire gig, smiling having the time of their lives... and that's cool... I'm just more of a "dial in your tone at the beginning of the night and forget about it" kind of player.

[LefThanDed]

3 p'up basses aren't exactly super common in the righty world either, so I'm not surpised that they'd be less common in the lefty world.

... welcome to Bootsy's World:

[Addison]

3 p'up basses aren't exactly super common in the righty world either, so I'm not surpised that they'd be less common in the lefty world.

... welcome to Bootsy's World:

SPOLER ALERT: He uses the 2nd and the 4th pickups 99% of the time.

[tim]

... welcome to Bootsy's World:

[pjmuck]

... welcome to Bootsy's World:

LOL! Great reference, Tim. One of my all time favorite Onion articles. ("Open up, baby birds, 'cause papa's got a nice big juicy nightcrawler for you".)

[pjmuck]

3 p'up basses aren't exactly super common in the righty world either, so I'm not surpised that they'd be less common in the lefty world.

Coincidentally, the Zon Legacy Elite 5 that is now a couple weeks away from completion was going to be a 3-pickup bass for almost two years (yes, I've been waiting that long) until Joe talked me out of it, literally last minute.

The reasons were two-fold for me... the first is because of the control setup I was going for, which was always going to be a single volume with a pickup selector switch.

With 3 pickups, Joe usually goes with a 5-way rotary knob... and I just didn't want two knobs on deck. It also didn't make sense to have all the tonal shaping that 3 p'ups gives you without having EQ functionality on deck, since more combinations typically require more tonal adjustments to compensate.

The other reason is that I just can't see the 3-pickup idea getting a lot of use from me. I'm just not really a knob or tone tweaker. Not live, anyway. I've tried really hard to get into tone shaping for individual songs, but, other than switching to the bridge pickup for certain tunes (Don't Stop Believing, etc), I've found I get more useful and practical tone-shaping from changing picking hand positions. It's also a lot easier than sitting there and tweaking knobs through an entire song, trying to nail what you're looking for on the fly. To me, anyway... YMMV.

I see some dudes playing with their knobs through an entire gig, smiling having the time of their lives... and that's cool... I'm just more of a "dial in your tone at the beginning of the night and forget about it" kind of player.

Excellent points, and I largely agree. For the most part, I'm a "Set it and forget it" guy too, usually playing P or J basses 90% if the time, but it's fun to be a knob twiddler once in a while too PROVIDED I know my way around the bass well enough, which I don't always because I like to bring different instruments to gigs sometimes ad don't spend the time familiarizing myself with the instrument well in advance. (There's something to be said about having less options/instruments!). In theory, at least, I like the options of a 3rd PUP, especially at the neck, (i.e. my modded Tele bass) where it's nice to be able to dial in some fat sub harmonic mud to further enhance the aftermarket P PUP, but I rarely use the neck humbucker alone. The Burns Bison does have several distinct tones, but as you mentioned, has electronics that fail to fully take advantage of the tonal options (i.e. can't have all 3 Pups on, can't solo certain PUPs, etc). The Spear has 3 volume knobs and a single tone knob, so there's no limit to the combinations of PUPs/volumes you can use, but then you're limited to 1 tone knob and varying PUP output.

[Lefty007]

Lakland 44-95 and 55-94 can qualify as a three pickup system, because the neck humbucker can be split. I would use it as a Jazz bass, or I would solo the neck coil of the bridge humbucker, giving me tight P-Bass kinda sound.

Although I have to admit I would spend a good part of my set deciding which I wanted, and changing settings constantly.

You can order these Maruszczyk lefty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KprsqMRb0wY

[pjmuck]

interesting option.

In the midst of my searches, I came across these options:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMYvCWg4rU

http://www.delano.de/products.html?&cHa ... ystem%5D=9

I don't know if either are offered left handed (You could just install a righty, but that would change the sounds due to repositioning of coils), but I did write to Howard Ulyate of the YouTube video to see if he offers lefty versions so I will respond back once I've heard back from him. (He's licensed his through a company called Proto Guitars now). See: https://reverb.com/item/696140-proto-mu ... -humbucker

[pjmuck]

Funny, there was another thread about basses on Arni's site. As usual I started to scroll though his site and was checking out these Bodies made in the US that have 3 PUP's.

http://leftybass.com/secondhand_offer_54.htm

Yeah, theres another guy selling 3 PU bodies on eBay now too:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Left-Handed-Cus ... SwPc9WuD7x

[Jeroen]

Clover Avenger:



Available as a lefty with choice of 4, 5 or 6 strings.

And technically, an MM Bongo 5 HS has 3 pickups too. There's a dummy coil hidden underneath the pickguard to eliminate hum in the single coil settings. I guess you could raise it to the same level als the neck pickup and wire it up differently so you can use it on its own or in various combinations.

[Jeroen]

And what would you guys make of this? I wonder how it's wired up.

[tim]

And what would you guys make of this? I wonder how it's wired up.

Oooo... I'm not sure that's the way I would have set it up, but I'd love to give it a try!

[fivebass52]

I once saved every Ibanez ATK brochure I could find on the internet... and the folder I have them in is slated as my screen saver. Just happened to see a picture of an Ibanez JTKB300 Bass scroll by - with three pickups! Have never seen nor heard of these basses until I saw them listed in my scrolling brochure pic, from an EU 2010 ATK Brochure Page!

[Addison]

I once saved every Ibanez ATK brochure I could find on the internet... and the folder I have them in is slated as my screen saver. Just happened to see a picture of an Ibanez JTKB300 Bass scroll by - with three pickups! Have never seen nor heard of these basses until I saw them listed in my scrolling brochure pic, from an EU 2010 ATK Brochure Page!

I'd never buy one, but I LOOOOVE the control layout on that thing

One volume, one tone and an on/off switch for each pickup... what more do you need?

[tim]

what more do you need?

Series / parallel / panic

[Jeroen]

Kill zone mode. Just like John Petrucci's guitars.

[tim]

Kill zone mode. Just like John Petrucci's guitars.

Hehehe. I can only imagine trying to understand this from the subtitles.

[andrew]

I've always loved the Gibson G3 bass and would like to create a lefty version of it some day.