Description
Precision P bass pickup. Visually classic version of P Bass pickups with exposed poles.
The Warman P Bass Classic pickup is a split single coil pickup with each of the two coils alternately wound and opposing magnetic poles to operate in a humbucking mode. The P Bass Warman Classic has an inductance of 5.21 Henry for a good punchy low end and mids and a resistance of 8.56 K-ohms. Supplied with mounting screws and springs. For best mounting we recommend that a small wedge of foam rubber is also fitted underneath the magnet bed in the pickup route ( as in the old fashioned way of doing it ).
These are also very popular with the Cigar Box Guitar makers as they actually cut through the link wire between the two units and use it as two seperate single coil pickups on 3 string cigar box guitars. You can also use them similarly to the XII type offset split coil pickups.
Warman pickups use ceramic magnets as these are even brighter than Alnico V or III, and in higher output pickups to help counterbalance the treble lost by the higher resistance (remember higher resistance means more midrange, but less highs).
Why not team it with a set of our J Bass pickups ?
c6767t (verified owner) –
I used a set of these PU’s in an old Harley Benton PB20. There was nothing wrong with the originals but since I made very good experiences with other Warman pickups in the past I thought I’ll give it a try. And I was not disappointed, these pickups are phenomenal! Well balanced from string to string, very high output, nice, round tone, just how a precision bass should sound. And all this for 16.99, incredible.
The only negative thing is the springs it comes with, they are too thin so I used 2 blocks of high density foam instead.
mbakirov (verified owner) –
This one is a very good sounding pickup and a definite upgrade from stock pickups they put in cheap basses.
I have 2 pj basses , one paired with twin lock, another with seymour duncan noisless hot stack bridge j bass pickup.
Sounds great in both scenarious, the only thing is it seems that the polarity is opposite to seymour duncan, so i had to put white wire to ground and black to the signal so they pair well together.
Also the cable could be a bit longer.
otherwise this is an amazing sound pickup I have in 2 basses now. loud and clear and punchy , amazing sound!
Adam Herrick (verified owner) –
I ordered one of these pickups a while back to put on a P-Bass kit I built with my boy during lockdown – what a difference it made! They are fantastic – outright – and highlight the vast gulf between “affordable” and “cheap”. They seems to be a pleasingly balanced, high-output pickup.
Before the swap, the bass made a horrible glassy, brittle tone that didn’t change much whether the tone knob was up or down. And that’s not to mention the noise / interference. Cheap Chinese crap probably. Ugh.
So the bar wasn’t high, so to speak, but the Warman pickup not only delivered, but delivered in _spades_. I wired it in with 500k pots (linear volume, audio tone) and a push-pull switch to choose between a .068uF and 0.022uF capacitors.
The Warman pickup transformed the bass from something of an embarrassment that lived in a case, into a go-to instrument that’s actually playable in public / at gigs and which I now hang on the wall for easy access.
Using steel rounds, I can get a fantastic range of tones from this setup. With the big cap and the tone right down, it thuds and thumps for England; with the tone up, it’s bright and crunchy. Plenty of mids / highs available for tone shaping if you want that, but plenty of lows too. Switching over to the small cap seems to brighten the treble a little more (resonant frequency shift?) which makes it almost painfully crunchy / spanky – perfect for slap.
But all of that starts with the pickup: if the signal don’t go in, it don’t make a noise. And the signal is clean: you can tell it’s a quality pickup because there’s no detectable background noise, fuzz, interference.
I’m here writing this review because I’m going to put another one of these on a PJ as soon as money allows. I’ll be ordering the equivalent J pickup to go with it.
You should too. 🙂