The original Bartolini design gives you the timeless tone that started it all – full and warm for that vintage voice you've been craving, enhancing the natural voice of your bass. These dual coil inline pickups are hum-cancelling even when only playing the neck or bridge pickup, so they are well suited for studio or stage. They have a blade core design, so you don’t have to worry about string alignment. Original Barts bring out your voice, low and clear.
In the early ‘70s, Bill Bartolini leveraged his deep knowledge of acoustics to create pickups that produce the most natural, musical voice from the instrument. He added shielding to block radio signals and noise. He developed a method of sealing, isolating, and stabilizing the coils so they could be encapsulated in epoxy to eliminate “microphonics” – the nasty noise you get when you touch typical pickups.
Available in balanced specific bridge and neck versions.
Artists: Scott Martinez
Size (Neck):
4" [101.6mm] Long
0.77" [19.6mm] Wide
Size (Bridge):
4.14" [105.2mm] Long
0.77" [19.6mm] Wide
Coil Structure:
Dual Inline Hum-killing
Cable Type:
Shielded Coaxial Hot Core
Magnetic Circuit:
2 types of carbon steel powered by ceramic (ferrite) magnets
Opposite polarity for bass and treble coils for neck and bridge pickups
57J-S1 - Neck
57J-L1 - Bridge
This pickup, while not a vintage pickup, is a true classic. Thousands of basses have this J pickup set installed. Low mid punch, with warm lows and a rolled off top end characterize this pickup. There is a pleasant amount of compression that makes these pickups quite forgiving to play.
Note: The pickup used for this video is the Bartolini 9J1 L/S, a 4 string pickup. The 5 string sizes/shapes will sound similar, but not exact as they will use a longer magnet. Bartolini is engineering them to sound as close to each other as possible.
Put on a good set of headphones and check out the audio demo below to hear it for yourself.
As always, keep in mind that these are generalizations. Your experience could be different depending on many factors.