I own several J-basses from around 2000 Euros and downwards, all the way to the lowly Harley Benton JB-75. The JB-75 is a surprisingly good instrument for the price, but I wanted to see how much better it could get with a couple of upgrades.
At this point I had already leveled/crowned/polished the frets, shielded the cavities and the pickguard, made a new bone nut and replaced the jack socket and pots/cap with better quality components. It was now time for a new pickup.
After considering several pickup options (including my favorite J-bass pickups, the standard wind Lollars) I decided to try these from Kloppmann They costs twice as much as the entire bass(!) which of course means these pickups don't make sense AT ALL as a cost effective mod/upgrade to a cheap bass. But I've wanted to test these pickups for a while and this was a good excuse.
At this price I expect pickups to be VERY good though!
First, lets get the bad stuff out of the way:
-No pickup foam included? Seriously Kloppmann.... At these prices, surely you can afford to included two tiny strips of foam?
-The included height adjustment screws were made from soft, poor quality metal and stripped very easily. I ended up using some spare screws I had instead.
-The "aging"... I totally understand that this is a purely a cosmetic option that doesn't affect the tone but still... It doesn't really look like a truly aged pickup at all. I just looks like someone used a dark marker pen on the pole pieces. If I had ordered directly from Kloppmann I would have selected "no aging" for sure, but in this case Thomann had already made the decision for me.
The "ok" stuff:
-Including a capacitor in the box is a nice touch, but I think most guitar/bass players won't really want to use this type of ceramic disk capacitor when they buy a +300 Euro pickup. Of course this is pure snobbery and doesn't really make much of a difference to the tone. It's more a matter of "reading the room". Most players who buy a pickup in this price range will probably want an Orange Drop or something even more expensive. It would be better to ditch the capacitor and include some pickup foam instead.
-The pole pieces aren't staggered. While this is "vintage correct" it also means you may experience unbalanced output between the inner/outer strings with low radius fretboards (like 7.25"). Luckily the Harley Benton JB-75 has a rather flat 12" fretboard so this wasn't an issue for me at all.
The good stuff:
-The tone.
Yeah, these pickups sound great!
Are they worth the money? Well, compared to the stock Roswell pickups they certainly provided better clarity. It wasn't a HUGE difference but when comparing pickups we're hardly ever talking about huge differences, but subtle nuances. The general voicing of the ultra-cheap Roswells and the super-expensive Kloppmanns was actually surprisingly similar. But the Roswells sounded slightly muddier by comparison. The Kloppmanns had slightly better presence/clarity and a generally "tighter" tone.
When I say "slightly" I mean the following:
-The difference was very noticeable on recordings made before/after the pickup change when listening through hi-end 2000 Euro headphones.
-The difference was less noticeable when listening to the same recordings through studio monitors.
-The difference would probably be negligible at band rehearsals or through a PA system at gigs.
-The difference between these pickups is considerably smaller than the tonal difference you would get by moving your plucking hand 1 cm in either direction, or the difference you would get by turning the tone knob 10% in either direction.
These pickups are for people who are chasing those last 5% of tone and are willing to pay a premium for it. These are superb quality pickups, there's no doubt about that, but even the ultra cheap Roswells came surprisingly close.
My all-time favorite J-bass pickups, the standard wind Lollars, are probably still my favorites, but these Kloppmanns are definitely up there with the best. The Kloppmanns may actually be slightly closer to a true vintage Jazz Bass. The Lollars have a tiny bit of a "modern", punchy/aggressive edge to the tone by comparison.
Worth it...? Probably not to be honest, but they do sound amazing!
