An interview with Carey Nordstrand

See Carey Nordstrand’s business listing here

BBG: What was the thought behind the design of the Big Single pickup model, why did you design it and what does it do?

Nordstrand: The thought was related to getting soap bar covers in and having a dual coil that could fill them up and then thinking what else can I do to use all the space that this cover has in it, I don’t want to just put straight J single coils in it. That would be leaving some potential there.

We do offer straight J singles in soap bar covers as well, no one knows about it and we haven’t really promoted it yet mainly because I think the big single is great. So basically, I was doing the morning ritual, getting ready for the day in the shower and the thought just popped in my head, and I thought, “What would happen if you took the two poles per string that a traditional J pickup has, and rotated them by 45 degrees, and that would make the coil wider?” That would be interesting. At that point, I couldn’t get ready soon enough and get to the shop and figure out how to make that work.

It took a little experimentation. We started with a stack design before I actually got into the big single, and that is where the fat stack came from. And then it seemed like it would make sense to make a single coil. From the first note it was obvious we had something going there. Basically you get a wider aperture. You sense more of the string. You also sense it in a different manner than a symmetrically paired set of pole pieces would do.

I had a mechanical engineer one time tell me those little magnets actually exert levering forces on the string movement because there is string pull involved. There is an interaction between magnets and string. That seems to say that the big singles actually impact the way the strings sound because of the asymmetrical way the pole pieces are laid across the strings.

I think it’s part of what makes those pickups sound big and lush and rich and complex. So that is about what I know about the physics of it. Other than that I just know they always sound great no matter what bass I put them in. Still to this day, it’s my favorite pickup we make.

BBG: So to summarize, it’s a design that was driven a bit by the form of the pickup but with some happy coincidence things that happened because of making that change?

Nordstrand: Yeah, I would say so.

BBG: That’s cool. I guess it’s true what they say, I would rather be lucky than good.

Nordstrand: It’s fun when both things combine, when you get good at something and you get lucky. That’s when the good stuff happens.

BBG: Do you notice a big difference in the articulation of the note with the two magnets not having as much of a space between them, in regards to the magnet? I’ve heard some say the traditional two poles with the little bit of space in them leaves a little bit of a double thump transient. Do you find a cleaner note articulation when the two magnets are closer to the centerline of the string?

Nordstrand: Maybe, um, I’ve never thought about it in that way. That’s a little out there for me. I don’t know. I’ve never conceptualized things in that matter. Interesting observation. Maybe I will have more to say about that if I think about that more.

BBG: Talking to bass players all day, my mind and I get crazy ideas you can’t even imagine.

Nordstrand: Yes, I’ve had my share of those myself. That has got to be exponentially worse, or better, for you.

BBG: I learn a ton from my customers.

BBG: What do you find to be the difference in different magnet materials, AlNiCo V vs. AlNiCo whatever, and what do you find to be the difference between different magnet sizes or diameters?

Nordstrand: I don’t have a lot of experience beyond the AlNiCo, we have the neo blades, and it’s definitely a different thing. AlNiCo to me is the most sort of analog, vintage sound that I’ve played around with. Neo and ceramic and some of these other more modern high-energy magnets seem to have what I best describe as a more modern, hi-fi character to them. The only thing I have played around with other than the AlNiCo V is the AlNiCo IV.

I do know that as a general rule of thumb, the higher the value, the higher the magnetic energy. We do make dual-coil pickups using AlNiCo IV strength because AlNiCo V is really powerful and pulls on the string a lot. So you have string pull issues. We started making AlNiCo IV dual coils.

They do have less energy and a softer, more mellow character to them. I have some AlNiCo III, and we are going to start playing around with AlNiCo III Tele pickups pretty soon. In terms of size of the magnets, that’s kind of like how many cubic inches your engine is. It’s how much potential the magnet has for delivering energy. And also torque, really I guess, to take the analogy further.

So if you are comparing a J pick up to a music man pick up, the mass of those magnets of the Music Man-style pickup is quite a lot, so they have a lot of power potential, and the way traditional Music Man pickups are made, there is not a lot of winds, especially compared to a J coil, but it’s a fatter wire. And if you put two of them parallel, you get a very wide open, big, big sound.

So all those things being equal, if you make the same pickups with smaller magnets, like a J-size magnet, with a single pole per string, it would be a lot less output, a lot kind of smaller sounding, and probably kind of brittle and clean sounding comparatively.

BBG: It’s sort of a difficult question to answer because the context where we have smaller or bigger magnets is something that’s changing.

Nordstrand: Yes, you can’t make apples to apples comparisons very easily. Although I do have a friend, Howard Ulyate, locally here in Southern California, he makes pickups and does repairs and other stuff, he makes pickups that are effectively like dual coils that use 1/8-inch pole pieces. They definitely are kind of more polite with all other things being equal. For me it’s a matter of optimizing your coil size, your shape, to the particular magnetic engine you have in place for a particular design. I think there’s a middle point of what you can do in terms of a particular winding pattern that gives you the most even response and broad frequency and lush organic character. That is effectively what we try to do with every design we put together, something that is rich and lush and really inspiring sonically. So there you go for that.

BBG: Here’s a question about pickup placement on an instrument, and I guess it can apply equally to whether you’re talking about rearranging jazz bass coils on a jazz bass, but it would also apply to making a set of dual coils. The question is, what happens when two coils are closer together or farther apart from each other?

Nordstrand: Interesting, sort of specific question about pickup placement there. Well, when you put an aperture onto a string with a pickup and magnets and you sense that string, you’re collecting the data of that string moving at that particular point. Now string movement is a very complex, in a way phenomenon, and it changes. I mean obviously you can tell if you pan between a J pickup bridge and a J pickup neck, there is obviously a huge difference in sound even though functionally the pickups are very, very similar.

So because you are sensing a different point of the string—there are articles about this—there is a comb filtering effect that happens, and phase issues, and because you are not sensing the same part of the string certain frequencies are going to multiply and certain frequencies are going to cancel to a certain degree and harmonics are going to become less here and more here. It’s a really complex relationship. But that’s what makes, effectively in a nutshell, that is what makes humbuckers sound kind of broad and that’s what makes single coils sound focused. That is about the best I can do to explain how that works.

BBG: Is there any magic to placing pickups on say a particular harmonic or some type of rhyme to the reason about where you–found anything like that to be true for you?

Nordstrand: Harmonics move depending on what note you play, so to me that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, yeah, if you are playing open string harmonics and you want to sense them most effectively then there are sweet spots you can put pickups in, but once you fret a note you’re changing the relationship of everything. I mean, what’s the point?

You’re not going to play a bass with only open strings and harmonics (laughs). So it’s a matter of compromises. I think the best pickup placements tend to offer the most even collection of tones as you play up and down the neck, which is evidenced by the P pickup placement, the Music Man pickup placement, the J bass has a very specific sound because of where the pickups are placed, even 70s spacing versus 60s spacing is a different animal because of the way like we talked about with the humbuckers, they are sensing the strings and the comb filtering and the way the harmonics and the waves are adding and subtracting is different between a 60s and 70s J.

It’s scientifically complicated and to me it’s… you can chase all that stuff down and do a bunch of scientific experimentation and do a computer analysis of wave forms, there are so many things you can do to really get down in the weeds about it, but the bottom line is how does it sound? For me, it’s a simple matter of we just make pickups that we think sound great and try not to worry, that stuff has information that can inform what you do, but we try not to get too bound up in the minutia of the scientific part of it.

BBG: Is there magic in the traditional Fender single-coil Jazz Bass pickup?

Nordstrand: That depends on whether they sacrificed a goat at midnight when they made it (laughs). Single coils have certain things that they do and that they do well, and obviously the genesis of the single coil is deeply rooted in Fender instruments, and lap steels before that. For sure there is a certain degree of magic. But I get uncomfortable when people start talking about magic and voodoo and the intangible qualities of what makes a pickup sound good.

That doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are intangible qualities that make something sound good, but I do believe that by paying deep attention to the results of your work you can find a way to make things sound, like I said before, really inspiring and amazing and deep, and make the experience of tone a really rich and involving experience.

That’s effectively what I do when I design pickups. When I sit down to test something, and I do this more than two or three times over the course of a week or two with a certain product, if I sit down and I start playing and I am like what will it sound like if I am like “what will this sound like with a delay pedal, what if I put distortion on it, what if I run it through this?”, and I sort of get lost in exploring the sound that comes out of the amp then I know I am onto something at that point because I stop analyzing it with my mind and I start experiencing it with my heart. That is what we try to do when we make pickups is to find that place where it touches you tonally, and it makes the experience of music something beautiful and amazing.

BBG: I did not wish to make you uncomfortable with that magic question.

Nordstrand: Oh it certainly wasn’t you. Unfortunately, I think magic and voodoo is something this industry uses a lot to justify certain sale practices. That is what I meant when I said it makes me uncomfortable. Some people will sell you a pickup saying this is a handwound pickup, implying that being handwound is going to make it magical. And there are a ton of handwound pickups that sound like crap.

I get uncomfortable because of the connotations that, it’s unknowable and you shouldn’t even ask, because this is magic because it was done this way and uses titanium this or that or the other thing…literally to the point some people are like “I only handwind pickups under a full moon”. It can get really ludicrous, and I don’t think that really serves the objective of, you know, does this sound good or not? Which is really what it ultimately comes down to. Everything we do as players, builders, as pickup makers, as recording engineers, all comes down to what comes out of that speaker, what’s going into my ear and how does it affect me? And so I think you’re losing sight of the forest for the trees once you get into the question of magic and voodoo and these obscure things that just take your eye off the ball.

BBG: Understood. Mark me down for one set of the full moon pickups, please. (Both laugh.) This question is for more of, I guess it is both for you as a bass builder and as a pickup maker. What has a bigger impact on the sound? The base of wood choices, construction method, the pickups or both?

Nordstrand: Because I have kind of learned about pickup making and bass building concurrently over the course of my career, I think pickups are a really, really big deal. I have experienced the differences in different types of pickups in different scale lengths and different wood combinations. To me, and this is my personal experience speaking here, because I have the ability to build instruments with widely different ranging pickups we can put in them, I think pickups are one of the main major parts of what affects how an instrument sounds.

The other thing is scale length and pickup placement, and then you start to get into the woods and the style of construction and the other details along those lines. There are extreme things, such as synthetic materials to make necks and bodies. Those are going to have drastic impacts on the tone, as well, but if you stick to fairly traditional methods and construction, you know, wood instruments, those three things are major major factors on how an instrument sounds to me.

But that said, there is definitely an impact that comes from a maple neck versus, especially a maple neck with no finger board glued on, just a one piece with a skunk stripe, there is definitely a difference between that and a glued on Indian rosewood or fingerboard or an ebony fingerboard is a big difference, even a maple neck with a glued on maple fingerboard is going to sound different than a maple neck with a skunk stripe, and that’s why we do the skunk stripe otherwise what would be the point, it’s a slightly more difficult way for us to make necks in some ways.

And body woods for sure have an impact on sound. I personally don’t care for neck – through type instruments, I prefer set neck, so whenever I build, carved fancy, exotic basses they usually all have had, well except one, they’ve all had set neck construction. The neck timbers end in the neck pickup pocket. For me neck through instruments have a rubbery quality to them. I like the way bolt ons sounds in this kind of punchy, organic manner, and set necks to a degree are in the same ballpark. And string type is also a big deal, steel strings sound very different from nickel strings sound different than flat wounds. So that is a big factor, too.

BBG: I talk to people who endlessly financially punish themselves ordering one custom bass after another chasing this thing, the perfection. Yet at the same time that they are willing to take 3, 4 or 5,000 out of their bank account, they are completely devoted to one brand of string and the first thing they do is restring the bass with their strings they always use. So why they would be flexible about the really expensive part, but completely inflexible on the $30 part. [Laughs.] I am not trying to make light of what $30 is, but you could basically take a friend to lunch or buy strings.

Which of these two would you say is more of your goal building pickups: creating pickups that will shape the sound of the bass or pickups that let the sound of the bass come through?

Nordstrand: That kind of goes to what we were talking about a little bit ago, getting caught in the minutia of things. There’s a lot of guys out there, with the voodoo of it all, that in their marketing will talk about how the true sound of your bass comes through “these pickups”. I tend to get a little queasy about those kinds of statements. It’s all a part of a big system. To say that your instrument has a certain sound that it’s supposed to make and these pickups deliver that sound the best, I just have a hard time with that. So, I have never really thought about what we do in those terms, it’s kind of a little alien to me.

It’s all different stuff. Traditionally, the style of construction we use is definitely associated with a more vintage-y, colored-type sound. I don’t really have a good answer for that. We make vintage-inspired pickups that sound good. Whether or not that sound is “the sound of the bass” is entirely debatable, and I’m not really interested in that debate frankly, to be honest. But I can tell you that our pickups, they will impart their character on an instrument, I think all pickups will. You can’t separate these things out. A bad sounding bass with a great set of pickups is probably going to sound OK, a great sounding bass with a great pair of pickups, can sound amazing.

I have this experience here on a regular basis. The bass is obviously, what it’s made of, the wood and the construction, are obviously very important. Sometimes things come together and it just sounds great, and there is really not anyway to explain it in quantifiable scientific terms that we know of at this point and time. And it’s like you put it together and oh this one sounds great, and you put a a great pickup in there and it’s mind blowing. Then there are basses that are, you know, it sounds OK. And part of the problem is that so much of what we experience with our ears is colored by our frame of mind.

Human hearing and auditory experience is not the same every time you hear something. So that’s a real tricky part of it, the emotional component of where our head is when we sit down and listen to something, or try a new set of strings or a pickup. Part of what happens is someone gets excited about a new instrument, they get it in, and they are all wound up about it, it’s gotta sound great because “I spent $3,500 on it, and everybody loves these things, I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about it.” I plug it in and man, there’s no way it’s going to sound bad, unless there is something physically wrong with it or it’s not working.

And this is part of what happens when people buy and sell instruments on a regular basis, because after a couple of weeks or a month, your experience of the sound changes because it’s not new, it’s not fresh, it’s not the latest, greatest thing anymore. So you’re not approaching it with the color like the first time you played it. That is all part of what goes on when we put pickups into an instrument and decide, based on our experience with it, whether it’s giving us the sound of the pickup or the instrument. I think it’s all connected.

BBG: I like your answer very much. I often half joke, half-not joke, that I wasted my time going to luthier school and when I should have been studying something that would be useful in my day to day life, like psychology.

Nordstrand: Sure, sure. That would make a lot of sense.

BBG: I have one last question for you. I heard you make some world-class barbecue [Carey laughs.] If I’m at Carey’s house on a Saturday night, what kind of items are coming out of the smoker?

Nordstrand: Probably baby back ribs that have been cooked low and slow at around 250 for about four hours. I make a rub and put that on them. If I’m really feeling like I want to get involved with it and I want an extra layer of savory flavor I will heat up a honey garlic butter and drip that on the ribs as it’s cooking about half an hour or so, 20 or 30 minutes, and then at the end I will take a real good off-the-shelf-sauce—there are a ton of them out there so I don’t bother making my own sauces—then just glaze the ribs up and bring the fire up and crisp it up a little bit, caramelize them, pull them off, cut them up and let’s eat.

Either that or I will get up every half hour to an hour overnight and do a 16-hour pork shoulder, and have pulled pork. That’s my two favorite things.

BBG: You’re making me real hungry talking about that. And that’s the perfect note to end this on.