Addison wrote:
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.
