=========================================================================== Status =========================================================================== Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 10:50:40 GMT From: "W.H.Purvis" To: tjs@eecs.umich.edu Subject: re: pickups reviews Tim, I doubt if this really counts as a review, but I would like to give a plug for Status pickups (I don't know if they're available in the States but they are reasonably well-known over in the UK). I am not terribly well up on pickups and when I built my first Electric Bass earlier this year, I went around the local stores looking for ideas. I eventually decided to get a PJ style pickup and found this Status `Hyperactive' in a rather battered box going for a price I could (almost) afford (50 pounds - ~$80 I guess). I had assumed for that price it was a passive pickup, but discovered when I got home that it was the active version - that meant I had to rout out a bit more body to make room for a battery! When I finally got it all together, I was really impressed with the sound I got from it, really punchy and clear. All went well for a couple of months then I started to get strange noises from the pickup - sounded a bit like wind noise on a microphone out-of-doors without a windshield. I thought it might be the battery going flat, but when I replaced the battery I found it was still there. I then contacted Status and got to speak with one of their designers - he told me that the model I had bought was a discontinued line with which they had had problems like mine. They had traced it to a faulty batch of capacitors. He offered to replace the pickup with an identical one (they had a few left on the shelf) and immediately posted one off to me (no proof of purchase - there are some trusting folks left!) and it arrived the next day. I swapped over the pickups and connected it up and left it switched on to for a `soak' test. After a few hours, the new pickup started doing the same thing. I got back to the guy at Status, and he was extremely apologetic. He then arranged to connect up his remaining stock and leave them `soaking' for a while to see if he could weed out a good one. About 5 days later he rang to say that a new one was in the post. He asked me to try it and if, at any time, it went faulty, to contact him and he would replace it with a passive pickup with a separate pre-amp which would give the same sound. I have now been running the second replacement for some months and no sign of problems. I can't speak for the current range of pickups, but the service is over and above the level I would expect from any manufacturer! Bill Purvis