LeCompte Triple Threat Pickups

Root Notes

The reasons for which builders and craftsmen produce what they do are always of great interest to me. Some feel strongly about a particular offering due to an engineering angle; for others it’s all in the design/art aspect of the thing; and yet others simply have a gut feeling and want to try something that perhaps hasn’t been done in just that exact way before. LeCompte’s Triple Threat pickups represent an intriguing mix of these design drivers, and I was excited to give them a spin in my custom MTD 535-24 bass, for which they were specifically made (proper string spacing measurements and placement of the magnet poles is of course paramount with this type of design).

All Wound Up

In objectively descriptive terms, LeCompte’s Triple Threats feature short, wide windings encompassing two to three triads of AlNiCo 5 magnetic pole pieces per coil (one triad per string); two coils per pickup, slightly offset from each other. Each of these 5-string pickups’ coils splitting the B and E strings off from the rest, the neck pickup sees its bass coil slightly bridgeward and treble coil neckward (reverse P), with the bridge pickup mirroring this layout with its treble coil bridgeward and bass coil neckward. This produces a close to typical J-style aperture between sensing coils for the G, D & A strings, and a closer-spaced one for the B and E. The coils can be housed in a number of different shell sizes, with mine arriving in Bartolini M5 shaped shells to fit my testing bass. The bobbins are thick and sturdy, and a plastic substrate is used below the bottom end of the bobbin, into which LeCompte’s branding and pickup designation is etched (neck vs bridge). The magnetic pole tops are nicely beveled, and sit flush with the covers that expose them. Non-exposed poles are not currently an option.

In Bud LeCompte’s own words, the Triple Threat concept was borne of a desire “to make them unique in some way. It just sort of came to me one day to try a pickup with 3 magnets per string instead of two.” I posited that the attack and sustain characteristics of these pickups may differ from the Fender-derived, dual offset pole pair per string design and perhaps have something in common with the alternate MM-style, single, large pole piece arrangement, in that the middle of the three magnets might better capture the initial attack of the string and provide sonic information that could be lost in the string’s lateral oscillations with a dual offset pole scenario, but possibly provide a wider sensing window than large, centered poles do.

Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time

To my ears, the overarching sound of the Triple Threats is decidedly in the old school or vintage camp, compared to pickups from Bartolini, Delano, EMG, Seymour Duncan, Aguilar & others. This is not a huge surprise, given the coils’ physical architecture; they’re wide and stout, and seemingly not as tall as some J-style windings. Sound familiar? The Triple Threats’ windings bear some similarity to that of the typical P-bass split coil, but seems to me to be a nice cross between J and P compositions. So it comes as no surprise that I would generally describe the tonal characteristic of these pups in the same way; as a kind of melding of classic P and J tones as far as the sustain and decay are concerned, with perhaps more initial attack than a typical J pickup, and more output. I attribute this to the middle magnet, centered below the string, ostensibly offering a somewhat similar attack trait as the StingRay or G&L’s famed MFD pickups.

In any case, due to the particularities of the wire windings and the magnet metal used, but also the less common spacing of the bass and treble coils between the two pickups, for me these pickups are borne for rock. The tighter-spaced bass coils produce a more distinctly upper mid focused tone, while the treble coils’ Jazz-like placements offer something closer to J territory.

I don’t detect a lot of energy above the low to mid treble band, with most of the sonic action occurring south of maybe 3 kHz, focusing the tone with a bit of a nasal high mid presence and grunt that’s just asking to snarl through thick guitar distortion and drums. There isn’t a largely detectable quality of “air”, a term sometimes used to describe the region of a pickup’s sensitivity and output above 7 or 8 kHz, so while these are likely to be just what Dr. Feelgood ordered for classic rock, they might not satisfy those looking for it to be Miller-time or to Dirty up their Loops. They are also relatively high output sensors, and do provide a thicker tone than that of a Jazz Bass (albeit without going all the way to full dual coil humbucker territory), so they may not be the immediately obvious choice for meticulous jazz players, either – but of course all of this entirely depends on the player’s preferences and tonal goals.

A Word From Bud

In the process of discussing the Triple Threats with Bud LeCompte, he offered quite a bit of information I found helpful in understanding the impetus for his design and the processes he took to arrive at the final product. In that light, let’s hear a bit from Bud in his own words:

“I wanted to put more of myself into my basses. After some careful thought it became obvious to me that building my own pickups was the easiest and most practical way of doing that. I figure if I’m putting my name on the headstock it needs as much of me put into it as possible. It just sort of came to me one day to try a pickup with 3 magnets per string instead of two. I made a few prototypes with promising results and then finally came up with something that I really liked the sound of.

I have been a jazz bass guy for a long time, but I had grown tired of what I perceived as a thin sounding bass tone. I was never really a fan of MM big magnet type of pickups either – they sound too throaty and have a gruffness to the sound I don’t care for. Personally, I’m on a quest for what I call a “pure tone”. To my ears, what I think comes out of the three magnets per string is a tighter treble, more natural sounding mids, more pure bass and more output…all without sounding hot.

With a three magnet per string set up, the string vibration starts over the centered magnet, moves over an outer magnet, back across the centered magnet then on to the other outer magnet and back to center. That’s a lot going on vs. two magnets where it is outer-outer or one magnet center-center. Seems like a lot more “pickup” action going on with the three magnet design, or as you put it, “approaching or achieving near full lateral string position coverage”.

I could build Jazz pickups and P-Bass pickups, or bar magnet pickups, but it’s all been done before 1,000 times over. I’m just trying to stand on my own two feet and give the bass community something that’s a little different. The feedback has been great so far. I think I’m just fortunate that I stumbled onto something and I hope the bass world “picks up” on it.”