LeftyBassist.com

Freakin' beautiful, though I think I'd prefer the look of it if the strings/bridge were more centered across the body:

http://www.normansrareguitars.com/produ ... at=&page=1

Oh my. I like the colour and the pickups. A bit more centered would be nice though.

I don't get it. Am I missing something? I must be. Why do they have 25% of each the pickup area with no string over top that portion?

I suppose the pickup design was intended to fit 6-strings as well, so they just needed one size.

crescenze wrote:I don't get it. Am I missing something? I must be. Why do they have 25% of each the pickup area with no string over top that portion?

Just to capture that 2” of 5th string movement when you are doing your best Pete Townshend whirling arm impersonation...

.....and of course he goes the other way....dammit

That's how George designed it back in the late 80's. See Pic below of Alain's replica original bass:

I would love to have that bass. Its a rare one.

Jeroen wrote:I suppose the pickup design was intended to fit 6-strings as well, so they just needed one size.

Could be it. On a six string version it looks like the bridge and neck would be close to if not actually centered.

Here's another old 5 string FBass with the same original design pickups. Its the headless model. Pups hang longer on the G side. Regardless, this is still a cool bass and proto lefty meaning it might even be the first lefty George built. Ill ask him at NAMM in a few weeks.

It's a beautiful bass but it seems like the price is a bit high to me. Isn't a new BN5 around that price these days?

On a 5'er with split pickups, there is a design problem to solve.
The 3rd string can't sit between both halves or it will have tonal/volume issues. If both halves are differently sized to put the overlap between 3 and 4th strings, then humbucking isn't as good. Both halves need similar, preferably identical, amounts of coil and iron to pickup equal amounts of noise, which will then cancel out completely. Different halves would still leave some residual noise pickup. This design solves the problem by using matched 3+3 sized coils.
Another approach to the problem is to make each half with side by side humbucking coils, then a 3+2 size arrangement works well.