So the black bass was my son’s first bass, and while he was still playing there seemed to be some issue with the p-bass style pickup nearest the neck. I helped him narrow his choices, were it me I would have gone with the equivalent low end student model Yamaha...but the differences were slight. Not sure what I liked about the Yamaha better.
Some years ago I found this bass covered in dust in the room the title picture was taken. It was in transition from D-Rock’s bedroom to storage room to it’s eventual current use as my music studio/office. Dustin had gotten a couple other basses, said no problem to me slapping some strings I had around on it. Amazingly, the old Fender flat strings brought out a tone the bass never demonstrated before, and this was only with the Jazz bass style pickup at the bridge. I was intrigued.
Over the last 5-7 years or so I’ve gotten the bass to play better and better (truss rod adjustments, intonation adjustments on the bridge) but the electrical problems persisted and got worse. I eventually “hot-wired” the 2 pickups in series and routed them directly to the output jack. It was a tone heaven I rarely am affected by playing bass — usually I’m pretty utilitarian about the amp/sound I’m getting. The odd thing was this — all 3 potentiometers (the knobs — we’re gonna call them pots going forward) seemed to be fine when I checked them with a multi-meter. In fact, for 500K resistance pots, they were all within a very tight tolerance of each other (478-482 if I recall) and well within the stated manufactures specs. In fact, one of them went back in the circuit as a volume pot. I paid a pro to do it...and it was great for a few months.
Then it crapped again. I took the pot out. It spec’d fine. I left the bass back in hot wired mode with the pots in, but disconnected. I had fun putting different knob combinations on. It was kind of like trying out different hairstyles, joking about my yin and yang knobs that did nothing. But they were doing something. They were acting like miniature radio transmitters (Faraday Cage) and adding a lot of buzz. So out went the dead/zombie/unused pots, replaced by some car bumper clips. Still some buzz, the bass was useless to try and record with.
Thus the experimentation begins. I have been intrigued by a certain circuit called the PTB- passive treble and bass, as well as the 3 way OMG switch used on some G&L basses. I should have taken the clue when I thought I ordered 2 three position mini switches and I got 2 bags with three pieces in each. Oh well, practice pieces.
My buddy helped me solder it together — I stripped 6 short lead wires and we wired it, and I thought I could install it and — OUCH — I burned a finger nicely on the soldering iron, ripped one of the flimsy leads off the switch, and nearly knocked over a couple guitars. The next day I brought the bass to Juan’s, we put the switch in after replacing the lead wires with color coded wire, which were quite a bit more substantial...I had a small amp with me, and there was a lot of noise, so I did not quite notice that something wasn’t quite right…
Surprisingly I figured out the problem (one of the pickups was out of phase) and was able to swap the leads out and VIOLA! I had a working OMG switch and it sounded GREAT!
I used it at a couple rehearsals, but things are slow with my 2 sorta-bands. So I ordered the parts that I thought would allow me to make the 2 tone controls of the PTB circuit. Again, I’m not taking the hint that the reason the switch wiring was wacked was because I DID NOT READ THE SCHEMATICS CORRECTLY. I had 2 diagrams of the same solution with 2 different types of switches. There was a disagreement between the 2 and I didn’t catch it. But by the time I’m ordering these parts I am well aware if this mistake. But DUNNING-KRUGER!!! I found my mistake and swapped the wires! I’ve GOT THIS!
Ehhh, except I ordered some 22 pF capacitors instead of 2 pF capacitors. So I can’t make the bass cut tone control. This was an error reading this schematic for maybe a year...then I try to put things together. After another burnt fingertip I did not have a tone control and a volume control, I had 2 volume controls. And they worked backwards…
More research, some encouragement from Juan that my solder joints were not bad, I thought I understood my wiring mistakes and set out to re-wire things...and...I got a tone pot that did NOTHING, and another backwards volume pot. Hey, at least there was a signal and no detectable noise — even if the signal was maybe 1/10 the original strength. Back to the drawing board…
So instead I decided to wing it and make up a recipe for a chocolate cheesecake. It looks like the mid-Atlantic ridge...but it’s going to taste GREAT!!!!!
BTW — the basses left to right: a custom made fretless (built 2014), a 2004 Rickenbacker 4004 Laredo, a 1980 Fernandes Bomber, and the poor, abused 2001 Ibanez GSR-200 (with fake controls...)