anyone built their own bass out there and used one of these? i'm about to, but want to know if anyone has had problems with any of them. just the simple stuff: mounting depth, battery power,further adaptability. i want to run a pretty complicated pickup system (see my post also in this area) and a concern is that i'm going to need to chop up a heap of the body to put all the electronics in. if anyone has any ideas, warnings, words of advice, or anything of value, please post it. i'm desparate for help on this. i've got no idea.

cheers

OK..let me try this one. Re. mounting depth, you have the info on J-Retro web site. Essentially, standard Jazz routing is sufficiently deep, for U-Retro you can go a bit shallower.

Re. batteries, all 3 models will work with 9V or 18V, with 18V giving you a bit more headroom, though it is unlikely that you would need this with most pups.

Re. setup etc, it is pretty simple, as everything is pre-wired. All you need to do is to bring outputs from 2 pups to the right terminals. You can add whatever switching you want in front of the preamp. for example, my DP Custom has MM+J pups, so I have a switch that sets MM in Single Coil/Parallel/Serial mode, and then the output from the switch goes to U-Retro. Output from the J pup goes direct to the other input of the U-Retro.

These are awesome preamps, you will like the end result.
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/attachment.php?postid=1127038
Switches left to right: MM Switching, Pickup Selector (Passive Mode), Passive On/Off, LED Switch

thanks for that, your info is appreciated.

i love the setup you've got going on there, looks just like what i want. i'm also curious, what kind of bridge is that and was it difficult to set up? i want a piezo bridge and a mate's yamaha had an aftermarket one put on before he bought it, but he doesn't know what it is, and apparently neither does anyone else.

cheers

Originally posted by lowendtheory
thanks for that, your info is appreciated.

i love the setup you've got going on there, looks just like what i want. i'm also curious, what kind of bridge is that and was it difficult to set up? i want a piezo bridge and a mate's yamaha had an aftermarket one put on before he bought it, but he doesn't know what it is, and apparently neither does anyone else.

cheers

That's an ABM bridge - each string has it's own. I don't know too much about Piezo bridges but here is a Wilkinson Bridge with a HighLander 18V Piezo system on my Rick Turner Electroline:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/attachment.php?postid=1128339

Highlander system has one piezo transducer for each string, and a separate preamp for each string too, so that you can balance string-to-string outputs.

J-Retro Forum Here (http://pub206.ezboard.com/fthedudepitfrm2)