hofner icon controls?

[nikthastik]

i received my hofner icon in the mail the other day. its a little difficult to understand the controls. it seems like the bass control had to be on for the neck pickup to work and the treble control has to be on for the bridge pickup to work. with both bass and treble in the off position i seem to get no sound even with both volume controls wide open. so do the bass and treble controls work together with the volume controls or am i understanding this the wrong way? i've only played my fender p-bass in the past 1 volume 1 tone control...easier to understand. by the way the bass sounds great anyway, just trying to understand it a little better. i'll be restringing with labella deep talkin' beatle bass flats.50-.100 today. i'm looking forward to hearing the difference this makes.

[stratovani]

I'll agree that they're not exactly the most intuitively designed controls around. In a nutshell, Hofners are designed so that everything is full on all the time, the principle being that in a passive system controls can't add anything, they can only subtract. Since both pickups are on all the time "bass on" turns off the bridge pickup, and "treble on" turns off the neck pickup. Therefore flipping the switches to the "on" position turns off both pickups, and flipping them to the "off" position leaves them both on. The rhythm/solo switch works on the same principle I mentioned before. In the "solo" position you're getting the full-on sound, as if there was no switch, and in the "rhythm" position a resistor is introduced to the circuit to mute the sound a bit. I usually play my Icon in the "rhythm" position so if I need a volume boost it's there.