Noob wiring question, passive controls and a preamp?

[Stringmaster]

Hey guys, I am in the middle of building a bass with a jazz/ p / jazz configuration. I was planning on doing a passive v/v/v/t, 3 volumes and a tone, but I was wondring if I would somehow be able to wire in a 3 band preamp. This would be possible right? This is my first bass wiring job, so my experiance and knowledge is pretty low when it comes to how bass electronics work. Thanks.

[line6man]

That should be no problem at all, but you will have a lot of knobs on the bass...
You might need to stack some of the pots.

[Stringmaster]

Stack pots are cool with me. I feel dumb just for asking this, but do preamps use standard 250/500k pots? I made up a wiring diagram for it without the preamp, how hard is it to wire in a pre amp? Is it as simple as just adding 3 more pots? Thanks again.

[bongomania]

Your passive volume pots will be 250 or 500, but for the EQ knobs of the preamp you have to get the specific values that the individual manufacturer says to use. They're not all the same, and one preamp might need three different values of pots.

Take the one output of the passive harness, and feed it into the input of the preamp. Whether you add pots, or how many of them, depends on the specific preamp.

Realize that most preamps are designed for two-pickup blending, so you'll need to either have the preamp custom-modded for three pups, or you'll want a preamp with no blend at all (designed for one pup) and just feed it your passively-combined output.

[line6man]

Originally Posted by Stringmaster

Stack pots are cool with me. I feel dumb just for asking this, but do preamps use standard 250/500k pots? I made up a wiring diagram for it without the preamp, how hard is it to wire in a pre amp? Is it as simple as just adding 3 more pots? Thanks again.

Most preamps use 25K, 50K and sometimes 100K pots for the Bass, Mid and Treble controls.

It depends entirely on the preamp you choose.