Hey gents,
About a year back I was studying abroad in Italy and picked up a 100euro pbass on the 'bay. I'd primarily been a j-fan so I figured this was a good way to diversify. I picked up with the full intention of just leaving it in italy if I couldn't fit it in a bag but I sort of fell in love with the string spacing and neck feel, so once I got home I swapped out the nut and threw in a SD Hot for P and saw instant awesomer-ness.
Fast forward a little bit, I've been using it as a backup for my MIA J, the leave hanging around my room bass, and alternately, a downtuned bass. In this video I have it strung Db-Ab-Db-Gb with a B string as the Db. It didn't sound this wooly at the gig so I'm guessing it's just the video audio, but I also took it to a pop gig (think ryan adams meets ben folds) thinking it would fill space better than my J, but I was just totally unhappy with the sound--the pots were too on/off and it hummed like a mother, and it was too muddy or too clanky. Though this could be the hot for p which worked well for the video guy's rockin' ways but not for ryan adams stuff.
The aforementioned link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz6lIHpT6Mo
All that is to say, I have a bunch of J pups sitting around at home, an uncle with a dremel and a yen to solder something. I had a couple scenarios in mind:
-Add a J pup in the bridge (I have a set of MIM pups and MIA pups from other swaps)
-all new pots and cap (what's the value that everyone swaps the stock fender for?)
-a less likely option, add another J pup to the neck position like a mudbucker, but with out the "-bucker" distinction.
Then for wiring options:
-Push-pull vol/parallel knob
-Maybe turn the stock tone into a volume for the J like on the G&L SB2(?)
-An on/off for the J and keep the tone knob
-Add a chicken-head knob as a 3 way selector
-etc.
I started looking around lmii.com and stewmac for ideas and there are a lot of options. I'm not necessarily looking for something conventional, but you know, useful is nice. I'm mostly just bored and switching out pots is relatively cheap when you already have pups. What do you guys think I should do/what's a good way to go about this? I'm mostly just lookin for more ideas.
Thanks for gettin' through the novel,
Chris
EDIT: Thinking about it, I wouldn't be adverse to a pre or some crazy cap that does weird things (like that black diamond thing that I heard is useless), but since funds are low, it wouldn't happen right away...so maybe plan for expansion?
