poor man's P-bass Aguilar OBP-3 mod

[JimmyTheSaint]

I really like my late model Fender American Precision's playability: nice feeling neck finish, reasonably low action (but not as low as my Zon or Fodera), 20 frets, one pickup, and wide string spacing all make it great for slapping, which is mostly what I do on bass. But I never cared much for its tone compared to my active basses. So I installed an Aguilar OBP-3 with concentric treble/bass and push-pull mid, and whose compactness fits it in nicely in the existing space next to the output jack. I wired a replacement stereo jack to transmit power from RING on a TRS cable and plugged in the TRS cable from my Line 6 Variax power supply and voila: active P-bass, no drilling, no routing, no battery---and no volume pot, which is the only drawback. The new sound has totally saved my P from the closet.

I installed shorted dummy 9V terminals in all my other active basses and now power them from the Line 6 power supply, as I described here:

Zon Lightwave: The Mystery of External Power

[rockern]

Hi,

I'm thinking about doing the same thing to my P and was wondering if you use the old output jack at all as I would like to just put the stereo jack in it's place?

[JimmyTheSaint]

In the setup I described above, I just replaced the mono jack with the stereo and had no need for the original jack.

Since then, I switched to one of those huge linear power supplies so that I could get clean power with up to 27V for the Ag. Since I discovered powering the Ag with 27V makes an audible difference (I slap a lot, and probably with more amplitude than most people), I'm going to build my own external 3 x 9V battery box which will also supply power on RING while passing the line signal through to the rig on TIP, the same way Line 6's XPS does with 9V. That way I'll have the non-portable power supply on all the time in the studio without concerns about draining batteries, and a battery powered supply for the gig bag. I'm going to put a volume pot on the external battery box.

[rockern]

Ok I see that when I read it again know. And is it difficult to build the battery box you describe? (I wouldn't do it myself since I have no knowledge of electrics but I know people who does).