Unidentified onboard EQ.......
 

I recently ended up with a set of passive EMG pickups and figured I would drop them into my MIM Jazz bass.

What a mess THAT turned out to be!

First a little history. I got the jazz bass in a trade for some other gear. The guy told me it had been fitted with an active onboard EQ. It had a volume, blend, and stacked bass/treble knob and sounded good. No visible battery compartment on the body. I asked and he said it was under the pickguard.

Imagine my surprise when I pulled the pickguard off! It appeared that someone started off with a Dremel, then gave up and went right to the chisel! Yeah, it fits. But man is it ugly! :rollno:

So then I get to the EQ. No real indication as to who made it. No proper brand name anywhere to be found. But, there is a circuit card that has "www.sho-music.com" printed on it. :eyebrow:

The link leads to some Japanese singer's website. So no joy there. I tried the standard Google searches. No luck.

I went ahead with the EMG install and it all sounds good. However, I still have no idea who made it.

Any clues??

Hi.

Any pics?

Regards
Sam

how positively bizarre...

I'd like to see some pics too

It is probably some off brand Asian preamp. Have you tried looking on ebay? Whoever put it in there had to get it somewhere and I am guessing ebay. If you like the way it sounds then I would not worry about it. Preamps really are not hard to design and there are many, many small Asian firms that are perfectly capable of making a decent one. If you are absolutely driven to know what you have then you can replace it with an aftermarket preamp from a source you like. As far as the battery compartment goes there are a whole lot of people who are not going to do their best work when it is going to be covered over by a pickguard....

Ken