Unidentified onboard EQ.......

[Ritchie_Darling]

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!

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.

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??

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Originally Posted by Ritchie_Darling

Any clues??

Any pics?

Regards
Sam

[PilbaraBass]

how positively bizarre...

[Alexdeth89]

I'd like to see some pics too

[khutch]

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