What are some popular wiring mods for P Bass?

[Gear_Junky]

I am fairly confident with modding passive circuits, but never considered doing this on basses.

Curious: what do people do with their P-basses (other than upgrading component quality) - i.e. upping/changing pot/cap values, etc. and with what results?

(mine is a cheap SX Fretless, so I'm not concerned about butchering it)

[R. Laevinus]

Whenever I get my claws on a P-bass, I usually do the following to it immediately: An Orange Drop tone cap (the brand name makes me feel better about myself - but I tell guitards it has better tone) with a rating of either .047 for dark or .022 for bright tones;

An Orange Drop .001 treble bleed cap (helps maintain treble levels when you roll down the volume).

Sometimes, when I want a brighter P tone, I'll also swap out the pot for CTS 500's. Once I also installed a stereo output jack for a buddy who had problems with his jacks going bad - we figured the extra prong (connected to ground) would help secure the cord. It seems to have helped.

[Gear_Junky]

interesting. I don't usually roll off volume, so no need for treble bleeds.

mine is fretless, so i don't know if brighter should be a goal (maybe it should).

Upping the pots values is interesting - I know that Jazzmaster guitars have 1Meg pots on single coil pickups (the explanation I heard: the pickups were designed for jazz and were on the dark side, so the 1Meg pots choke them less). I wonder if this would be interesting on P.

I am all ears

[praisegig]

In my Pbass, I used Dimarzio pup, 250k pots and .068 orange drop cap. Dark when rolled off and pretty bright full on. Seems to my ear, it has more tone variation than an .047. JMHO.

[Arvin]

Originally Posted by Lon

In my Pbass, I used Dimarzio pup, 250k pots and .068 orange drop cap. Dark when rolled off and pretty bright full on. Seems to my ear, it has more tone variation than an .047. JMHO.

+1 on the .068 uF cap; that value makes for a very useful tone control.

[Gear_Junky]

wow, i woulda thunk that a higher value cap would be more abrupt in its range?