Epiphone Zenith preamp switches

[bowthing]

Do any Zenith owners out there know exactly what the two switches on the [Shadow] preamp do? I just got a Zenith, and I'm playing with the setup and electronics. As far as I can tell, the switches affect only the magnetic pickup. The lower switch seems to be a gain control, and flipping it toward the tail gave me a much better balance between the two pickups (out of the box, the bridge was WAY louder than the magnetic pup).

The upper switch seems to make a slight difference in tone for the magnetic pup, but I haven't zeroed in on exactly what it is doing. Has anyone figured this out? This is a pretty weird bass! The neck is very nice, though...

[Wolftone]

I just got my Zenith the other day. Would love to know what the switches do. Not much gain on those eq, pu volume controls either.

[Wolftone]

I am waiting for some tapewound strings. The fretnoise of the round wounds is just too much. It may turn out to be not such a versitile bass as they advertised!

[Jeff Scott]

Let me get this straight, you bought a new bass (of your own choosing) but don't know how it works?

[Wolftone]

Well now this bass was bought from a big refurbishment centre and sold by an ebay store. I thought I knew it, but the controls (concentric eq and volume for each pup) do nothing. So looking inside there is a Shadow pcb with mini pots attached and 2 unknown slider switches right on the pc board. So I closed up the electronics cavity and said F-it! All I could do is re-seat the Nanoflex bridge pup which also did not help. Like the Epi Ultra II Les Paul guitars this unit has a design flaw in the circuitry that can only be corrected like the guitarists do, and chuck the pcb and fill the cavity with new pots and wiring!

[Jeff Scott]

Sorry to hear this, bummer about the preamp in your Epi.

[Wolftone]

Replacing the onboard preamp with an ARTEC MB1 master blender board. Tone/volume pots on the stock board do nothing. Will let you know how it works out.