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OLP wiring confusion

D

Darkside

Jul 5, 2011
4
0
#1
Hi, I am relatively new to bass electronics (and the forum) and am feeling somewhat confused about the wiring in an OLP mm2 bass i recently won on ebay.

Upon receiving the bass and 1st playing it, the bass sounded extremely dull, crackly and just outright cut out. I opened the control plate to investigate and noticed lose and broken wires with poor soldering. Attempting to look for wiring guides on the net nothing I found resembled how my bass was wired.

It is safe to assume the previous owner has modified the wiring but could anyone please explain to me the situation with the wiring posted below and offer any help or advice? (oh, and the grey p/u wire aswell as being soldered onto the pot was soldered onto the red wire next to it via the white core but fell apart upon opening!)

Thanks!

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
#2
I'm not sure what is up here, but that is completely ridiculous.

I don't know what the first pot is doing, but the second pot adds a series resistance to the signal path, and it looks like there is a capacitor permanently wired in to remove high frequencies.
The third pot simply decreases the output impedance by varying a resistance parallel to the signal. Then it looks like there is a resistor and capacitor in parallel, in series with the signal.

Rewire it like a standard Jazz bass.
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
 
#3
Thanks for the help, yeah, I have ready a good few times it should really be wired like a jazz which adds to the confusion of it all.
Can you see any feasible reason for an alteration like this? Also, all of the diagrams I have seen have p/u's with atleast 2 wires, the p/u wiring of the bass has 1 grey wire which consists of a white wire surrounded by unsheathed wire (which is what is soldered to the 1st pot) is this normal?
 
#4
Darkside said:
Thanks for the help, yeah, I have ready a good few times it should really be wired like a jazz which adds to the confusion of it all.
Can you see any feasible reason for an alteration like this? Also, all of the diagrams I have seen have p/u's with atleast 2 wires, the p/u wiring of the bass has 1 grey wire which consists of a white wire surrounded by unsheathed wire (which is what is soldered to the 1st pot) is this normal?
Click to expand...

I have no idea what the previous owner was trying to do. It makes absolutely no sense, so I'm assuming someone uneducated on the wiring of a bass was messing around.

I'm just curious, what's the color code on those resistors, and the value on the caps?

What you've described sounds like a single conductor output. The inner wire is the hot, and the braid around it is a ground. This is common, and for a single coil pickup, it is preferable, as the hot lead is shielded. The disadvantage is that the pickups cannot be wired in series.
 
#5
I'm somewhat uneducated myself but are the OLP mm2 humbuckers not dual coil? (neck & bridge)
Could 1 of the wires have been removed, although I do not see any signs of this.
The grey wire HAS been cut in half and taped back together though as I dont think they could thread it through the original routing after taking it out as they made a NEW routing hole (and cut out a trench) under the scratchplate!! But I guess that irrelevant.
anyway,
1st resistor is Grey, Orange black + brown
2nd is grey, orange light blue + dark blue

I'm not really sure how to read the cap value, the 1st reads 'I04J 2aosg' and the 2nd '2A 472K'
 
#6
THe OLP pickup is wired like two single coils in the same shell. It should have have two grey wires coming out of the pickups (one for each coil), both with a hot and ground inside. It was totally lame two have a MM pu with two volumes but I think It was an effort to offer the single coil sound in the bridge.

+1 to Line6man, that wiring is whack. The stock OLP did not look like that, I think it has been refinished as well cause that color I haven't seen Also there is no conductive paint. looking at the picture it seems that it was grounded to the plate but without the rest of the shielding.

are you in the UK? Link Removed i searched green olp bass and this looks like the same one. Can't be that many refinished in that color.
 
#7
Haha, yeah, it's the same bass. I did love the look of the refinish so had to put in a bid, although seeing some of the prices I do feel pretty ripped off looking at how much you can buy them in the states, I paid £185 (inc. £15 P&P) which converts to $296! Ah well.

So it's supposed to have 2 grey wires, as I thought. Hm.....would that mean only 1 pickup would be usable? Should I just get a new pickup?
Regretting buying it more and more now!
 
#8
Darkside said:
Haha, yeah, it's the same bass. I did love the look of the refinish so had to put in a bid, although seeing some of the prices I do feel pretty ripped off looking at how much you can buy them in the states, I paid £185 (inc. £15 P&P) which converts to $296! Ah well.

So it's supposed to have 2 grey wires, as I thought. Hm.....would that mean only 1 pickup would be usable? Should I just get a new pickup?
Regretting buying it more and more now!
Click to expand...

remove the pickup and look, it may have been bridged at the pu end to hard wire it parallel. we do make a few great OLP replacements...
 
#10
Darkside said:
Hi, I am relatively new to bass electronics (and the forum) and am feeling somewhat confused about the wiring in an OLP mm2 bass i recently won on ebay.

Upon receiving the bass and 1st playing it, the bass sounded extremely dull, crackly and just outright cut out. I opened the control plate to investigate and noticed lose and broken wires with poor soldering. Attempting to look for wiring guides on the net nothing I found resembled how my bass was wired.

It is safe to assume the previous owner has modified the wiring but could anyone please explain to me the situation with the wiring posted below and offer any help or advice? (oh, and the grey p/u wire aswell as being soldered onto the pot was soldered onto the red wire next to it via the white core but fell apart upon opening!)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I own several of those OLP's and the stock electronics are bad quality. I would replace all the pots, wiring and the jack. The parts are pretty cheap. You should get a better quality pickup also. Even though the diagram says the pots are 250K the pots in the OLP's are 500K
Link Removed
 
#11
Darkside said:
So it's supposed to have 2 grey wires, as I thought. Hm.....would that mean only 1 pickup would be usable? Should I just get a new pickup?
Regretting buying it more and more now!
Click to expand...

Someone must have replaced the pickup, or rewired it. It looks to me that they might have been trying to wire up passive bass and treble controls like on a G&L.

You only have on pickup in the bass. The way the OLPs are wired is you have a volume for each coil in the pickup. Musicman basses are not like this at all, but they needed to fill the extra control spot. I think that's kind of dumb.

You would be better off wiring the pickup in parallel and installing a 3rd party 2 band preamp to make it more like the real thing.
 
#12
I also thought the idea of having seperate volumes for each coil was dumb...until I bought an old OLP. I was surprised at the difference in sound between the two coils. But I ended up wiring them together. Even though MM pickups are wired parallel, I prefer the sound of the OLP coils in series.
 
#15
wcriley said:
I had originally planned on adding a preamp.
But after thinking about spending $100 on a preamp for a $100 instrument (that doesn't have enough strings) ...I sorta' lost interest.
Click to expand...

If you are handy with a soldering iron you can make one. It's only around $15 in parts and pots. The build is so easy it can be made on a proto board. I made one for my OLP 5 and this bass is singing
 
#16
wcriley said:
I also thought the idea of having seperate volumes for each coil was dumb...until I bought an old OLP. I was surprised at the difference in sound between the two coils. But I ended up wiring them together. Even though MM pickups are wired parallel, I prefer the sound of the OLP coils in series.
Click to expand...

This is a key point. I URGE you to wire the pickup like the Jazz diagram BUT the one with the series/parallel option with a push/pull switch on a volume control. This gives the bass an incredible sound and nice range of tone in a passive 'Ray. Basically you can do coils in series (which as Wcriley notes is very, very nice) and also do coils in parallel which is much brighter and then even choose or blend which coil you'd like. This mod REALLY turns an OLP into a killer passive 'Ray bass!

The ultimate, of course is a stingray clone active preamp to make it really authentic, but that is a bigger and more expensive project. For now try the Jazz bass series/parallel wiring. I think you'll be surprised by it.
 
#17
BassLife77 said:
If you are handy with a soldering iron you can make one. It's only around $15 in parts and pots. The build is so easy it can be made on a proto board. I made one for my OLP 5 and this bass is singing
Click to expand...

I spent quite a bit of time breadboarding and building preamps back in the early 80s, inspired by Craig Anderton's (and other) columns in Guitar Player Magazine.

These days, I'm too old and lazy to want to spend the time. :D (Especially while I'm so happy with EMG's 3-band w/variable mid preamps.)
 

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