Help with Hollowbody - Possible Darkstar content

If you plan on a pickup change anyway, it would make no sense to get it rewired just to have it done again with the pickups. But I'd be willing to bet money that the guy who had it before was an idiot and wired it wrong.

TaySte_2000 said:

Hi all, I recently bought one of the Reissue Dearmond Starfires I all ready had one in Cherry Red and managed to find a black one for a really good price.

Now the only cosmetic problem was it had 2 additional holes drilled where 2 switches had been to do Series/Parrallel and Coil Splitting but now they are just holes as all this has been removed so clearly the whole bass has been rewired. But it's got like 1/2 the output of my Cherry Red one which is already a quite a bit quieter than my other basses but then again it's a hollowbody with flats on it so I'm cool with that. But the black one is really quiet but then I get distortion on some of the strings and if I bend it I lose signal completely, this is when the string no longer lines up with the poles but I do the same on my red one and I still get sound.

I'm wondering if this sounds like a wiring problem and if so what could it be? Loose connection? Pickups wired out of phase? and should I bother spending the money to get someone to rewire it or get it Darkstar'ed where the rewire will be part of the install.

Any advice would be great.

Cheers

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First check out the pickup height. If they're the same as your working bass, then I'd suspect the re-wiring job is at fault. Could be something to do with the pots and capacitors used too.

Getting a Darkstar conversion job done is an expensive proposition so you'll have to decide whether it's enough of an improvement over the stock sound to warrant it. That would of course take care of any possible wiring problem if done by someone competent.

Since you already have one in red, my inclination would be to Dark Star the ebony one giving you two different tonal flavors. I have a Dark Star in a P-type bass and I'm very impressed with it.

That one is a classic for Dark Stars. I would do that in a heartbeat! Otherwise have a tech sort out the wiring.

This is one of the few instruments out there that I wouldn't undertake the re-wire myself. I guess at this point maybe but it would be a challenge due to the limited access to the cavity

My understanding of how to so this FWIW ...

Decide how you want to work with the pickup leads - most often they get unsoldered at the pickup or get clipped there. The alternative is to unsolder the wires from the switch - carefully noting what goes where. Mark the north end of the switch for orientation so you can interpret your diagram later!

Then ...
1. pull the knob's
2. firmly secure fishing line to the pot & switch shafts leaving a few feet of slack
3. remove the nuts and retaining washers
4. Carefully start pushing things into the cavity and fish things out being careful not to stress the harness
5. remove the fishing line from each component and label it (neck vol, bridge tone - that sort of thing)
6. tie each individual strand of line into a loop, leaving it passing through the body. You'll use the line to assist in pulling the components back through later
7. make a template of the layout using cardboard and the holes on the bass body
8. Insert each component into the template and secure with the retaining washer's & nut's

- there's your work bench. Do the re-wire and then reverse the steps. Having actually listed this out - I'm still inclined to pay for this one. It's not like doing a J Bass after all ... guys who've done it a few times are going to have some tricks to make life easier.