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Dummy question...active to passive mod

E

eastcoasteddie

Guest
Mar 24, 2006
8,757
12,584
#1
Since I've defanged my Squire Deluxe active Jazz V (that name is too long), I felt that it is has a bit too much treble in it to sound like a good fretless. I have to roll off the treb pot all the way for it to sound "ok"
So I'm thinking of just removing the pre and install passive pots to give it that fretless Jazz warmth that I yearn for..
Is there a place I can get the whole pot/wiring setup as a whole? or do I have to get it all piece by piece?
Also, pups should be fine passive? They seem to be plain old SC's with 2 wires.

thanks in advance
 
#2
I don't know if you can get them all as one pre-made unit, but I changed over my Ibanez SG1200 from active to passive part by part, and it takes about 45 min, including looking up the wiring diagram from seymour duncan. and your current Pickups are already passive, so they are fine. as for wire, I got mine from my local electronics store, 22 ga. stranded copper will do you fine. (opening a HUGE can of worms here....) little secret... It does EXACTLY the same thing as the "specialty wire" at the local music store, for a fraction of the price. hope it helps! oh, and if you want to make the tone pot kill more of the highs, get a bigger cap. i.e. higher MF number (470MF will roll off more highs than a 360mf). the nice thing about this trick is that it has NO effect on the highs when the tone pot is fully on.
 
#4
jwymore said:
Is it a volume, volume, tone setup like a standard Jazz bass? If so we sell a Jazz Bass wiring kit that would do the trick.
Click to expand...

well, it's a 4-knob setup with the stock preamp
Vol, Blend, treb/bass stack and a mid pot.
I would change it to a standard vol/vol/tone setup as a passive instrument. I would just insert a stainless steel bolt/nut in the 4th hole to cover it, or a dummy pot or something.
Is there any other way to do it? a 4-knob passive setup?
 
#6
Hi Ed,

I've ordered from here Link Removed before - excellent harness for not too much. The only downside is that Butch is entirely a one man show, so orders probably will take every bit of two weeks to fill - I'd ask up front what his turn around time is running. There's probably other places to get a pre-wired jazz bass harness, maybe others can chime in. You could ask for 250K pots instead of the 500k pots for a warmer sound, or you may just want to experiment first with tone cap values to see if that's enough by itself to get you a warmer tone. AFAIK, the pickups in that bass are passive & should be fine by themselves. Short of a couple of EMG pickups, I'm not aware of much on the market that are true "active" pickups and contain a preamp unto themselves. Should be fine running the stock pickups passive. Hope it helps...

- Eric
 
#9
eastcoasteddie said:
well, it's a 4-knob setup with the stock preamp
Vol, Blend, treb/bass stack and a mid pot.
I would change it to a standard vol/vol/tone setup as a passive instrument. I would just insert a stainless steel bolt/nut in the 4th hole to cover it, or a dummy pot or something.
Is there any other way to do it? a 4-knob passive setup?
Click to expand...

Get a 3 hole plate...
That's what i did with my single pickup jazz bass.

Link Removed
 
#10
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#16
eastcoasteddie said:
any wiring diagrams available for this? I think I will go this route since I already have a 4-hole plate...
Click to expand...

If you really need it, i can draw you one, but what you would do is connect the output terminals on the two volumes straight to the jack, and not the tone control. Then connect the tone to the middle terminal of one volume, then add a second tone and connect it to the middle terminal of the other volume.
 
#17
i have the deluxe active jazz V... and i too found the stock pre not quite up to par...so i ordered an Aguilar odp-3 with the push pull mid selector (what the switch does stock)... and am using my switch as a active/passive toggle...and i ditched my blend and volume pots to switch them out for two stacked pots so i can control each of my pickups independently with a volume/tone and volume/Tone setup... so i have a good ol fashioned passive bass setup and at the flick of a switch i can engage my active pre for a plethora of sounds.... this kind of thing might work out for you as well... only cost me 170 bucks...but who wants money when you can have TONE!
 
#18
bassguitarded said:
i have the deluxe active jazz V... and i too found the stock pre not quite up to par...so i ordered an Aguilar odp-3 with the push pull mid selector (what the switch does stock)... and am using my switch as a active/passive toggle...and i ditched my blend and volume pots to switch them out for two stacked pots so i can control each of my pickups independently with a volume/tone and volume/Tone setup... so i have a good ol fashioned passive bass setup and at the flick of a switch i can engage my active pre for a plethora of sounds.... this kind of thing might work out for you as well... only cost me 170 bucks...but who wants money when you can have TONE!
Click to expand...

I did buy an OBP-3 for this bass a few months ago. Although the preamp sounded very sweet, I felt it sounded too clean for my tastes. I like the grittiness of the stock squier preamp, especially that I made it a fretless. You can make it sound really weird at times. I wound up selling it in the classifieds all pre-wired by me. I forgot who I sold it to, but they made out like a bandit with that one!!!

But as a fretless, I want to capture a more traditional tone only a passive jazz bass has.
 
#19
robert43 said:
Hi here is not a exact digrame but if you follow the 1st but add the 2 tone as shown here
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]


[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

but lust lose the 3 way switch
Click to expand...

I notice that in the Jazz bass diagram, they show 250K pots. Shouldn't a passive bass use 500k pots, as shown in the guitar diagram?

EDIT...I did some searching on this forum, and found a lot of good information on pot resistances.
I see that 250K pots will give you a warmer tone, which is what I'm after. But I also found a thread with a response from line6man, which reads:

"The more pots you have in your circuit (this does not apply to active tone controls), the darker your tone.
So 1M pots are generally used when you have alot of pots in your circuit."

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=494664

So for a 4-pot setup, what resistance posts should I get?

also, it is suggested that Linear pots be used for tone controls and Audio pots for volume. Is it bad to use Audio pots in both vol and tone?
I see that Carvin offers the opposite; Linear for Vol, Audio for Tone
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=494664
Does it really matter???
 
#20
line6man said:
If you really need it, i can draw you one, but what you would do is connect the output terminals on the two volumes straight to the jack, and not the tone control. Then connect the tone to the middle terminal of one volume, then add a second tone and connect it to the middle terminal of the other volume.
Click to expand...

yeah, if you could draw one up...that is if it isn't too much trouble.
is the mini-switch tor series/parallel a PITA to do also?

I'm going to buy all the pots and a switch separately, and buy some wire, so I'll be pretty much wiring it up from scratch. I've changed enough preamps in basses in the last year that I'm fairly confident I won't screw this up...:cool:
 

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