Recent content by collibosher

Both my pickups are "floating" and the ground to the copper in their shrouds is separate. The appropriate wire is connected to ground when the Pup is selected. I have a 2-pole 3/5-way switch (cheap stratocaster/telecaster type) with the J-bridge Pup connected to 3, the P-neck Pup connected to 1...

Mine's in the bargain basement. It started life as a very cheap Harley Benton Jazz copy, I had to replace the neck as it was warped and the truss rod wouldn't move. While I had it apart, I remodelled and repainted the body to make a PJ with extra space for active electronics. So the last thing I...

I managed to reduce a hum (but not lose it totally) in a PJ setup by lining the pickup cover with copper tape (stopping just short of the 8 holes for the poles) taking it round the back of the pickup and connecting it to the main copper lining in the control panel area. I'm working on it in a...

Just to say, I wasn't taking the piss! My partner said that she'd love to have that hanging on the wall. Even though it's prob 60s it's got a real "art deco" look about it.

My band is Bass, Guitar, Drums, Vocals. The drummer and bass also do backing vocals. We're a Britpop band, think sixties, mod revival and pub-rock. We've had to follow much better musicians than ourselves onto the stage, often they had an extra guitarist. But our setup means no trying to be...

Finally got together my very own Frankenstein bass, with the Artec SE3 at its centre! This is the circuit that I used (the rounded oblong at the top is actually a Telecaster-type control plate with an extra hole drilled in it. The dots top left form a standard 5-way guitar switch. The volume...

Brilliant for $20, £14.34 in British money. If it works it's even better!

I'm going to see if I can cure the hum, and I'm not too concerned about a one-off quiet plop which only occurs the first time I switch in "active". I might ask you some more stuff if I get stuck. Thanks so far.

Thanks for this. I've not had a problem with switch pop, but I have with hum which is present when the active circuit is switched OUT and the volume control is not at either end. I am going to try your bypass switch method, and see whether earthing the pre-amp input makes a difference. I'm...

Finally put it together today, got amp in and tested earlier. As for switch pop... the only pop I get is if I leave the bass switched to passive, plug into the amp, and then the first time I switch to active I get a small boom, but not again until I unplug the bass. Switching back and forth is...

Here's an example of the kind of stuff we play, indexed at the start of a guitar solo. Kenney Jones is quite disciplined at the point where Ronnie Lane does a little run on the bass. Otherwise it all goes to pot. What you don't want is a drummer who goes off on one during a bass run because...

I don't think anyone has the lead, it's a song by song thing. If you're jamming that's one thing. But you should be rehearsed well enough to know your part in a 3-minute pop song. Can we have a third item, "it depends on the song".

Our previous drummer used to do that sometimes and it could be annoying. Sometimes I wanted him to hold the beat while I played a few notes at double speed, not jump from 4/4 time to 2/4 time! Particularly as we played 60s mod, with a power trio plus singer. If I went off, he had to keep it...

Another go at this. I was thinking that if you switch out the active circuit, you will get a 50k volume pot across the pickup. Might do for battery emergencies to get you to the end of a song, but not so sure about switching for an alternative type of sound. So here's yet another go. I noticed...

Sorry again, but this time for passing on naff information. The diagram I found above was on the site of a guitar maker/seller. It convinced me that you can bypass an Artec SE3, so I ordered one. Having looked closely at it, I can see that, yes, it is possible, actually very easy, but the...