alternative control schemes for a 4 hole passive PJ 5

Master volume. Blend (or a switch). Treble roll off. Bass roll off.

The reason why I prefer a switch vs. a blend, especially on a PJ, is that backwards volume pots load your signal in a way that regular volume pots don’t. You’ll always have one pot loading then other pot in a multiple volume pot situation.

If you want multiple volume pots with properly switching of pickups, you can always use a VVT with a switch, too, but making the volume pots regular volumes like a Les Paul and not backwards volume knobs like a Jazz Bass.

 

A simple thing that I find very musical is a cap selector switch (like Tonestyler, but you can make your own much cheaper). You can wire it in place of the cap for the tone control, or in parallel with the tone control (as a separate control). I particularly like what small caps do to the character of the pickup(s).

Re: Q-filter, my understanding is that yes, it is sort of a mid cut control. It also seems to raise the resonance frequency. Some discussion and diagrams here. Some folks on TB really like them, so it’s definitely a contender. But it can be done with a switch on the tone control, leaving the 4th hole for something else.

Bass cut is an option, but I’m not sure if a PJ naturally has that much bass to cut. Perhaps if it was implemented with a series wiring (or even OMG, or “bass boost”).

The fourth knob could also be a rotary pickup selector switch, I think Dingwall does that on some models (neck, bridge, series, parallel).