Am I dreaming?

well, there are preamps out there that do just what you say - i.e. the J/U Retro.

But I've never found the after market parts to do this myself.

 

for your preamp. the EMG bqc control is righ tup your alley, it is high/low and mid/sweep. i know they also have stacked pots for their pickups, try emailing them as i have found their customer service pretty darn good

 

the best you could do with the emg setup would be vol/vol,bass/trebl,mid/sweep. Don't get me wrong, it's close but if he *needs* blend then this won't help.

 

I think the U-retro is the same preamp as the J-retro without the J-bass plate. So it could be mounted in nearly any bass.

The Aguilar obp-3 can be wired that way, but its hard to find the necessary parts. You can call them, or you'd probably have to get a modular custom pot for the mid/midsweep. I looked into this pretty heavily, I was going to do the exact same thing to my Pedulla fretless, it has only vol/blend/bass/treb.

Randy

 

that is correct.

 

FWIW:

if you can pull it off I would suggest you try and play a bass with that setup before buying. I personally found that mid setup undesireable. Had the EMG with variable mid and wired the OBP-3 that way. Also have a Lightwave that has mid and a sweep. Hard to find a tone and hard to get back if you do find it.

I've heard players comment about liking the onboard parametric EQ's like on the US MTD's but I don't recall anyone stating as much about a variable-mid/sweep. Maybe this post will bring out some related comment.

I've also ran across several comments from Wave owners stating they wish the sweep were a treble control instead - without ever having the opportunity to experience that or knowing the technology involved behind the Wave, I'm inclined to agree. Has piezo so maybe that's why they skipped the treble.

It dawned on me after after-the-fact that plenty of guys like the Retro pre's. That, there's been plenty of feedback on. Never had a Retro and wasn't even aware they had a mid sweep. My assumption has been the popularity of it was due to the drop in Fender aspect. Don't recall guys addressing the sweep aspect of it but I know I became aware of it and grew interested in it from someplace so maybe that was it. Until the OBP-3, they wasn't anything small enough to fit in the Fender otherwise and that may even be the reason Aguilar designed in the option.

 

I couldn't find a pot off the shelf to do this, which surprised me. Dual 500K linear taper didn't sound like it would be so hard to find. Email to Aguilar looking for a source came up with zip- they didn't know of one, and that's why that wiring config is listed as optional. I think they would offer it prewired otherwise. This was back in April.

 

FWIW:

Volume pots are commonly used for tone pots. It's been over a year but that may well have been what I used. I had the EMG and the OBP-3 at the same time and I couldn't tell any difference in the way the variable mids worked tonewise - except it seems the OBP-3 had 3 different adjustments for mid instead of 2 - boost/cut, frequency, whatever else. I remember at the time I was thinking the Aguilar was 4 band thinking the mid stack controlled 2 different bands but I emailed Aguilar and they stated otherwise.

Seems kind of dumb to design something in that can't be used cause the parts not available. I would assume it must screw up the frequency curve othewise Aguilar wouldn't specify linear in their diagrams and they would have have mentioned an audio could be used when you called them but I'd call them again and ask specificially what' the deal.

I had a bunch of spare parts laying about but if it something so hard to find then it seems unlikely I'd have had one.

If Aguilar themselves doesn't know, probably a hard find.