This could be titled, "Examine your wiring carefully".
I wired up my two pickups about 3 or 4 weeks ago and used a blend pot.
I thought everything was fine. I checked my sound out and it appeared that the blend worked. When all the way to the bridge pickup (and playing over it) it sounded like I thought it should. When I blended all the way to the neck pickup, again it sounded like I thought it should (though not noticably different, aside from playing directly over the pickup).
At my last gig I was getting some distortion and assumed it was my cabinet. I turned down a bit and it seemed to go away, yet I could still hear some distortion.
Last night I was practicing through headphones (not using my cabinet) and when I played the strings hard (which I do...I'm a heavy player for most things) I heard that same distortion. I knew it wasn't my cab as I wasn't using it.
It sounded just like an active bass with a battery going out (but not dead)...very distorted, but only when I pounded the strings.
So, I decided to take a look at my wiring again. Sure enough, after much closer inspection under a magnifying glass, I noticed that on my blend pot, there was one single strand of my P-Bass pickup wire that was soldered to the jumper wire lug that fed the blend to the volume control.
I must have inadvertantly got one little strand of that wire to splinter off in that direction as I fed the hot pickup wire through the center lug.
I removed that strand and made sure all connections were totally seperate. Wow, what a difference in my sound (well, duh!
)!!! Now when I blend completely from one pickup to the other the sound is tremendously different in tone (which it should be), regardless of where I played. Before, I thought the tone was different but it was only because I was playing over each pickup to obtain that tone, as obviously that wayward strand of wire was enough to make both pickups "full on". Which, of course, sounded exactly like the way it does now when the blend pot is centered.
Plus, my distortion is completely gone now, no matter how hard I hammer my strings. What an idiot I was. Of course, that was my first wiring job ever...and I really should buy some reading glasses as my eyesight is rather poor for small things close up. Newbie mistake. It worked, but I was really shortchanging myself on tonal options (which was the purpose of two pickups).
One tiny strand caused all that, and I wasn't even aware of it...having used it that way for almost a month. My bass did sound great, and for the most part my favorite tone is when the blend pot is centered anyway, which might explain why I didn't really pay much attention. Were it not for the distortion, I may have left it that way. Though, not being very knowledgable about pickup wiring, I don't know what the technical reason was in the wiring that caused the distortion. But it's gone now anyway.
My point? Be absolutely sure that your connections are perfect, as it doesn't take very much at all to mess it up, even if slightly.
I wired up my two pickups about 3 or 4 weeks ago and used a blend pot.
I thought everything was fine. I checked my sound out and it appeared that the blend worked. When all the way to the bridge pickup (and playing over it) it sounded like I thought it should. When I blended all the way to the neck pickup, again it sounded like I thought it should (though not noticably different, aside from playing directly over the pickup).
At my last gig I was getting some distortion and assumed it was my cabinet. I turned down a bit and it seemed to go away, yet I could still hear some distortion.
Last night I was practicing through headphones (not using my cabinet) and when I played the strings hard (which I do...I'm a heavy player for most things) I heard that same distortion. I knew it wasn't my cab as I wasn't using it.
It sounded just like an active bass with a battery going out (but not dead)...very distorted, but only when I pounded the strings.
So, I decided to take a look at my wiring again. Sure enough, after much closer inspection under a magnifying glass, I noticed that on my blend pot, there was one single strand of my P-Bass pickup wire that was soldered to the jumper wire lug that fed the blend to the volume control.
I must have inadvertantly got one little strand of that wire to splinter off in that direction as I fed the hot pickup wire through the center lug.
I removed that strand and made sure all connections were totally seperate. Wow, what a difference in my sound (well, duh!
)!!! Now when I blend completely from one pickup to the other the sound is tremendously different in tone (which it should be), regardless of where I played. Before, I thought the tone was different but it was only because I was playing over each pickup to obtain that tone, as obviously that wayward strand of wire was enough to make both pickups "full on". Which, of course, sounded exactly like the way it does now when the blend pot is centered.Plus, my distortion is completely gone now, no matter how hard I hammer my strings. What an idiot I was. Of course, that was my first wiring job ever...and I really should buy some reading glasses as my eyesight is rather poor for small things close up. Newbie mistake. It worked, but I was really shortchanging myself on tonal options (which was the purpose of two pickups).
One tiny strand caused all that, and I wasn't even aware of it...having used it that way for almost a month. My bass did sound great, and for the most part my favorite tone is when the blend pot is centered anyway, which might explain why I didn't really pay much attention. Were it not for the distortion, I may have left it that way. Though, not being very knowledgable about pickup wiring, I don't know what the technical reason was in the wiring that caused the distortion. But it's gone now anyway.
My point? Be absolutely sure that your connections are perfect, as it doesn't take very much at all to mess it up, even if slightly.
