So I learned a few things last night. I got the new pickup in from Carvin and opened it up. The pickups didn't come with any instructions on how to swap them out. I went online and watched some YouTube videos on the best way to do it. Specially a series of videos from Lollar Pickups on how to do it on a stratocaster was helpful.
Side note, I used this $22 solder dealio from Radio Shack to do the work with some .032 solder:
There were a couple of issues I was having with my SB5001. The main one was it was buzzing like a single coil pickup will do when solo'ed, but with both pickups fully engaged. Carvin's support assumed this was due to not have a reverse polarity pickup installed, hence the new pickup. The other was a lack of low end when both pickups were on full. This was not attributed to the pickup issue by Carvin support.
So I got all my equipment together and opened up the bass. I removed both pickups first and checked the labeling. They were labeled correctly. The neck pickup had a J99AR white printed sticker on it and the bridge pickup had a piece of masking tape with J99A hand written on it. The pickups that Carvin sent had white printed stickers on them like the neck pickup did. So I assumed that the bridge pickup with the hand written masking tape label was actually mislabeled so I decided to swap that one.
This was the first time I've changed a pickup on bass I think and its been a really long time since I did it on a guitar as well, but it was fairly easy. I spent a while looking at the ends of the new pickup and how those ends were connected on the one that was installed. It was just three wires and two of them connected at the same place. So I unsoldered the existing connections and removed that pickup. I fed the new pickup wire into the control cavity and soldered it back in its place. Not as pretty as the original soldering, but tested it out and it was functional. So I sealed it back up, readjusted the pickups to match my SB5000 and restrung it.
Upon playing it I immediately noticed that the buzzing was gone when both pickups where fully engaged and it seemed to sound fuller as well similar to my SB5000. So I decided to rerecord both basses again. When I plugged in each bass to my home recording software, I watched closed the input meter for each. I noticed with all settings the same the SB5000 came in at about -11db while the SB5001 came in at -12 to -13db. I opened up the SB5001 to try and adjust the internal gain but it was already maxed out.
So I thought maybe it was a battery thing. My SB5000 has semi fresh Duracell 9V batteries in it. So I went to swap the batteries and seemed to notice a bit of a output change with the SB5000 so I went to test the SB5001 with the Duracells to verify only to find the bass dead. I immediately started flip flopping the Duracells to see if I had installed them incorrectly or if the 9V leads were crossed in the bass. They were not. I put the original Rayovac 9V batteries back in the SB5001 and the Duracells back in the SB5000 and both started working again. I pulled out the batteries and held them side by side and the Rayovacs were a hair longer. I can only assume this is why the SB5001 won't work with the Duracells.
A side note, I returned a SB4000 after a similar event. The Rayovac batteries it shipped with were dead, so I put in a new set of Duracells and the bass would not play so I assumed the preamp was bad and sent it back for a refund.
So with all that said, here is the new A/B clip between the basses. The SB5000 is first, the SB5001 is second. All settings are the same on each bass. The SB5000 still has the dead DR HiBeams on it and the SB5001 has the Carvin SS strings that came with it:
SB5000 vs. SB5001 Take 2
And here is the old clip (with the mislabeled pickup) for comparison:
Original SB5000 vs. SB5001
What y'all think?
Things I learned:
Buzzing with both pickups engaged can mean it needs a pickup swap
Duracells seem to produce a little more output from the bass
Duracells are shorter than Rayovacs
If Rayovacs have been used before, Duracells might not work
Pickup swapping ain't that hard
