It's been very silent from me for a long long time. I'm very sorry about that! But I'm back to tell you all about a very fascinating update that I have had done to the electronics of my 6-string fretless Clement Jon bass.
From the start, this bass was equipped with a piezo bridge, two Lace Sensor Alumitone pickups, and a ToneStyler tone control. To balance the magnetic and piezo pickups, a Bartolini piezo/magnetic buffer was installed.
The Alumitone pickups were placed a bit unusually, with the bridge pickup closer to the MusicMan Stingray sweet spot position, and the neck pickup in front of this. I soon discovered that the neck pickup was obsolete with the bridge pickup in the sweet spot position, so I removed it, and instead put on a big ramp in front of the sweet spot pickup. After installing a ToneStyler in a fully passive bass, I also realized that the ToneStyler is actually a device that is only usable in a truly passive setup. The addition of the piezo/magnetic buffer rendered the ToneStyler pretty unusable. So I removed that as well. For several years, I kept the bass like this, with only a single volume control and a blend between the remaining magnetic pickup and the bridge piezo. I have used the magnetic pickup mostly, and just dialed in a slight hint of piezo to make the
Fast forward to February this year. I was discussing Jazz bass pickups with a Norwegian pickup vendor named Edmire Pickups. We came into discussing piezo pickups, and he told me that he had actually developed a circuit that allowed the piezo signal to blend with the magnetic pickup in a different way. He had never done this installation on a bass before, and was interested in using my Clement "Tundra" Jon as a test vehicle for his first bass ciruitry! In the course of development and discussion, Ed and I came up withe the name for the circuitry: The Piezo Elegance System - PES!
Basically, Edmire implemented a dual mode bass with a rotary switch to switch between the two different modes. The first mode is the traditional BLEND mode. This works in the way that we as bass players are accustomed to. It simply blends between magnetic and piezo pickup. In the mid position (indented), both pickups are on full. When you roll counterclockwise you roll off the bridge piezo, and when you roll clockwise, you roll towards the bridge piezo.
The more interesting mode is the "PES" mode. When you put the bass in the PES mode, the blend control changes functionality and becomes a treble boost/cut control. In this mode, the magnetic pickup is always on, and forms the "base tone" of the signal. When you roll off the treble boost/cut (counterclockwise from the indented mid-position) you cut the highs, like a traditional passive tone control. When you roll up from the indented mid position (and clockwise), you boost the treble. This is actually done by gradually adding the piezo signal to the signal from the magnetic pickup. So unlike a "normal" treble boost, which just boosts the treble that's already in the signal, the PES treble boost adds the signal from the piezo, so it retains the acoustic character of the piezo signal.
So what does this mean?! It actually means that the frequency spectrum from the bass sounds fuller and more natural than when boosting treble from a normal treble boost on a preamp, for example.
In addition, Edmire hid two mini potmeters inside the control cavity of the bass. One of them allows me to round off the piezo signal, and cut the highs that the piezo gives. The second potmeter allows me to tame the bass from the piezo a bit. Both of these will affect the piezo signal in both modes, but the treble round off has most effect in PES mode, while the bass control has more effect on the blend mode (it acts similar to a high-pass filter, which is very useful on piezo-equipped instruments).
In addition to the PES circuitry, Ed also put in a Bartolini preamp that I sent him, so I have a "traditional" 2-band preamp (that works in both modes).
And on top of everything, the bass is completely silent. No noise whatsoever. Although the control cavity is pretty cramped and the circuitry is extremely complex, the work is extremely tidy done.
So finally the Clement fretless has an electronics package that suits the instrument! I'm extremely happy with the Clement Jon fretless, especially now that it's got Edmire Pickup's PES system installed!
so that will be my excuse for now. 
