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Delano JSBC's

B

Brado

Oct 19, 2005
386
11
47
Buda, TX.
www.myspace.com
#1
Anyone out there with some extensive knowledge in all things wiring/ electronics; I could use your help. I have a bass with 3 Delano JSBC's in it. I want to wire the bass vol,vol, voL, tone. Passive. These pickups have 5 wires...green, white, yellow, brown & bare. The Delano website schematics (for the JSBC's) show 2 wire conductor (black & white). Not sure why they did that. I referenced the regular soapbars (SBC's) to find out what the 5 wires do. If I'm thinking right, each pickup can be individually wired differently (series, single coil, or parallel) depending on which wires you assign where..Which also leads me to thinking that you can incorporate switches to change between, say, series single coil....etc....
Can anyone sketch out a wiring diagram for this?
vol, vol, vol, tone/ 3 switches (one for each pickup/ series, s.c., parallel)
Is this even possible? I have all of the holes I need to accommodate the above. I would be using a 2 prong output jack instead of three, as this will be a passive setup. Any helpful advice is much appreciated. Thanks.
 
#2
Brado, before you do anything with a wiring diagram, you should figure out why your JSBC pickups have 5 wires. My JSBCs only have two (signal and ground) and I was not aware that the JSBCs could be made with more. You should try 'hot-wiring' this bass to use one of the pickups with the coils in series (or parallel) and do some tests to make sure you know how the pickups work in that particular mode.

My reason for pointing this out is that your JSBCs may not be intended to run in 'single coil' mode since they are supposed to be a split coil pickup. They may well have given you the option of connecting both coils in parallel or series, but trying to run one coil at a time would probably only sense half of the strings. But it's worth trying anyway. Who knows, maybe they were able to fit a very narrow dual-coil humbucker in that shell. A quick 'tap test' with a small steel tool or screwdriver would tell you which part of the pickup is actually active in the 'single coil' setting.

For the SBCs this makes sense because both coils span the entire length of the pickup, so you actually do get different tonal results between the possible settings.

The other thing you could do is test each of the coils individually, or together (series and parallel) with an ohmmeter, and let me know what readings you get. I can compare these with my JSBC pickups and then we can make an educated guess about whether the default versions (2-conductor) are wired in series or parallel. This would satisfy my curiosity. :)
 
#3
Definitely email Delano for specs on those pickups! Post it here and I'm sure we can come up with a diagram for you :)

I've been thinking about a passive tone / preamp bypass switch for my Bee... I love the pre, but I'd like passive single coil as a recording option. I already have a series/single coil/parallel switch on mine.
 
#5
I've got an FE7MC or some such... typical MM style. I had requested the bass with a passive tone but it was dropped somewhere along the email order chain. I just haven't got around to upgrading it myself yet.

I haven't emailed with him in quite a while so I don't know what his current email response time is.
 
#6
Brado said:
@ Tubby Twins: Ahhhhh. I'll look into that.
@ James. What pickup/ pickups do you have in the Bee you're talking about?
I'll e-mail Reinhard. I've sent numerous e-mails to the guy with no reply. Maybe he'll get this one. I hope so.
Click to expand...

I have e-mailed Reinhard about 5 or 6 times over the last year. Sometimes he has replied within 24 hours; a few times he has taken about a week or so to e-mail me back. Nonetheless, he has always replied.
 
#8
OK. I got the bass up & running again/ passive. Using the "SBC" wire-color guide, I could only get these pickups to work wired as parallel. This is when you have the green & white together (hot) yellow, brown & bare are the ground. I tried them as series, but got an incredibly thin sound (green is hot, yellow/ white connect, brown & bare are ground). I didn't try single coil/ It worked in parallel, so that's what I'll stick with until I can figure out something else from there.
 
#9
That's really weird. If they sound that "thin" in series mode, then I would think it's an issue of the two coils being out of phase. But with the way you've described the wiring in parallel mode, it doesn't make sense.

You've got some really strange and rare pickups there!
 
#10
I'm just going off the diagrams you find on Delano's website. And, since the JSBC's only have a 2 wire conductor diagram, I'm going off the SBC diagram. Maybe I got an experimental set of pickups? dunno....I'm pretty much to the point of leaving the bass passive for now/ Maybe mess around with the pot values to get the treble response right for my taste. Either that, or....the other alternative....pay someone to just wire it up active again & let it be. I'm losing sleep over this whole mess. Trying to understand it all & make educated guesses on how to get what I'm after is racking my brain.
 
#11
OK. After 3 attempts, I've successfully installed my new Bee Pre. The bass sounds fantastic. The only thing that's different from how it was the day I got it is the passive routing of the pickups...no blend pot..vol, vol, vol, tone, then 3 band....For the tone cap, I used an old used one from an early 90's Fender jazz bass....I have no idea what the value of the cap is....All I know is this: It sounds great wide open or completely rolled off & everywhere in between. I'm learning! Yay! Electronics. What bliss.
 

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