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Fender Blacktop Club

#921
BAG said:
Hello Kitty shirt and 1970's hard rock hair. Please tell me this is your usual stage attire. It'd be even better if it was a Jazz gig.
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The t-shirt changes. The bass changes...frequently. Picks get changed every song! The "hair" stays the same. (As we play out more, I will invest in better "hair".) And no, it's not a jazz gig. Would have to have a Jazz Bass for that. We're a Ramones cover band...fronted by an Elvis tribute artist.
Ramon M.jpg
 
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#925
She has a maple Fender Deluxe Precision Special neck, WD brushed gold pickguard, LaBella flatwound strings, and most recently 62 reissue control plate and Nordstrand angled pole pickups. Alnico 3 magnets for the neck pickup and alnico 5 for the bridge.
 
#928
I'm interested to hear some other people's experience with the sound of the Blacktop Jazz.

With mine I have to up the mids and treble from 12 o'clock to around 2 o'clock to get a similar sound to my Franken P, Godin or Jag. For this reason I would describe it as a darker sounding bass. It may just be that it is fretless and my current knowledge of fretless basses is one..... this one. I also can't recall if i've seen another fretless Blacktop Jazz....but I digress.

When I run the neck volume full and tone around full (with the above settings) I get a sound similar to the above fretted basses. Turning the volume down a bit loses some top and mid just a little. Here's where I find it a bit weird. While keeping the neck pup at about 80% if I turn the bridge pup up to around 50-70% it actually gets a bit darker sounding as though some more top and/or mids have been cut on the lower notes but the higher notes now get a bit of that bridge pup honk sound, although not as much as the J pup on my Jag or Godin.

Right now, as I was typing the above paragraph I just had an "aha" moment and was about to delete this post but decided to press on. I assume that this is due to the spit P pup at the bridge naturally having more top end honk on the D and G due to that part of the pup being closer to the bridge compared to the E and A. Mind you, this doesn't really explain the sound getting a bit darker when blending pups or is this normal. Obviously my P has no bridge pup, the Godin has a pup selector so there's no blending, and with the Squier Jag shorty I only ever used the P pup as I didn't like the J....and i've barely played it in the last year.

Don't ya hate it when you answer your own question....Oh well, i'm going to post anyway now that i've written this.
 
#931
It is a custom built Precision by Mike Powers from Music Lab in Lansing Ill. It was made in 1978.It has a Bartolini pickup and an Aguilar preamp. I think the body may be a Schecter. A couple of years later Mike went on to work for Peavey, he was responsible for many of the basses that they produced.
 
#937
I would like to join the Blacktop Club. I got my Blacktop P about a year ago. I've been playing Epiphone Thunderbirds for years, but I needed a good road case and couldn't find an affordable T-bird road case. There are 1,000 options for P/J cases, so I decided to start looking for a Fender of some variety, and I found this 2012 beauty on eBay. The seller offered to take it back if I wasn't satisfied, but the twin humbuckers and high output really sealed the deal for T-bird loving ears. He swapped the original neck for a Squire J-neck, which he modified by cutting the headstock to look like an old P and adding a P decal. The shape looks a little off in this photo due to backlighting, but it looks good. I've been playing it for a year now and I dig it, but I want to get a better jazz neck, because the binding and blocks on this are just painted on. I also intend to replace the bridge with a more recent and solid high-mass bridge, and get the buzzy wiring checked out and possibly modified for a coil split option. My main rig is a Genz-Benz Streamliner into 1 or 2 original Eden D210XLT cabs, and it hits hard. I've read the first 8 or 9 pages of this thread, and will catch up soon.
IMG_1248.JPG
 
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#938
bassplayinben said:
I would like to join the Blacktop Club. I got my Blacktop P about a year ago. I've been playing Epiphone Thunderbirds for years, but I needed a good road case and couldn't find an affordable T-bird road case. There are 1,000 options for P/J cases, so I decided to start looking for a Fender of some variety, and I found this 2012 beauty on eBay. The seller offered to take it back if I wasn't satisfied, but the twin humbuckers and high output really sealed the deal for T-bird loving ears. He swapped the original neck for a Squire J-neck, which he modified by cutting the headstock to look like an old P and adding a P decal. The shape looks a little off in this photo due to backlighting, but it looks good. I've been playing it for a year now and I dig it, but I want to get a better jazz neck, because the binding and blocks on this are just painted on. I also intend to replace the bridge with a more recent and solid high-mass bridge, and get the buzzy wiring checked out and possibly modified for a coil split option. My main rig is a Genz-Benz Streamliner into 1 or 2 original Eden D210XLT cabs, and it hits hard. I've read the first 8 or 9 pages of this thread, and will catch up soon.
View attachment 1008921
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I put Precision Bass Special necks on mine: Jazz Bass width and available either with or without block inlays.
 
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#940
bassplayinben said:
Oh that's a good idea, I hadn't considered that. I have played a few Specials that I got close to buying. Any issues, or did they fit right in? I've switched out different components on various basses, but I've never done a neck swap.
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Fit like a glove. It's going to get harder with the new "offset" neck plates, but as long as you get a neck that isn't set up for those plates, you should be fine. I certainly had no problems.
 

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