Fender Jazz Bass - Low output?

Does the volume pot work normal?

 

No it is not normal that low output for Jazz Bass or any other bass. It may have to do with volume pot. Take off the control plate and measure the ohmic resistance between volume pot's first and third leg. It should read 250 K or a value close to this if am not mistaken. If not then you may need to replace this pot.

 

Are the pickups very low? Perhaps they need to be raised. The resistance rating of a pot has to do with the volume control at its minimum. If the volume is turned up all the way resistance should be zero or very close.

 

Thanks for correcting me @sissy kathy. Then he should check is there zero resistance when volume turned all the way up.

 

A bass requires about 4 times the power that a guitar does. That said even a 20 watt amp would produce enough volume for you to comfortably hear the bass. It sounds to me like you need a set of pickups.

 

It's very rare to have both pickups need to be replaced.

 

Agreed. We have no history of this bass though. There is pitifull little that can go wrong in a passive bass. With the pickups at maximum, that pretty much eliminates a bleed through to ground killing the signal The only other thing I can think of is perhaps the tone cap is shorted out, Talk about rare. That's easily checked though cut the tone cap free of either the pot tab or the rear of the pot (which ever lead is longest.) See if your volume comes back then. Usually when caps fail they go to open, but anything is possible I guess.

 

Try playing it way up the neck on your D/G strings, so you're well into guitar territory. It isn't the pickups that require more power, it's the low notes that require more power to be heard.

 

If tone cap is shorted out then mater tone control has no effect on tone of bass.

 

Didn't think of that. Good catch. If the cap is a small one twisting the nob my not tell you much.

 

no problem mate.

 

Can you solder?

The next step in debugging is to disconnect one pickup from the electronics and connect it via crocodile clips directly to a guitar cable.

 

Is it new? Contact the retailer.

Is it used? Hard telling what previous owner(s) did.
Check with previous owner to see if they can shed any light on this.

If you're going to open it up, check for stray wires touching things they shouldn't.
Pots will have values and or model numbers.
Are the two pickups wired wrong or out of phase.
Those are my non-soldering suggestions.

Otherwise have a guitar tech look at it for you.

 

Yes. Single coils have less output than humbuckers.

Raise your pickups. The neck should be about an eighth inch lower than your bridge pickup. Up the gain a little bit. If you play a P bass at 1:00, your jazz bass will be at about 2 - 2:30 to be around the same input level.



What it sounds like to me is that you have a pad switch on. Like, mic/inst/line. But, I could be wrong. Check the input level on your device.

10w is more than enough to hear your instrument. Don't worry about that. 1w is more than enough to hear yourself. If it wasn't, then the "amplug" wouldn't work...and it does.

A ground could be hitting something also, but that usually just means you get no sound at all.

Have you tried another cable, instead of just trying different devices?

 

If you'll look you'll see he's trying to use an underpowered Guitar amplifier to power his bass. His little dinky 10 watt amp doesn't have the juice to drive his bass. He's been told this several times on this site and at least once by a tech at his home.