Sorry guys, I haven't been near a computer for a couple days. I got two kids with the flu and I'm trying to remodel my bathroom after work every day.
I really, really appreciate all the help and advice!
Michael --
Perhaps I didn't explain what I meant well. I am referring to being fair to the instrument. It is impossible for any of us to know / understand what has been done inside of the cavity of your bass without having it in front of us. It is also impossible for us to know whether or not there is a flaw in the pickups that you purchased, whether or not they are compatible with one another and/or the preamp and what the sound that you are hearing is.
Our minimum service charge is just $75 and it's doubtful that any issue you are having (unless one of the pickups is flawed) would cost more than $150 for us to fix properly -- or to tell you definitively that there is a problem that we cannot fix.
To me, with the level of instrument that you have chosen (and very big thanks for the kind words about your Monarch), it just doesn't make sense to continue your struggle when help is so easily available. Sadly, we are just not in a position to provide quality tech support on an instrument that has been modified with non-Fodera parts by someone not familiar with working on our instruments without seeing what is going on in person.
Please do not take this feedback as being meant than anything other than trying to help you get to the bottom of this problem that you have been experiencing for many weeks now as quickly as possible and with the highest probability of success.
And, again, if you ever try to get through to Joey and cannot, I have provided you my personal cell phone number...
Kindest regards,
Jason
Thanks Jason, I really appreciate the help and advice. It's also very cool of you to give me your personal cell phone number.
I honestly don't really want to ship the bass. It'll add another $120 to $150 to any fees I incur from you guys working on the bass. Also, like you said, I wouldn't want to have a mechanic on the phone to diagnose my problems, I wouldn't want to try to describe my tonal goals over the phone and work out trying to get the tone I want over distance. I really, really want to come in to get the work done myself. On top of that, if the bass is going in I want to have it pleked. The bass has been played A LOT. While I have the action as low as the bridge will go now and the neck straight as an arrow with no buzz at all, even when I dig in with med. light strings, I would like for it to be perfect again.
I'm definitely going to bring the bass in at some point. I'm just trying to get it good enough until I have the opportunity. I was actually planning on coming up last December when I had tickets to see Leonard Cohen, but we had to scrap that trip unfortunately.
I hear you. Waiting until you have the $$$ sucks in a case like this, but it might be worth the wait.
I think someone recommended wiring the bass passive as a temporary fix. Might be worth a try if you are comfortable doing so.
Good luck!
Yeah, it has been a bit of pain trying to do this on the cheap. I'm one of those "my bass is more expensive than my car" kind of people. My Fodera is the one nice thing I allow myself and is definitely my favourite object I own.
I'm definitely going to try the pickups wired straight to the jack and see what I get.
Thanks!
indeed. even easier. probably still best to disconnect the pre. hell you could just wire the p/up to a different 1/4-inch jack and leave it hanging while you experiment.
Thanks for the idea! I'm definitely going to try it. Can I just wire both pickups to the jack at the same time? I take it that would be in parallel?
Hi.
One quick thought:
Have you shuffled the p-pickup the right way around? There must be 4 combinations of twisting and turning both pickups around, but only one correct?!?
Underneath the pickup there will be a stamp for magnetic polarization.
I did wrong on a Spector once. I had the split bridge pickup the wrong way and the p-pickup kinda upside down.
Does that matter? I've never heard that it matters which direction the pickup is facing. I always thought it would sound the same both ways.
In response to Phishaholik's posts, I'd just like to chime in about the cost to send the bass back to Fodera. It sounds like his overall expense to have it looked at might run him $250ish, considering the cost for the work and the shipping costs. Relatively speaking, spending $250 to address problems with a very expensive bass sounds like a no-brainer. However, I'm rapidly learning, based on personal circumstances, that $250 is not a small sum of money, particularly if you don't have it! This is not meant to be a comment on any of the posts made here thus far, but simply to note that when the economy stinks, and you might be one of those folks who must live from paycheck to paycheck through no fault of their own, the seemingly 'small' $250 cost can be a considerable barrier.
I don't even know why I'm posting this, other than to make a point that up until the very recent past, I'd have said, heck, it's ONLY $250, what's the big deal? I feel very much differently today.
That's exactly where I'm at now. Living in Northern Virginia, we are incredibly impacted by all the ineptitude going on in DC. The entire area if full of federal government employees. For example, when the sequester hit, thousands of people were either laid off or lost hours at work. That trickles down to our entire local economy. Five years ago, if you wanted a $50k a year job it was there for the taking. Now, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. Also, being a suburb of DC, we have one of the highest costs of living in the country. To send it in to Fodera, I either have to sell some gear or hopefully have enough left over from my tax returns.
I also forgot to quote it, but for the TBer that said if you own a 10k bass, you should be able to afford to repair it. My bass didn't cost anything close to 10k. We're talking more like a third of that.
And one more time, thanks for all the help and ideas! I tried turning the gain down on the preamp so it was close to parity with the pickups in passive mode. I isolated the batteries with electrical tape, just so I could take that variable out of the equation, and took Jason's advice of tightening all of the tuning keys. They were all loose. The tone is definitely better, but still muddy.
It's very possible the pickups are a bad match-up with each other. Since the bridge pickup is overwound, it has deeper lows and less highs. The D.Allen is also known to have deeper lows than most pickups. I think the combo is just giving me mud. Although, that wouldn't explain why the P pickup alone sounds so muddy.
Michael
