First of all, I would like to apologise for ressurrecting an old thread.
Well, my G&L Tribute SB-2 is an amazing instrument but i have never been totally happy with it, always kind of missing the possibility of rolling off the tone (i.e. missing a tone control).
Using only the P pickup would be ok as it is but every time i needed a little bit more punch I have always found that blending the bridge pickup would sound too trebly to suit my need. Many people have reported that working on the pickup volumes would be enough to find a pleasant tone, but I could not find it.
So, I have extensively researched talkbass, bassbyleo and other websites looking for advice for a mod to make the SB2 perfect for me.
Most of them would require drilling the body for a side jack to enable the room on the plate for a jazz bass-like tone pot or substituting regular pots for concentric ones, etc, but I would like to find a way of modding it in a simpler way.
As I like to play jazz basses with bridge pickup solo and the tone knob totally rolled off, a la Jaco Pastorius, I wondered if permanently rolling off the teble of the SB2 bridge pickup would not suit me. So i did it, soldered a 47nF capacitor at the bridge pot lugs connecting the signal wire from bridge pickup to the ground, not messing with the lug connected to the jack.
And, voilá, It did work very very well. The SB2 is now AMAZING (at least for me).
The mod did not affect neck pickup tone when used solo (al least I did not notice any change) and it only removes the excessive treble when using bridge pickup, blended or in solo mode.
Now the Tribute SB2 really works for me. I have not yet tested it with a band but I believe it will really rock.
The mod is definitely not as versatile as having a tone knob installed but it allowed the bass to fulfill its function of providing good tones only messing with the pickup volumes.
The good thing is that, depending on the need of the person, the use of a capacitor with larger or smaller capacitance would allow fine tuning it.
Just my two cents of a very easy and cheap mod, that could be very effective dependng on the player needs.
Cheers
Cristiano
I think I finally want to do this. Been thinking about it for some time. I have a tribute SB-2 that's been my practice Bass Modification bass. I learned how to do setups on this bass (And this bass plays so nice after a good setup). I also Learned how to change pots and wires on it as well. Now, it's time to do the single Tone Mod (I'm keeping it simple, and not really interested in the dual tone mod, though I know it exists). Allparts has the Pots and knobs needed to do the job.
This is what I'll be recreating. I'm still not understanding the 1M ohm resistors connected to the volume pots.
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