Fair enough.
I just remember the hubbub about Fender’s S1 being nigh useless on the Pbass.
I guess it must’ve just been too far outside of the Pbass range for comfort for most people?
I might play with that next time i have my bass open.
Thanks!
How would you describe the parallel tone of a P?
OK, the S1 switch. It was an idea - not a new one, really, but....when you go from parallel to series wiring on a P pickup, the series version is louder - quite a bit louder. If you used the switch to change the nature of your bass for a set of music, and you compensate for the level difference with a volume control later in your chain, everything is OK. But that's not how people usually do things - if you have two sounds, you want to be able to switch between them on the fly, and when you do that, the louder one always sounds better - especially on bass.
There is a way out of this. You wire the pickup in parallel - it's always in parallel. Then you capacitively load it in one mode so you get the "normal P" sound in that mode - this is a simple thing to do and the sound (other than the level) is exactly the same, if you choose the right capacitor value. You can also tune it to other sounds - there is a lot of leeway there to create your own desired tone. In the other mode, you either leave it as is, or load it with a bit less capacitance. So, you now have a bass that has both sounds like the basses with the S1 switch, but there is no level difference. Suddenly, the two modes are different flavors, and with neither being louder, you don't have the bias towards one, or the drop in level to contend with when switching on the fly. I have built a lot of basses with this idea, and they work great - a "P" sound, and a more "modern" sound.
What does a parallel wired P sound like? Well, there are a lot of flavors you can dial in with the loading capacitor value, but for smaller capacitor values that load it less, there is more high frequency extension - the resonant peak moves up in frequency. If you load it to the same sound as a "normal" P, you get a bit more "range" on the tone control - the normal P tone is there with the tone control rolled back a bit. For those that always play with their tone control dimed, they now have a tone control that literally "goes to 11" - if you always want "everything it has" tone wise, doesn't that mean you really want a bit more at times? With parallel wiring, you get that.
The other obvious question: Does/can a parallel wired P sound like J? No, the low mid scoop you get from combining two spaced pickups is not something you can get from a one pickup bass. You need two pickups to do that.
