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Help Make My Jazz a bit more P...

#41
The J is a great design – my personal favorite. But I find most designs can be robbed of their potential by lackluster implementation. (In this case sounds like a cheap set of pickups.)
My advice would be to get a good set of single coils in there.
Once you've done that, if you're like me you'll find yourself rocking the neck pickup most of the time – and wishing there were some way to make your P-bass a little more J.
Seriously: my classic J build has been at the very top of my bass guitar pyramid for years. It makes itself felt & heard without having to resort to that burping lo-mid thing.
I've tried onboard preamps & split coils, but wound up achieving nirvana without them.
 
#43
H13 said:
First of all, let's get the sexy picture out of the way.

View attachment 7196883

I bought the J after a CV P Bass. I love what a P Bass does to a mix, but I find it hard to make "cool poopie I do on my bass" cut through the mix properly. It does an amazing job of filling everything in and making the mix sound huge, but yeah, when I go for a wanky bit, it gets lost in the mix.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE:
- Hotter pickups
- More growly low-mids
- Don't want to loose that J Bass zingy attack\brightness

I've seen the Dimarzio Model J pickups discussed like this before? Also a series switch for the pickups? Any other tips and tricks?
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Hotter pickups will likely add more midrange, but also likely less top end. Whether those pickups add as you say, "more growly low-mids" is something only you will know after you install those pickups. The Jazz Bass zingy attack/brightness? Again, hotter pickups will likely compromise this.

There's no "free lunch" here, and there is always compromise. The best thing to do is to play a Precision Bass if you want a Precision Bass sound, and a Jazz Bass if you want a Jazz Bass sound. You've said that what I would have suggested (a P/J) format isn't going to do it for you, so...

You'll have to figure out where you are willing to compromise.

If you have a Parametric EQ pedal, I think you would be well-advised to A/B your favorite Precision Bass sound from your Precision Bass, "against" the Jazz Bass in question in conjunction with an EQ pedal, and see if you can get the Jazz Bass closer to the Precision Bass sound you want. Pay attention to the boosted frequencies and cut frequencies. You may even be able to take a second step, and then A/B your newly found parametric EQ adjustments against amp settings, to see if you can duplicate this in service or eliminating a parametric EQ in your signal chain. Or if your amp already has parametric EQ, then just cut the parametric EQ pedal out of the equation of the Precision versus Jazz situation.
 
#44
IMG_0089.webp
This is my J bass. It has Dimarzio Relentless pups which is basically the updated version of the Model J.
Pups are side by side split humbuckers and the neck solo is a bit closer to the P bass sound than other J pups I've tried. But the secret sauce is the series/parallel switch. In series you don't get the mid scoop, mids are very pro dominant, bottom end is beefy and the top end rolls off a little.
This gets you closer to a P bass vibe than just soloing the neck pup.
It's still not going to sound exactly like a P bass but it will cut through the mix like a P bass better than J bass with pups in parallel. One of the defining traits of a P bass besides the midrange is the attack. The attack on a P bass is a bit pillowy, it blooms a bit in the lower range. On a J bass the attack is tighter, so that's one attribute you really can't replicate on a Jazz bass.


Some will say just fix it with EQ but that's not the same as running pups in series.
Bumping mids in EQ just pushes the mids in one specific frequency range, which is not the same as the overall tonal quality of the sound of the string across the whole bass.
 
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#45
Gervais Cote said:
Oh, that looks very interesting…………

I wander how the neck pickup soloed would sound with it ?

In my particular situation, I would (almost) want to try with a neck pickup only to build a precision bass with a single jazz bass pickup instead of the twin humbucker set of standard p bass.

The thinness of that pickup would leave more space for the graphic of my basses like the one in my avatar picture…..
Click to expand...
Food for thought; have it routed to take a BC-shape soapbar? There are tons of options to be had in that size...certainly, more than a J-bass shape. ;)
 
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#46
AK Bass Guy said:
But the secret sauce is the series/parallel switch. In series you don't get the mid scoop, mids are very pro dominant, bottom end is beefy and the top end rolls off a little.
This gets you closer to a P bass vibe than just soloing the neck pup.
It's still not going to sound exactly like a P bass but it will cut through the mix like a P bass better than J bass with pups in parallel. One of the defining traits of a P bass besides the midrange is the attack. The attack on a P bass is a bit pillowy, it blooms a bit in the lower range. On a J bass the attack is tighter, so that's one attribute you really can't replicate on a Jazz bass.
Click to expand...

This may have sold me on finally doing a series switch on one of my basses. I've been jazz bass guy for the majority of my 25ish years playing, and have typically run all controls wide open. I'm familiar with the series mod and how it sounds, though I've never done it on any of my own basses. Lately I've found myself playing my p-bass more often at home, and I've been rolling off the bridge p-up for certain things at band rehearsals. Anyway, your description is the sweet-spot I'm missing from both worlds. I prefer the attack of a jazz for the bite and immediacy, moreso than the pillowy push of a p-bass. Still, I want a touch more midrange/beef when I favor the neck pickup on my J. Sounds like the series option may be the answer!
 
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#47
I think you need to study this more, figure out exactly what you're looking for, and then experiment how to get it. Can you find examples of the sound you're looking for?

My first recommendation would be to try a few different sets of strings, and tweak the setup. Both very important for dialing the bass sounds, and best bang for buck…

Other than that, it sounds like you're after that magical unicorn sound that's powerful and sits in the mix like a P, but sings/zings like a J when you need it to :) You could approach it as a "beefy J" or as a "bright P". The key is to figure out which set of tradeoffs you can live with.

I personally found it with the "bright P" approach - wired the split coil in parallel, then loaded it with capacitors to taste. This gives extra top end for brightness, but without the mid scoop of running the J pickups together. It was what I was looking for and thought a PJ would do, but didn't.

For the "beefy J" approach, I'd probably consider beefy single coils like Aero Type 1. You could also try series wiring or loading capacitors, but that's not the same sound. Either way, the scoop is still there, but the character of the mids around the scoop will change. And this requires some more trial and error… the best of these sounds I heard was with Nordstrand Big Singles, but those are soapbars…

Or maybe you want a Rickenbacker :)
 
#50
Grahams Groove said:
This may have sold me on finally doing a series switch on one of my basses. I've been jazz bass guy for the majority of my 25ish years playing, and have typically run all controls wide open. I'm familiar with the series mod and how it sounds, though I've never done it on any of my own basses. Lately I've found myself playing my p-bass more often at home, and I've been rolling off the bridge p-up for certain things at band rehearsals. Anyway, your description is the sweet-spot I'm missing from both worlds. I prefer the attack of a jazz for the bite and immediacy, moreso than the pillowy push of a p-bass. Still, I want a touch more midrange/beef when I favor the neck pickup on my J. Sounds like the series option may be the answer!
Click to expand...
Sweet. You won’t regret it. It’s probably one of the cheapest mods you can make on a J bass.
I also prefer the attack on a J bass as well, it has a nice “punch” to it. The tighter attack works better in a live situation IMO, really helps when trying to keep the bottom end of the mix clean.
 
#51
H13 said:
How does that make it more P-Bass-ish? Do you lose a lot of zing?
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A split P pickup is just two single coils in series. So putting the two Js in series gets you closer to the P sound, but not the same because of the pickup locations, the pickup windings and the fact that each pickup sees all four strings. You lose a bit of the zing, but not all of it because the bridge pickup is still closer to the bridge than the D/G half of a P pickup.
 
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#54
GR7G5TER said:
Something to do with the shorter contact track i believe.

If you go to Anderton's YT All About the Bass series and find the Fender Standard vs CV vs Player video, it's in there somewhere and they reference another video where someone swapped them out. I can't remember who that was but it seem to make a big difference.
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I can't imagine making any difference, but given their usually rather large tolerances (5-10% is quite common)... did they actually measure each pot to verify their values were comparable?
 
#55
mcnach said:
I can't imagine making any difference, but given their usually rather large tolerances (5-10% is quite common)... did they actually measure each pot to verify their values were comparable?
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Tbh, I don't remember, it was a while ago and didn't retain to much of the info, because I'm never going to use mini pots. But it sounded like a big difference.

If I end up with or consider a bass with them I might look it up.

If I could be bothered to watch the Andertons video again I'd get the link to the video, but I've no appetite for watching 45 mins comparisons of fender basses again that sound as good as mine does! 😁
 
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#56
Malak the Mad said:
Okay, let's take this in stages, from least invasive to most;
  1. Stage one; replace a volume pot with a push-pull pot to switch between series and parallel. Then, see if that extra "beefiness" brings your stock pickups to where you want it.
  2. Stage two; humbucking pickups. Recently, I've grown fond of Bartolini B-Axis and Delano JMVC Fe/M2 pickups¹. Then, do the series/parallel mod to have that extra "kick" at your fingertips.
  3. Stage three; convert it to a P/J. I did this to a Mighty Mite body using a Fender Reggie Hamilton Jazz pickguard as a template and have never regretted it. As far as I'm concerned, that is the "sweet spot" on a Jazz body.
h9WE9sI.jpeg


¹: So far, I only have a J/MM Delano set, but that J-style neck pickup is a beast, but, at the same time, not harsh or unpleasant to listen to.
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Those are all great suggestions for the OP.
I'll add the Dimarzio model j pickups. Definitely a beefy low mid sound.

BTW buddy. That's a sweet looking bass. Still have it??
 
#59
Geri O said:
I've had the wonderful East J Retro in two Jazz basses.

The very last thing I expected it to do was to make an approximation of the tone of a Precision bass. That's the last thing that preamp was designed to do.

Solo neck, series, parallel, whatever. It ain't gonna happen
Click to expand...
The pre will def make it more p-ish than without, which was the ask from the OP.

Obvi actual p sounds won't happen.
 
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