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help with my ye olde pickups

Jimbob Jones

Jimbob Jones

Sep 9, 2006
1,628
398
Birmingham, UK
#1
I have recently taken on a project to restore an archtop bass back to it's former glory. It came with a pair of pickups, but no other wiring.

Front of pickup

Back of pickup

Wire

I am pretty sure that these are humbuckers, but I just want to make 100% sure before I put them into the circuit incorrectly.

My question for you all is: how do I wire these pickups into a circuit? In a perfect world I would like to have a Jack Cassady-ish tone with plenty of headroom (but I don't want the transformer in this bass, just the low impedance setting). My bass has holes in it for four knobs and a switch. Therefore I would quite like a volume/volume/tone/tone configuration with a neck/both/bridge switch. Is this possible?

Thank you in advance

JBJ

EDIT: I don't mind chucking the old pups and buying new ones to get the tone, but it would be nice to keep the old ones.
 
#2
FWIW:

first thing to do is see if the pups even register on a meter. Peal the jacket back (probably run an exacto knife lengthwise first - don't strip it with wire strippers - cause it looks like it may be a surrounding ground inside the jacket with the white hot lead center, can't tell from the pic) and test it. Solder additional lead and shrinkwrap if you get a decent reading. If you don't, pups probably don't work or are damaged.

Then wire a pup to a jack, plug in a cord to the amp and tap on the "poles" with a small allen wrench or steel pup screw. If you don't get response on the staples and screws, it's probably a single coil but not necessarily. You can get some idea of the tone by inverting them over strings of another bass and plucking them.

One pick you didn't show was the back of the body so I assume there's no control plate. Will be lots of fun mounting the pups/controls if not.

You can use any diagram that meets your needs.
 
#3
Thank you for the information...the wires do have a ground outside and a hot inside (or at least two wires, one inside the other) So I wire the hot wire to the rest of my circuit, but what do I do with the ground?

The bass is a hollowbody and has no control plate, so I will probably struggle to actually install the circuit, yes :D
 
#5
Hi, JBJ

The pups are most probably Gotohs VB-1F and VB-1R since the construction is 100% same as with the one I have in my hand right now. The cover comes off after You unscrew the screw poles so even if Your pups are fried, You can use the original covers with the new pups.

The pups are single coil, have around 5,9 Ohm DC resistance and are a bit larger than the original "staples" that they're copied from so they don't fit to the Höfner 182 for example :mad:. Guess why I have one :rolleyes: . The SRP is á32€ here in Finland.

IMO the "correct" way to rewire a F-hole instrument from the ground up is to drill a template of the hole pattern to a piece of plywood or something similar material. When You've done all the wiring and tested the circuit, you tie a cord to all the pot shafts an slide 'em in place. Try to match the thickness of the top in the template so You can adjust the knob height with washers or nuts before installing the wiring into the body. Otherwise they tend to stick up quite badly. When shopping for pots, get the smallest possible quality ones even though almost all of them will seem to fit through the hole when You try it without wires. The standard "Les Paul" wiring is the one I'd use.

As for the other missing parts, try Gotoh catalog, they should fit.

The headstock repair is an easy one since the surface area is large and there doesn't seem to be any chips missing.

Very cool project, good luck.

Regards
Sam
 
#8
Hi, JBJ

If You're using those original pups or the Gotog ones, I wouldn't worry about the "headroom", the sound of those pups is, well, different. ;)

If You're going to use the bass for other than period correct tunes, I suggest better pups, perhaps the Hofner ones. They'll give You more versatility.

Regards
Sam
 
#9
I have some pictures of the inside of the pickups.

Top

Side

End (Wiring)

So, here's my question. The pickup is, yes a single coil, but what do the staples do?

I've decided to wire these into my circuit, (I'm guessing they're not fried) and see how I like my tone. If I dont like it then I'll replace them with something else.

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
#10
FWIW:

a meter will pretty much tell if they work - or just wire it to a jack, plug into the amp, and tap on the poles/staples with a steel pup screw (if tapping on the staples has no effect as far as I know they don't do anything - possible they may be like adjustable poles). Won't tell you they'll sound like but no point installing them if they don't work. You can invert them above and pluck on a string to get a crude idea of the tone.
 

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