I was a newbie here not that long ago, so no worries. I hope I can help. I am certainly not an expert, but I did exactly what I proposed above and I will run you through it. I apologize if this gets kind of lengthy.
Bright and thin is a good way to describe the sound I was getting. I switched to flats almost immediately after getting the bass. I have used LaBella Low Tension Flats for several years due to some arthritis in my hands. The sound improved greatly, which is what kept me from returning the Mezzo. If you know these strings, they are really nice, but they take about 3 months to fully “break in”. They are really thuddy when you first put them on, so don’t be alarmed. Now that they have broken in, they sound and feel great.
Now on to the real issue, the crappy electronics. I have had the “dynamix” pickups in another bass and really disliked them. The other issue is the preamp. No matter how you tweak the bass and treble, you can’t get the P pickup to have the same depth and warmth that a standard Fender P bass has. In addition, I am not a huge fan of active preamps. I have one in my high end Ibanez that I actually like, but it took me about 5 years to figure out all of the quirks. I like to be able to plug in, maybe adjust the tone knob slightly, and go.
I already had a set of EMG Geezer Butler’s from a previous project, but that bass was not a main gigging bass. Geezers are pretty unique for EMG as they are one of the few pickups that are passive. They do not require a battery to power them, nor do they require an onboard preamp. They are fully passive. Many people I have spoken with add a preamp with the Geezers for extra tone shaping, which would then require a battery strictly for the preamp. My experiment was to go with the passive Geezers to start. If I felt like I needed the extra tone shaping later, I could always add one of EMG’s preamps. It’s not like making it passive to start was going to cause any permanent damage.
I really like EMG pickups for several reasons, which I will lay out here in an attempt to give you confidence to do this without taking it to a tech:
1. EMG pickups come with everything. They come with pickups, tone and volume pots, input jacks, wire, etc. If you need it, they come with it. (One caveat to come later.) It does not include knobs, but I was able to reuse the Mezzo knobs.
2. These pickups are solderless. I have been practicing my soldering skills and have improved, but this is almost foolproof. If you can follow the directions to put together legos or IKEA furniture, you can do this.
3. There are enough videos online that walk you through the process. Or, if you get stuck, it is an American company that you can call and actually talk to a person.
Taking out the old stuff:
If you want to reuse all of the “stuff” you are going to take out, I would suggest having a soldering iron to simply heat up the solder and pull the wires apart. If you don’t care about saving the stuff, you can simply cut the wires.
Make sure you take the battery out first. Then, loosen the screws holding the knobs on. Loosen the nuts holding the pots in. Flip it over and take off the cavity cover. From there, I took pictures of where everything went, in case I needed to put it back. You can then start de-soldering or clipping the wires apart and remove the components. The only thing that will not come out is the input jack (I’ll explain later). Just undo the wires going to the input jack and leave it. There will be wires left that go to the pickups and one wire that goes to the bridge. Flip the bass over and use a screw driver to take out the pickups. The final wire that goes to the bridge will be the only wire left.
Optional step: I used copper foil to make sure all of the cavities were silent. Ibanez used conductive paint, but I have always liked to use foils to make sure that all electromagnetic noise is shielded. You may want to wait on shielding the pickup cavities though…
Putting in the new stuff:
Test fit the pickups. As Sonojono said, the jazz pickup cavity was just a little too small. I just used a small file and some sandpaper to clear out the 1 or 2 mm needed to make it fit. I thought about using a Dremmel, but it is so close that you will have more control simply sanding it down.
When you put in the new pickups, you can reuse the springs under the stock pickups, or a lot of people use foam. Some people even use the foam that is part of the packaging for the Geezers. Feed the wires through the holes to the rear cavity. With the big connectors, you will worry that they won’t fit. Take you time and go slow. They will fit.
In the rear cavity, put the new pots in the configuration that you want. There will only be 3 pots for the four possible holes (P volume, J volume, and tone). I put on of the old pots back in as a “dummy” knob. Check out Lee Sklar for inpiration.
Read the directions carefully and go slow. There are arrows on the connectors that need to line up. The good news is that if you mess up, nothing is going to short out and destroy your bass. You can simply take out the connector and try again.
Here is the caveat is spoke of earlier, you will need to reuse the input jack from the stock electronics. The Geezers come with a standard input jack. The Mezzo uses a barrel jack. The good news is that the new connectors go right to the barrel jack. Push them on, they will be pretty tight. That’s a good thing. Last thing, attach the bridge wire as shown on the instructions.
To check it before putting strings back on, tap on one of the pole pieces while plugged in. You can play with both volumes and the tone know to make sure they all work. If it doesn’t work, don’t panic. The beauty of the solderless system is that you can always redo it. I hope this has given you confidence, but I completely understand if you want to take it to a tech.
I know this has gotten really long, but I think it was worth it. I have no plans to add a preamp. The dummy knob and the empty battery compartment don’t bother me at all. The bass now sounds better than my MIM Fender P bass and doesn’t hurt my hands. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
