Hi everyone
I recently fell in love with soldering and modding my Schecter Stargazer IV Bass, so I went ahead and routed a P-Style cavity, tossed out the whole EMG electronics and pickups, and replaced them with;
- Seymour Duncan SPB-3 Quarter Pound P-Pickup (~11.5kOhm, Neck)
- Seymour Duncan SMB-4D MM-Style Humbucker (~2.6kOhm Single Coil, 1.3 Parallel, 5.2 Series; Bridge)
- Darkglass Tone Capsule Preamp
The basses electronics do the following now:
Pickups (SMB-4D goes through a DPDT on/on/on switch for Parallel/North Coil/Series wiring) -> 3-way toggle switch (this is where the pickups "meet") -> Passive Master Volume (500k linear) -> Active/Passive switch -> Darkglass Preamp/straight to output jack
The P-Pickup is non-reversed, however it is currently wired with it's assigned ground as hot and vice versa, to see if it changed anything with my problem.
Which is:
My 3 way toggle switch only yields 2 sounds;
Neck & Bridge, the middle position always only sounds like the bridge. (5.3kOhm measured with the bridge humbucker in series mode)
This is not an insertion loss problem as I would be aware of volume drops, which is not really the case, as well as it isn't a phase problem, which I have tried already before as well.
I also have tried stacked blend knobs, stacked master volumes for each pickup, etc.
So how the hell do I get 3 different sounds out of my bass? Is there any way, or is the huge DC Output difference simply not match-able?
In either case, I would like to know if there would be any matching Thunderbird-Bridge pickups for my SPB-3?
Or any other beefy sounding humbucker-style neck pickup to go with my SPB-3 (that one is staying for sure, I hate the tone of the SMB-4D anyways, so I'd be glad to fix my 3-way problem with a better pickup if not electronically possible).
Thanks for any advice in advance!
I recently fell in love with soldering and modding my Schecter Stargazer IV Bass, so I went ahead and routed a P-Style cavity, tossed out the whole EMG electronics and pickups, and replaced them with;
- Seymour Duncan SPB-3 Quarter Pound P-Pickup (~11.5kOhm, Neck)
- Seymour Duncan SMB-4D MM-Style Humbucker (~2.6kOhm Single Coil, 1.3 Parallel, 5.2 Series; Bridge)
- Darkglass Tone Capsule Preamp
The basses electronics do the following now:
Pickups (SMB-4D goes through a DPDT on/on/on switch for Parallel/North Coil/Series wiring) -> 3-way toggle switch (this is where the pickups "meet") -> Passive Master Volume (500k linear) -> Active/Passive switch -> Darkglass Preamp/straight to output jack
The P-Pickup is non-reversed, however it is currently wired with it's assigned ground as hot and vice versa, to see if it changed anything with my problem.
Which is:
My 3 way toggle switch only yields 2 sounds;
Neck & Bridge, the middle position always only sounds like the bridge. (5.3kOhm measured with the bridge humbucker in series mode)
This is not an insertion loss problem as I would be aware of volume drops, which is not really the case, as well as it isn't a phase problem, which I have tried already before as well.
I also have tried stacked blend knobs, stacked master volumes for each pickup, etc.
So how the hell do I get 3 different sounds out of my bass? Is there any way, or is the huge DC Output difference simply not match-able?
In either case, I would like to know if there would be any matching Thunderbird-Bridge pickups for my SPB-3?
Or any other beefy sounding humbucker-style neck pickup to go with my SPB-3 (that one is staying for sure, I hate the tone of the SMB-4D anyways, so I'd be glad to fix my 3-way problem with a better pickup if not electronically possible).
Thanks for any advice in advance!
