Individual volume pot per pickup vs 5-way switching?

[hooky_marr]

Hi all!

I have a project bass that I will be wiring with three individual Lawing Zexcoil Jazz Bass pickups. These use a pair of magnets/coils per string so each one is, in essence, a tiny humbucker - on a Jazz pickup that means 8 coils in total.

Internally, the coils are wired in groups of 4, with one group RW/RP to the other, and you can switch them in series or parallel with a DPDT switch; they recommend getting a 500k pot with a pull switch for this.

Now, I'm not an electronics guy -- Would there be any issue with wiring up the bass to simply use a volume pot with pull switch per pickup, individually switchable for series/parallel, all feeding to the output jack? Would there be any issues with capacitance/loading, etc?

I don't really need tone controls onboard; at most I might wire a buffered master kill switch for when I need to mute it.

I had originally thought of wiring it with a Strat-style 5-way switch, with additional mini switches or latching buttons to do the parallel/serial switch per pickup, which would allow me to use a traditional master volume / tone control or onboard EQ, etc, but then it's starting to possibly get more electrically / mechanically complex to wire up...

thanks in advance!

 

[Crater]

Would there be any issue with wiring up the bass to simply use a volume pot with pull switch per pickup, individually switchable for series/parallel, all feeding to the output jack?

This is very do-able, since the series/parallel switching is before and pickup volume controls or switching. Basically you would replicate jazz bass wiring with a third pickup.

Would there be any issues with capacitance/loading, etc?

There could be an issue with having the loading of three volume pots. You might consider using 500 k Ohm pots vs. the standard 250 k Ohm pots to lessen the loading.

Wring this up to use strat-type pickup switching wouldn't be a problem either, with or without individual volume controls for each pickup.

 

[hooky_marr]

Thanks! Yeah, they would be 500k pots most likely. Probably going with the vol/vol/vol setup with pull switches for each.

 

[ctmullins]

Three volume controls sounds awfully cumbersome to me. Maybe okay for studio work, but a pain for live performance. I’m more of a master volume with selector switch person.

 

[hooky_marr]

Three volume controls sounds awfully cumbersome to me. Maybe okay for studio work, but a pain for live performance. I’m more of a master volume with selector switch person.

I hear you.

Partly it's because it's a vintage bass and I don't want to start cutting it up - ideally any mods I make to it will be reversible, so I'm working with what is there. I might change my mind, though. I'm not doing any live performing right now, so 3 volumes will let me explore some tonal ranges, maybe if I find a favourite I can "hard-code" it into the setup in the future.

I am toying with the idea of having a custom-made clone of a Musician MC-888 with a pickup setup more like the old PRS basses from the mid-to-late 80s, with one right at the neck and two in the more traditional J placements, so I'd definitely use a switching setup vs volume pots for that.

oh and hey! Nice Sloan quote in your sig

 

[Jeff Scott]

What would Bootsy do?

 

[40Hz]

There could be an issue with having the loading of three volume pots. You might consider using 500 k Ohm pots vs. the standard 250 k Ohm pots to lessen the loading.

+1!

If you effectively have three split-coils to work with, you can play all sorts of interesting switching games with the six available coils. Series, parallel, phase, single coil, split aperture switching, yadda-yadda. The old Tiesco Spectrum guitars and basses did some things along those lines.

 

[lz4005]

What would Bootsy do?

Add three more pickups and 5 pots, probably only ever use one.