Installed P-Pup in neck pos on 5 string Jazz Bass

[Michael Moore]

I installed the Wilkinson P pup in the neck position and it sounds GREAT!!! But,... when both volumes are at 100% the signal is half of what it is with either volume cut. Individually P works great, J works great, but combined it is only OK. What is wrong? P is a new Wilkinson at 10K, and the J is a stock non-alnico 7K. I ordered a Alnico with a higher resistance of 9K. Suggestions??? It looks and plays awesome. A Lakeland or Sadowsky starts at $1000 up to $8000. Too rich for my blood.

 

[dwizum]

It may be the case that the pickups are out of phase with each other. Pickups that are out of phase will work fine when solo'd, but when you play both at full volume you'll get a big cut in output and it'll sound tinny and thin. Different brands have different conventions for phase, if you mix and match you can end up with a problem. This is easy to solve: reverse the leads (hot and ground) for one of the pickups (only one - if you reverse both, you'll be out of phase again). If one of the pickups has internal shielding - i.e. a brass plate under the P, or anything like that - reverse the pickup that doesn't have shielding. If they both have shielding, you will get some noise upon reversing one of them, but that can be solved by desoldering the connection to the shield and moving it to the other lead.

 

[Michael Moore]

dwizum, you are dman. I took it apart and reversed as you suggested and BAM! Both and individually are equal now. Thank you.