Installing New Pickups & PreAmp?

You're spoilt for choice! I installed my Seymour Duncan Musicman pickup and pre amp with a three way switch which gave me Series, Parallel and single coil - it works brilliantly! In practice though I use the series setting 99% of the time as it has the highest, fattest output. If you don't want to go down the complicated switching route then just wire your Mk4's in the standard series config. That's how I did my SR500 with Mk4's and it's really good.

 

Basses are normally set up with the two pickups wired in parallel with each other. Within the pickups themselves, if they have two coils, the coils may be wired in either series or parallel--it just depends on the pickup. Some pickups come with 4-conductor wiring to allow you to choose how to wire them up.

In that case, series wiring will give you more output and more midrange, at the expense of some high end. "Power" (i.e. output) doesn't really need to be the deciding factor, since you can set that Bart preamp to add lots of gain.

Mike

 

I have no idea whether the coils in the stock pickups are wired in series or parallel. I'm fairly sure they did not have 4-conductor wiring, so it will almost certainly be however they are made by Bartolini.

Mike

 

The standard pick-up wiring is series. It should tell you about this and any other options in the pre-amp and/or pickup wiring instructions. Also there is loads of stuff on the web about it.

 

Just to clarify, are you asking whether the pickups should be in series or parallel with each other, or are you asking whether the coils within each of the pickups should be connected in series or parallel?

 

See my previous question. When you ask about the pickups being in series or parallel, do you mean 1) the coils in each pickup being connected in series or parallel, or 2) the pickups being in series or parallel with each other?

 

Probably Ibanez would connect them in series. Search for the details of Prestige line. Most of them have dual coil soapbars.

There is another detail you should think about. Ibanez tends to install the neck pickup at the bridge position and the bridge pickup at the neck position. Would you do that?

 

Actually the "B" is for "Bass" and they install that at the neck position to accentuate the bass character of the neck pickup tone. The "T" is for "Treble" and they install that at the bridge to accentuate the brighter bridge pickup tone.

Each Mk1 pickup has only 2 wires and is SERIES. The Mk4's have 5 separate wires, so you can wire them any way you want if you know what to do. When they arrive in the box they have the red and white wires soldered together and the green and shield wires soldered together and there is a little diagram (one of many) which shows how to connect the green/shield to ground (earth) and the black to "hot", which is SERIES, i.e. the same as the Mk1. The volume of each pickup is independently controlled by the pre-amp so the question of series or parallel as applied to the overall installation isn't an issue.

 

The pickups arrive with the 5 wires soldered as two pairs and a single wire. The instructions tell you how to change the wiring for single coil series or parallel humbucking mode. I left the wires joined as they were received (which I think was humbucking) and fitted as per instructions. They sound immense so I have no desire to try any other mode. Full wiring and pickup instructions are available as downloads from the Bart site.

 

Not a problem, but be careful to remove the springs and foam pads intact from the Mk1's and replace them at each end of the cavities. You will need 6 of the same length screws as the Mk1's. They can be slightly thicker. The 6 screws will enter the cavity floor in different places to the 4 screws in the Mk1's. Put the new pickups in the cavities, feed the screws through the holes (mind the wires!!!), tap them all down firmly with a hammer and screw down hard until there is about 1/4 inch of pickup showing. If they are too tight and you don't know how to rout the cavities, you may need to file down the lower edges at the end of each pickup to make them fit, and there must be enough clearance to allow height adjustment down AND so they can spring back up again.

 

It's better to fill the existing screw holes on the body of the bass before installing the MK4s.
Please do search, both "MK4" and "MK5". There are several threads about MK1 -> MK4/MK5 exchange.