Is this even possible?

[fretlessman71]

I HAVE A BASS AGAIN! It worked!

Thanks to all for your help. For the record, this is a Sojing (yes, that's spelled correctly) bass that has one pickup - an acoustic piezo, complete with saddle, but it's solid from headstock to bridge, and has hollow "wings".... oh, bother, lemme just steal a pic from a fellow TBer:Invalid Link Removed

For a cheapie, it sounds REALLY NICE, very unique, and free of the "woofing" that a lot of ABGs suffer from while trying to acoustically reproduce that which they are unable to.

I just wish the wings were about 6" farther UP the neck; as it is, the neck sticks out too far to be very comfortable in the first few positions. Might be able to mod it though... any good ideas? Those wings are just held in with screws from the back...

 

[fretlessman71]

You know one trick with truss rods is to not have the strings up to tension when you adjust the rod, and/or clamp the neck straight before you tighten it. The rod can hold the neck straight, but can't always get it there.

If I have a recalcitrant neck, I clamp it between two pieces of wood against a sold flat surface, with the clamp in the middle to force it straight, , and maybe even out a little back bow into it, and then tighten the truss rod and let it sit over night. That usually does the trick.

Here's an illustration from Dan Erlewine's book

Question: Has anyone ever heard of a truss rod snapping, or a neck breaking, or any other sort of irreversible damage occurring using this method? I'd like to be reassured that I'm not cranking too hard on my truss rod and making things worse.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

Question: Has anyone ever heard of a truss rod snapping, or a neck breaking, or any other sort of irreversible damage occurring using this method? I'd like to be reassured that I'm not cranking too hard on my truss rod and making things worse.

The reason you want to clamp the neck into position first is so that you don't apply too much force when adjusting the rod. You aren't making the rod bend the neck straight, just making it hold the neck into position.

So you still want to be careful when tightening the rod in case there is something wrong with it. Truss rods do break if you over tighten them, which is the reason to do it this way, and not just cranking the rod tight in hopes that it will straighten the neck. So always loosen the rod totally first after you have the neck clamped.

The the bow is severe you sometimes need to clamp the neck in position and then use a heating pad to warm it and leave it that way for a period of time.

 

[Fred19137]

I don't know if you are still reading this. I garentee you this will become a project. If you want to separate the pickups. you have to pull them out, cut the adjoing wire. this should allow you to treat them separately. Hopefully u got it from there. Message me if u need more help.

 

[fretlessman71]

Fred, do you know these basses personally? I'm not a tinkerer, so this would be something for my tech guys to do for me. If it's not a really freakin' simple thing to do, and IT WON'T DETRACT FROM THE VALUE OF THE BASS (whatever it is - see related threads regarding origin!), I am happy to leave it as the rest of the bass is STOCK...

 

[bongomania]

I advise you to go back and read Fred's other posts about electronics.

 

[ctmullins]

This is intriguing. I have a hard time believing that any manufacturer, let alone a company under the Fender umbrella, would produce a bass with two P pickups that were permanently wired together. Did you purchase this bass new, or used?

At any rate, let's make sure we're talking about the same thing. Fred mentions removing the pickups to cut the wire between them. I hope he doesn't mean for you to cut the wire that joins the two halves of a single P pickup - you really don't want to do this. There's virtually nothing to be gained here - the two halves of a P pickup were meant to be wired together in series, and wiring them elsewise (parallel) produces a tone that really isn't very useful.

Now, if what Fred meant was to cut the wire connecting the bridge P pickup to the neck P pickup, then that makes a lot more sense, and is in fact exactly what you're wanting to do. But you shouldn't need to remove the pickups to do this, unless possibly the two are connected via a routed channel underneath the pickguard. What I would expect to find would be a pair of wires entering the control cavity from the bridge pup, and another pair of wires entering the control cavity from the neck pup. If this is what you have, then the pickups can remain in place, and you can accomplish your wiring mods in the cavity itself. If not, then, well, I'm intrigued, as I said, and I'd love to see a photo!

Further, and especially with regard to your original intent of drilling no new holes, I submit that you should dispense with the tone control altogether, and wire each pickup to its own volume pot (your choice of ohmage, though I'd use 500k), combined in parallel - basically the standard Jazz Bass wiring, minus the tone control. Personally, I never use my tone control, accomplishing tonal changes with pickup blending and right-hand placement alone. A push/pull for series/parallel (between bridge and neck) would be a nice addition to this wiring scheme, but certainly not necessary.

 

[Bass_masta16]

Pics of the P-P-Bass?