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Jazz bass pickup wiring question

McNasty63

McNasty63

Guest
Oct 13, 2016
2
0
#1
I have a jazz bass and was wondering if is possible to wire both pickups to one volume pot? (like is it a good idea) It's a Squier that i put DiMarzio Model J (DP123) pickups in. Any feedback helps. Thanks!
 
#3
honeyiscool said:
You mean to have a master volume instead of individual volumes? Absolutely. You replace the second volume knob with a blend pot (usually), which pans between the two pickups.

Love those Model Js, by the way. They're possibly the best affordable aftermarket J pickups.
Click to expand...

So i would still have to have another control? There is no way to just have a master volume and just a tone knob? And yeah, the Model Js are great.
 
#6
You would have no control over the blend of the 2 pickups, however it will sound more open with one less pot, a sound you won't get with 2 volume, 1 tone. Losing the ability to blend the 2 pickups might not be worth the change. You could easily try having one volume by moving the neck pickup "hot" lead to the middle volume pot, same lug that the bridge pickup hot lead is on, to see what it sounds like, (the neck pickup will be more of the sound than the bridge, if you do, because of it's location) If it floats your boat, great, if not, put it back the way it was, it's only one wire, you could remove the other pot if you like it, just be sure all the grounds are in place if it's going to be permanent.
 
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#7
I don't think it's stupid, it's "different", here's another idea though, I have a P/J bass with volume/tone/3 way switch, it's true that I can't blend when both pickups are on, (and the P pickup is stronger), but I've been enjoying that bass for a couple of years now, that way, mostly as a P bass, but, with the option to add the J pickup if I want. It does have a more open sound than it did with volume/volume/tone, and less knobs, lol.
 
#8
No, it is not stupid and certainly not extremely stupid. I run my Jazz basses (current and past) with both pickups full on a great deal of the time. A lot of others do the same. I enjoy having the flexibility to vary that from time to time but if you do not then by all means wire both pickups to a single volume pot and tone control. I play in a church band and I have to kill my signal for most of the "show" so I really appreciate having a single volume control because then I do not have to disturb my blend (when I am using one) to kill the signal. I'm not sure what your reason is for ditching one of the volume controls.

My preference is to have a blend control in place of two volumes but I have never put a blend pot in any of my two volume basses because I can achieve the same ends by just stomping on the switch on my pedal to put it into tuner mode which I have set to mute rather than feedthru. What are you going to do with the extra hole in your control plate? If it were me I would either put in a blend pot or a three way switch, both have been suggested above. That way you still have a single volume control but you retain some control over your pickup mix if you should ever decide that you want it later on. Plus you have something useful in the third hole. If you don't like either of those ideas then you could put in two no-load tone pots with different values of tone caps to do something useful with the third hole.

But if you are happy with a dummy control or an empty hole (which you could plug somehow) on your control plate and you really have no use for changing your pickup blend then you can certainly wire them both to the same volume control and use only one volume. My Squier VI has three pickups but only one volume and tone control. There is a bank of slide switches to control which pickups are on and any time two or more are on they are all effectively "wired" to that single volume and tone control. Pretty much any guitar or bass with a pickup selector switch is set up the same way so it is a well established and successful control approach. You are just further simplifying it by eliminating the switch. People love Precision basses after all and they have no means to adjust the pickup blend either.
 
#10
The simplest way to do this would be to take the bridge pickup's hot, and resolder it to the neck pickup's hot. You would be done after desoldering one joint, and soldering one joint. (This is a two minute job, after your soldering iron has warmed up.) The bridge pickup's pot would then sit unused.

However, the best way to do it would be to completely rewire the bass, exactly like a P bass, but with the pickups remaining parallel to each other. With the removal of one volume pot, you gain the ability to reverse the input and output of the master volume pot, and wire the tone control parallel to the pickup, rather than the jack. This will improve the taper and performance of the controls. This method would take a bit more time and effort, but it would be worth it, IMO.
 
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#12
line6man said:
With the removal of one volume pot, you gain the ability to reverse the input and output of the master volume pot, and wire the tone control parallel to the pickup, rather than the jack. This will improve the taper and performance of the controls. This method would take a bit more time and effort, but it would be worth it, IMO.
Click to expand...
Yes. This a thousand times. My biggest point of contempt for the Jazz Bass V/V wiring is the reversed volume pot, which is also normally combined with an audio taper for further stupidity, and then the tone pot is parallel to the jack. I think perhaps with the right set of custom tapered pots, you could get meaningful volume pot action going, but I just feel like your average Jazz Bass is wired with a bunch of controls not really designed to do what people think they're supposed to do. A reversed volume pot connects the pickup to ground, and then there's further resistance from that pickup to the output. I just feel like a regular volume pot just feels so much better as you turn it down.

Anyone who ever saw someone do a beautiful volume swell and thought, wow, I don't have the pinkie talent for that, nope, that's not what it is. It's just you have the wrong wiring for it. Replace your stock Jazz Bass wiring with a blend pot or a switch, and a master volume with something like a linear taper 250k wired normally (input + tone pot in the outside, output in the middle), maybe one of those nice low-friction Bourns pots, then you'll be realize, there's no talent at all to this. You can swell as nice as anyone who's ever done a volume swell.
 
#13
honeyiscool said:
By the way, I'm pretty sure this modification does nothing. In fact, I was skeptical enough that I did this modification to a 250k M/N blend pot, connected the wire on the unmodified lugs, then checked with a multimeter to the input and output lugs. Sure enough, it acted exactly like any unmodified 250k M/N ungrounded blend pot does, showing 250k resistance from the pickup you panned away from.

And if you think about how a potentiometer works, it's clear why that modification doesn't do anything. It's because sure, you've removed the other lug from the potentiometer, but what have you done, exactly? In an ungrounded blend pot, that lug is never used, anyway, and the potentiometer, all it can do between the input and the output lugs is give you somewhere from 0-250K resistance. When you're fully swept away from the input lug, there's still 250k of carbon between the input and output. The reason why people like this modified ungrounded 250k M/N blend is has nothing to do with cutting the tracks.

But despite my skepticism, I was willing to give it a shot, so I wired a Jazz Bass with it and hooked it up to an amp. If on the extremes the pickups are truly soloed, then I should be able to set the blend to neck, then tap the bridge pickup magnets with a screwdriver and not hear it. Yet I could hear the tapping sound no matter where the blend was set. Meanwhile, when I used a switch, it'd be completely silent if I tapped the bridge magnets when the switch was set to neck, and vice versa. That said, it's not like I felt betrayed by this modification. I was sure it wouldn't work, and it didn't, but I wanted an ungrounded blend pot to begin with, so I left it in.

In short, an ungrounded blend pot is enough. I do recommend it, though, it's a good scheme. I mean, just like any blend pot, it only has like five sounds, but it has a better presentation of those sounds than a grounded blend pot does, it causes less load on the pickups, and it's fully compatible with series/parallel mods. I think why it's better is because the standard blend pot requires something like a 500k M/N to avoid loading the pickups more than a standard V/V setup, but then that reduces any meaningful blend sweep, IMO, because nothing happens until the very end, there's a big volume drop in the middle, etc. The ungrounded pot lets you use a 250k M/N without loading the pickups additionally, and it really makes the middle position come alive, and there's little (if any) volume drop either.
Click to expand...

The idea of cutting the track is to allow the wiper terminal to disconnect from the track, at the extreme of the rotation. This means that instead of having just 250k Ohms of resistance, you have an infinite resistance, because the wiper doesn't touch the track at all. If you cut the track, but still have 250k Ohms resistance, then you cut the track too close to the end, so that the wiper is still touching it, at the extreme end of the rotation.
 
#14
line6man said:
The idea of cutting the track is to allow the wiper terminal to disconnect from the track, at the extreme of the rotation. This means that instead of having just 250k Ohms of resistance, you have an infinite resistance, because the wiper doesn't touch the track at all. If you cut the track, but still have 250k Ohms resistance, then you cut the track too close to the end, so that the wiper is still touching it, at the extreme end of the rotation.
Click to expand...
OK, I think I finally understand the theory of it now. I thought I cut enough of the track, but perhaps I hadn't. I'm shining a light into the blend pot I used, and I didn't do it properly. The wiper still reaches the track.

It looks like this particular pot will require disassembly to modify correctly.

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot.
 
#15
McNasty63 said:
I have a jazz bass and was wondering if is possible to wire both pickups to one volume pot? (like is it a good idea) It's a Squier that i put DiMarzio Model J (DP123) pickups in. Any feedback helps. Thanks!
Click to expand...
My Squier Jag has DiMarzio pups. One is the Jazz style 123 in the bridge position. The other is a split P.
I put in a dual pot (common shaft - not concentric shafts) and wired one pup to one section and the other pup to the other section. This makes a one control volume without joining the two pups to one pot.
This also allowed for parallel/series and phase switching. I don't use the s/p switch to much. But I really like how the phase switch works. The volume and switching happens before the blend pot. After blending, is the single pot tone control. I don't see why this wouldn't work equally as well with two j pups.
 

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