sooo... this is interesting.
My new to me 1999 Lakland 55-94 sounds ok, but something is happening in the mids which make it feel very dark. The setting on the mid control I find a bit off... set to the higher settings and boosting it begins to add in some of what I feel like is missing... but for a nice finger style sound I prefer the 250 or 500 boost.
This "darkness" isn't just me as other people seem to say the same thing and there's a whole load of pickup and preamp swapping....
I’m not sure I want to do any pickup swapping on this bass AND I know I typically really like that “bartolini” sound anyway!
Anyway my blend pot (50k mn) isn't working properly.... Hard to find in the UK with the whole of Europe locked down, but I can get a 250k mn blend pot.
Now passive single coil pickups in fender basses.... normally have 250k pots. A 500k pot sounds 'brighter'... and I think it's due to it interacting with the pickup and starting the natural top end roll off later or something... so I was expecting the 250k pot to slightly change the tone...
Well it has! First thing I noticed was a very slight single coil hum. I'll need to check the connections but I'm pretty sure that's new - but the nicest thing is seems to have opened up the sound a bit.
The neck pickup is very much more P sounding with a little more high mids openness. so that's one good thing.
The bridge pup bridge coil is more like a jazz bridge pup, in dual coils it's a little more open but it doesn't make much of a difference.
The middle 'jazz' setting is darker again and more like the other blend pot (which makes sense as electronically there's less difference with both pups at 100%) but it's a nice difference.
Another thing I noticed is that the low notes on the B string and E string would get a bit wooly sounding. Especially with the neck pup there would be a lack of difinition.. They now sound a lot cleaner and clearer now.
Had to go through the preamp options again, settled on 500k as a nice compromise between a "better" tone and what I like. The mid control still seems crazy powerful but it's good.
I also straightened the truss rod... and it plays so nicely. I also think the last three weeks I've got used to 5 strings more as I didn't get as much of a "oh this feels like home" picking up a 4 string.
So yeah - a £4 pot and it's opened up the sound somewhat!
this being Talkbass I should probably add a slight caveat - I think the original system was a fairly tuned circuit and was a balance of compromises got at through years of R&D - there was a certain baked in tone to the 55-94 originally that can only have been deliberate. Lakland knew what they were doing- but as a first stage of moving away from that tone this pot change has left me quite happy.
