Hey Y'all,
I loves me some semihollow bass goodness, my Rumblefish PJ is my all-time favorite bass. But it's not as comfortable to play as I'd like so I keep looking & experimenting. Here's my latest project looking for that "perfect for me" semihollow.
It's a Fender HMT - and oddball MIJ bass from the 80s. While the hockey stick headstock and sharkfin inlays say "heavy metal" (which is what I believe the HMT stands for) the semihollow body and fixed piezo bridge do not.
The neck is very slim and I'll ignore the ugly appearance. The body is semihollow of some construction (not sure if it's fully hollow, semi-hollow or what) made out of basswood, I believe.
The electronics are funky - an active TBX tone control that drops treble and ups bass turned in one direction and does the opposite when turned the other way. An unbuffered bridge piezo pickup is blended with a Lace P pickup.
So it seems a decent platform. I swapped out the Lace P pickup for a G&L MFD split-coil. Much beefier output with that G&L growl. I added in a PZP-1 buffer for the piezo from Invalid Link Removed. This was a big improvement over the crispy unbuffered piezo sound. But I'm still not a big fan of the piezo here - my old Godin A4 was a much better implementation (it may have been the onboard 3-band eq that helped there). It also has a problem where the output for the E-string is way lower. It needs some work with the saddle to get a good even response but I'm not sure it's worth it. I will probably pull all the active electronics soon and go with just the MFD split coil and vol & tone controls. It's all I need and sounds plenty good.
I'm running groundwounds (SIT Power Flats) on it for now for a mellower vibe than the roundwounds that were on it when I came to me (talk about harsh and useless with the unbuffered piezo). I may eventually file out the nut and put some tapewounds on it (the slots were too narrow for the Roto tapewounds I thought about putting on it) if it sticks around.
I loves me some semihollow bass goodness, my Rumblefish PJ is my all-time favorite bass. But it's not as comfortable to play as I'd like so I keep looking & experimenting. Here's my latest project looking for that "perfect for me" semihollow.
It's a Fender HMT - and oddball MIJ bass from the 80s. While the hockey stick headstock and sharkfin inlays say "heavy metal" (which is what I believe the HMT stands for) the semihollow body and fixed piezo bridge do not.
The neck is very slim and I'll ignore the ugly appearance. The body is semihollow of some construction (not sure if it's fully hollow, semi-hollow or what) made out of basswood, I believe.
The electronics are funky - an active TBX tone control that drops treble and ups bass turned in one direction and does the opposite when turned the other way. An unbuffered bridge piezo pickup is blended with a Lace P pickup.
So it seems a decent platform. I swapped out the Lace P pickup for a G&L MFD split-coil. Much beefier output with that G&L growl. I added in a PZP-1 buffer for the piezo from Invalid Link Removed. This was a big improvement over the crispy unbuffered piezo sound. But I'm still not a big fan of the piezo here - my old Godin A4 was a much better implementation (it may have been the onboard 3-band eq that helped there). It also has a problem where the output for the E-string is way lower. It needs some work with the saddle to get a good even response but I'm not sure it's worth it. I will probably pull all the active electronics soon and go with just the MFD split coil and vol & tone controls. It's all I need and sounds plenty good.
I'm running groundwounds (SIT Power Flats) on it for now for a mellower vibe than the roundwounds that were on it when I came to me (talk about harsh and useless with the unbuffered piezo). I may eventually file out the nut and put some tapewounds on it (the slots were too narrow for the Roto tapewounds I thought about putting on it) if it sticks around.
