Hey guys - on a Modulus Q5 w/ Barts, I find that when you solo the bridge pickup, you get a much harsher tone than with the neck pickup soloed...harsh in a bad way I mean - clanky, metallic, non-smooth. I generally will solo the neck pickup and occassionally blend in a little of the bridge pup, but never more than 50/50 and that's pretty rough. Does anyone else have thoughts?
I got a Q5 w/ Barts a few weeks ago. I love the sound of it soloed on the bridge. It's tight, percussive and doesn't lose bottom end and thin out like so many basses do in the bridge solo position. It makes for a great slap sound and a quality fingerfunk kind of sound. It's a little gritty, but not harsh at all IMO. Every player has a different style. I play with ultralow action, massive preamp gain and a VERY light touch. Even my slap is very light w/ short movements as compared to many I have seen. If you were a more aggressive player and tended to dig in a little more, it could sound harsh I suppose. Chas
I have a Modulus Q6 SPi with Barts and the two coil tap toggle switches w/ active bass & trble (9Volts) and I have found a cool way to modify the tone for REAL cheap. Put in a push pull pot on your volume control as per the instructions on the Bart site. Not a difficult mod and it just gave me a whole new bass! Of course you don't have tone controls, but between the coil taps and the pickup selection pot, you have so many passive selections! For a smoother bridge sound, you put it on one of the phantom/single settings and it has a great J-bass sound. It is a little weaker than the active mode, of course, but not as bad as the difference if you had an 18 Volt EMG system. I really like putting one of the neck coils with a phantom coil for a noise free p-bass, and it's got the great Modulus feel!
Initially I noticed harshness with my Q5, but my problem was that my rig was set for my Fender Roscoe Beck V, which is a passive bass and a very different animal overall. I experimented with tone controls (onboard and outboard preamps) and got smoother tone with little difficulty. I can't say I noticed that the bridge pup was significantly worse than the neck pup, though. If your speaker cab has a tweeter with variable attenuator, you might want to try adjusting that too.
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