My bass is too powerful! Will a compressor help

[bassbenj]

Hey Guys, thanks so much for the quick responses!

I will try and get a picture up shortly.

I basically built it Frankenstein syle: accumulating the parts and putting them all together, with some minor adjustments (this was several years ago when I had very little wood working experience, I now build downhill skateboards haha). The majority of what I did was tummy and arm cuts and then the stain and lacquer.

I did attempt to wire it myself with a diagram from the aguillar site, but when I took it to a luthier this winter (after it had sat in unfinished pieces since 2011) to get it fully functional for good, he said he had to rewire the whole thing.

The issue has been on my swr practice amp, as well as when I am recording DI. Basically if I want my tone knobs anything but flat, I cannot have volume max. The second I try and add more low end, I have to crank volume back significantly, otherwise I'm maxing out and getting distortion. Also, when I have one pickup volume up all the way, and I start turning the other up, halfway through the volume will drop out and then come back as blended. So I have been having to pretty much just play bridge or neck or 100% both (which with the flat tone doesn't sound too good).

The tone is pretty much why I built this bass the way I did, and I cant really harness it.

I have had active basses in the past, but had never had one that had more than 9v, so I wasn't sure if that was the culprit. I am laying some tracks down for a friend, and really want to use this bass, but cant. Which is why I was thinking compressor for the quick fix until I can get it rewired (by a different luthier).

Your bass is just too hot. That's why amps have two inputs: active and passive (or a switch). All the active input does is cut down the signal. (it's like two resistors for a few cents)

You can have that wired into the bass to tame it or into the amp. (better) Or for a quick fix get a Morley optical volume pedal. They take the input and add no coloration. Plus you can change the setting if you boost EQ.

A compressor will change your sound (maybe better, maybe worse) and may not even work as it can be overloaded on the front end as well.

Or you could just turn down the volume on your bass. Duh.

 

[Sparkdog]

Does that Aggie preamp have a trim pot on the circuit board? I had a Bartolini preamp installed in a bass and when the trim pot was up full it was WAY too hot for any amp I tried. I dialed down the trim pot until I could run the volume knob all the way up (mostly to avoid losing highs) without distortion.

Works great now.

 

[CarbonTom]

So obviously it seems like I cant play it wide open like my other basses, which is fine I suppose. I guess I really wasn't well informed about how intense the preamp was. At the time, I thought that I had to have that type of a preamp to have those pickups wired like that with the pots I wanted. Maybe I should have just done it passive as indicated by Dogghouse... I just had the mentality of 'Okay I can put whatever I want into this bass, might as well go all out.' I thought with that preamp, I would be able to fine tune much more of the bass' tone.

As for trim pots, I'm not able to access any circuitry on the preamp since its all enclosed.

I guess I'm just being a kook with electronics, and made some poor decisions with planning this bass.

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about preamps and wiring...

 

[JustForSport]

I've got similar situation with one-
EMG DC40's (on a 5'er) w/OBP PK 3 and it over-drives the amp with new batts, but is ok when batt's are not new.
I just keep the vol lower on that one because with active pre, tone (or not much) is lost with lower vol than passive setup.
Still trying to find an internal resistor (and cap?) setup to tame it a bit without loosing tone.
Would like less output with full EQ control, really.