Newbie question

[BassPuzzler]

If a bass has two passive pickups (say a j and a p) and volume and tone knobs for each pickup, does it need a switch for anything?

On that note, would it make any sense to have a bass with a humbucker at the neck position, and a p-pickup at the bridge, and then have a 3-way switch with: "Humbucker in series" "Humbucker in parallel" "humbucker tapped"?

Thanks!

 

[line6man]

You don't have to add any switches unless you want the extra options.

 

[bassbenj]

If a bass has two passive pickups (say a j and a p) and volume and tone knobs for each pickup, does it need a switch for anything?

On that note, would it make any sense to have a bass with a humbucker at the neck position, and a p-pickup at the bridge, and then have a 3-way switch with: "Humbucker in series" "Humbucker in parallel" "humbucker tapped"?

Thanks!

If a bass has two pickups of ANY kind you'll need to be able to somehow select the bridge alone, the neck alone or both together. (assuming you'd like to be able to adjust the tone)

The next step of sophistication is to be able to "blend" these two pickups together in any ratio.

Hence passive basses with two pickups (jazz/PJ etc.) have either two volume controls (one for each pickup) OR a single master volume and a "blend" control that allows you to mix the tone of the two pickups. Sorry, volume and two tone controls is what quite a few guitars have, not basses. And I might add it's an arrangement that sucks pretty bad on guitars too! (Guitars often have a switch to select each or both pickups. Some basses have that too).

You can have ANY kind of pickup in ANY position and there are lots of people making basses with lots of variations of choices.

To just give you a noob hint, your description of a humbucker can be found in G&L L2x00 series basses. Only they use TWO humbuckers. There is a switch that selects neck/bridge/both and a second switch that selects series/parallel/single coil (with "K" option). There is no "blend" feature. There are lots of variations one can imagine. I've seen basses with two p-bass pickups, or the PJ which is a P neck and Jazz bridge. There are also P neck and Humbucker bridge. Go root around the internet looking at the various configurations. Start at the G&L website.

 

[BassPuzzler]

So how about:

P at neck.
Humbucker at bridge.

Humbucker has a switch to bypass/ignore one coil, making it sound like a single coil.

Volume knob for each pickup.
Master tone knob.

 

[line6man]

So how about:

P at neck.
Humbucker at bridge.

Humbucker has a switch to bypass/ignore one coil, making it sound like a single coil.

Volume knob for each pickup.
Master tone knob.

Sure.