has anyone rewired a t40?
it has my favorite neck of all my basses
I just want the full range of single coil tone, and the full range of the humbucker tone
I actually don't like the way it is setup electrical
any thoughts on how I can accomplish this?
I can’t give you instructions on how to do this exactly, but I actually did a very similar rewriting on my formerly owned 1982 T-40 for exactly the same reason. I converted the tone knobs to push/pull pots, removing the shunt circuit of the original, and converted the phase switch to a series/parallel switch. This was all done on the blade pickups, which are hotter than the toasters and bassier too, which might’ve colored my experience.
Honestly... I was pretty underwhelmed. It seemed like it changed the “resonance” of the pickups when rolling off the tone knob, and the fully open humbucker sound was not significantly different as compared to the original circuit at the point where the shunt activates the humbucker mode. I think the peculiar interaction that the tone controls have with the pickups actually changes the pickups response, instead of just filtering it.
The series/parallel circuit was kind of a wash too, at least for my uses. With the neck in single coil mode, the tone in series was identical to the neck pickup soloed. With the pickup in humbucker mode, it made a
ridiculously bassy, super dub tone that was cool, but something I never once used on a gig. T-40s don’t exactly lack for low end heft, especially in humbucker mode.
Lastly, I have really come to believe that the phase switch is important on this bass. Even though I rarely use it, careful blending of the out-of-phase signal (especially with different combinations of single/humbucker mode on either pick) can really open up a lot of useful tones.
Overall if you really hate the circuit, go for it! I just figured I’d pitch in my experience with this.
