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PJ that works

#21
Hmm, my passive PJs sound just fine. One is a parts bass with SD 1/4 pounders wired VVT and the other is my '75 Precision with DiMarzios with the original volume and tone with a 3-way mini switch added for pup selection.

The only one I'm not satisfied with is my Squier fretless but it has several issues in addition to mismatched pups that lead to my dissatisfaction.
 
#22
petrus61 said:
There is not a two pickup passive bass currently available that will sound like either of its respective forebears, IME. Get one, the other, or both but don't expect a PJ to be able to fully do what just a J or P can in the tone dept. I have never played an example whose pickups character has not been affected by the presence of another. I'm one of a million voices, so take it with a grain.
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A P/J will work if you use a REAL Jazz pickup and a REAL Precision set and SWITCH between them and not try to mix them.

I've been telling people this for a long time, but now that Fender has come out with the Tony Franklin wired this way, maybe someone will listen to me. After all, it's really expensive! :rolleyes:

The reason passive P/Js stink so bad is that the pickups have usually been monkeyed with to "match" closer, which makes them individually worse, and they're wired into the awful V/V/T control arrangement so they always fight with each other. So, you wind up with something that fails to convincingly be either a real P or real J.

Worst example of this I've encountered yet (which is really saying something) was the horrible Fender "Hot Rodded" Precision Bass, usually found in that atrocious Sunset Orange. You might as well have taken the volume pots and thrown them in the river for all the good they did. The unique pickups were also losers.
 
#24
Bongolation said:
A P/J will work if you use a REAL Jazz pickup and a REAL Precision set and SWITCH between them and not try to mix them.

I've been telling people this for a long time, but now that Fender has come out with the Tony Franklin wired this way, maybe someone will listen to me. After all, it's really expensive! :rolleyes:

The reason passive P/Js stink so bad is that the pickups have usually been monkeyed with to "match" closer, which makes them individually worse, and they're wired into the awful V/V/T control arrangement so they always fight with each other. So, you wind up with something that fails to convincingly be either a real P or real J.

Worst example of this I've encountered yet (which is really saying something) was the horrible Fender "Hot Rodded" Precision Bass, usually found in that atrocious Sunset Orange. You might as well have taken the volume pots and thrown them in the river for all the good they did. The unique pickups were also losers.
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Well you never got tired of telling us ;) I agree you cant use a traditional 250k vvt wiring and expect the p to sound exactly like it does on it's own. Switching is an option, but you never seem to understand that most of us pj lovers do not want a "pure" p and j sound in one bass. The appeal for me is for a large part in the combined sounds you detest. I think it is perfectly possible to get a good authentic p sound out of a pj. IMHO using 500k pots is enough. For an authentic j sound it's not a very good option, you need a neck-j for that.

That said: switching can be a good idea, also if you're not going for just p or j. I recently converted to a 6 way switch (free-way switch) with a solo'd p pickup setting, but also 3 mixed settings. I also did try this with buffering pre-amps, to see what it would sound like without the pickups loading into each other. They sounded better while "fighting" with each other IMHO.
 
#29
Another vote for Yamaha, and the Pedullas, with the J in more of a '70's location, sound great.

IME/O, a VVT can do a good job of emulating the traditional P sound. The J, by itself, always seems less successful, although I like what it can do to augment the P-sound through a wide range of combinations.
 
#30
Matthijs said:
Well you never got tired of telling us ;) I agree you cant use a traditional 250k vvt wiring and expect the p to sound exactly like it does on it's own. Switching is an option, but you never seem to understand that most of us pj lovers do not want a "pure" p and j sound in one bass. The appeal for me is for a large part in the combined sounds you detest.
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No, but nice try.

The point of a P/J -- the reason they were originally thought up and the entire reason the average innocent mook goes shopping for one -- is to have exactly that, a P and a J.

What happens, though, is that he discovers he has neither compared to a real quality P or J.

What he usually finds after this cold dose of reality is that while it's more or less a fail for its originally conceived purpose, with everything cranked on it sounds pretty interesting -- and you're right, it does -- but you wind up with less versatility rather than more.

This is a salvage position, a rationalization.

And while I think that a purely notional set of P and J pickups combined on a P/J has an interesting sound, it's not one I would want for my default use. So, it becomes what I refer to as an effects bass and I'm back to using a real P and a real J and the P/J stays in the closet -- and that wasn't anybody's original plan.

I think it is perfectly possible to get a good authentic p sound out of a pj.
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Not with dumbed-down P pickups, though, and that's what typically comes on a P/J, unfortunately.

IMHO using 500k pots is enough.
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I don't understand why a 500K pot is expected to be an improvement when a ~5% rotation of a 250K pot off open causes the pickup to drop completely out in a passive V/V/T circuit, as it does on a HRPB.

If the pots don't mix -- and they don't -- why not just switch them on a passive and dispense with all the inductance grief once and for all?

That's what Fender finally did on the Tony Franklin.
 
#33
I merely added a J pup to a '90s MIJ P and wired in a toggle.
I left the original P volume and tone controls alone, and it sounded great.
It added that extra clarity to the P I was missing, plus you still have the option of going with the stock P tone if you want.

Never did use that switch, though. I liked both pups on full.
:)
 
#36
With a PJ setup, to really cop a jazz tone, putting the P pickup in parallel gets you pretty close. To me it never made sense having the louder pickup toward the neck and putting the weaker pickup by the bridge. I built a couple basses where I reversed the pickups, but moved them some. I put the P in more of a Musicman position and the J a bit closer to the neck than a 51 P single coil would be, but almost in that position. I got excellent results with both basses.
 
#38
logans59 said:
I love my Fender Aerodyne P, much cheaper than the Reggie Hamilton sig.
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Hmm, the difference is $50 MSRP and $100 at GC pricing. Not what I would call much cheaper and since I wanted the features the RH has it was the cheaper option because it would cost more than $100 to add them to an Aerodyne. But they are both good PJ basses and Fender makes more as well. If having an authentic P-Bass sound is important to you then you might have to do some electrical mods to many of them. That isn't difficult or expensive to do in most cases. Before you sit down to do it you have to decide which P-Bass sound you want as there have been many over the years. Perhaps that is why a lot of us PJ owners don't obsess over this.

Ken
 
#39
This is a quote I found from an interview with Tony Franklin talking about his P bass.


I added the extra Jazz Bass bridge pick-up in the early ’80s, as I wanted to have the growl and the harmonics like Jaco. I put in a Strat 3-way selector switch, as it seemed like the easiest way to switch sounds. I bought a pair of DiMarzio Jazz Bass pick-ups, as those were the loudest pickups available at the time. One pickup went in the fretless, the other in the fretted! The cool thing was that the volume of the P-Bass and J-Bass pickups matched perfectly, so there was no drop in volume when switching between the two. It was a happy accident!
 

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