I thought I would share my views regarding the electronics of my basses. Over the years I've taken a minimalist view of electronics. I really feel that if your using pedal effects, rack gear, iOS gear, and other things that are before the amp, the basses I've seen have too many knobs.
I'm not a big fan of the 1 knob per pickup wiring. Why do they do that? I'm not sure, because you can get the same exact sounds from one balance pot. 2 pots make it 2x harder to find the exact sound if the knobs get bumped. If I keep all the knobs I'll rewire the pickups using the attached drawing.
But.... In the past, I've used a MIDI programmable EQ, effects in a rack, and a GK 200MB on a stand set as flat as possible as a monitor. At one time, I even used an RTA to set the GK EQ as flat as it can get, but that's a story in itself.
Since I'm using iOS apps for effects to replace the rack gear, I have the same situation. The EQ, effects, and foot controller make it such that I have no need to make knob adjustments, except to turn the volume up and down when I don and doff the bass.
To this end, I usually make a few mods when I get basses.
Mod 1: Replace Vol pot with switch.
- In all my years, I've never used the volume pot to fade in or out, and/or play louder or softer. A slight dampen of the string near the bridge works well to fade me out. Volume pedals are used for the heavy lifting.
Mod 2: Find the blending sweet-spot between the 2 pickups.
- I've found that there's a place that I use all the time. Once I find that spot it's tough to find it with two knobs, and still tricky with one knob. When I find the sound, I mark the spot, measure the resistance of the pots, and put in resisters such that I always have that sound. Once there, 31-band and Parametric EQs are used when I'm looking for something darker or brighter. With the iOS cabinet and amp choices, I get even more options for different sounds. I just don't need a blending knob. With more then one bass with different strings, I change basses long before I make pickup changes.
Tone control:
- The pots usually go away. However, I love EMG's on-board bass expander. The Steinberger has the volume pots removed, but the active chip remains. The Stiletto has an active component, too. I will leave that, but will likely loose the tone pots. Again, with different basses that make totally different sounds, I'll grab a different instrument long before changing the tone knobs.
I've found that fiddling with all those knobs during gigs rarely helps my sound. In louder rooms (that I tried to avoid even when younger), you can't trust your ear anyway. The ringing in ears that comes after a short time makes it virtually impossible to EQ anything properly.
I know this line of thinking is not very popular, but I thought I'd share anyway in case someone was thinking of the same thing.