Steve asked me to come and talk about the "Space Bass"
I've had a few basses with three or more pickups. The first one was one of my '73 Ricks. I had started out trying all manner of wiring on it. I had phase switches, and series/parallel switches, a varitone... Then I replaced the Rick single coils with a Hi-A mini humbucker in '76 (broke the stock bridge pickup trying to rewind it) at the bridge and a Carvin APH-4N I got in '77 at the neck. So then I wired up series parallels for the both of them. My band mates called it the Space Bass.
It looked like this photo from 1977:
So each pickup had a volume control. I think I wired up the two tone controls as passive bass/treble like on a G&L (that schematic came with the carvin pickup). The wide knob where the pickup selector was is a Varitone. The extra knob is a stereo master volume. The various switches did series/parallel for both pickups. A phase switch for the bridge, and series/parallel for each pickup. There are extra switches, and I don't remember what they did! But they all did something. Not always useful either (like the phase switches).
There was a popular prog rock band in the area (NJ) at the time called Godspeed, and the bass player had a P bass pickup between the two Rick pickups. I liked the way it sounded, so I did the same thing. Then when the DiMarzio Model P came out I replaced the fender P with one of those:
This is about '78
It's a little hard to see in the old newspaper photo. The model P probably also had a series parallel. I had replaced the Carvin with the stock toaster, but the opening in the pickup was still larger.
This time the bass also had a Hi-A (Bartolini) TC1 preamp with active bass and treble controls. The battery was under the pick guard. Lots of fun changing batteries. The bass was now mono.
Around that same time I put a single coil pickup in the mute compartment of the Rick. It was an old pickup from a Teisco taken out of the case.
In the late 70s I had a '74 P bass with two P pickups, the extra one being at the bridge. Then I converted the bass into an eight string, installed Model Ps, and then in the 80s I cut the body into a different shape, painted it first florescent pink, and then fuchsia (hey it was the 80s!), and added a DiMarzio Model G at the neck.
(yay the 80! lol Note the keyboard player sitting on the Farfisa organ keys for the big noise ending)
That bass had seven switches. It was on/off for each pickup, and series/parallel for each pickup, and a phase switch for one of them. It also had a 6 position varitone, which it needed, because it was very midrangy.
In the 90s I added a third pickup to one of my SGD basses:
Back then I used EMGs. I had a 40P5, 40DC and a 40J in the bass on the left. The I replaced the 40J with a regular J, which I felt sounded better. I tried many combinations of the pickups, and then eventually made my own pickups for those basses.
For the eagle eyed readers; yes, the bass on the right is missing the output jack and a string is broken.
It was just posed for the photo.
