Very quiet passive bass

[M.R. Ogle]

I have made two short wires with an alligator clip at each end for troubleshooting. Just jumper the pickup's output leads directly to the jack, and THEN see if it's the pickup or not. I'd bet not.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

I have made two short wires with an alligator clip at each end for troubleshooting. Just jumper the pickup's output leads directly to the jack, and THEN see if it's the pickup or not. I'd bet not.

Thanks that's a pretty good idea. I think we have some scrap wire in our maintenance area at work I could use for this.

 

[MFeleki]

Did you already check that the -15dB "active" switch is not activated? Also, it may be worth checking the pickup height and adjusting if needed.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

It's definitely not padded. I don't really ever use the pad except when I'm in our band space and I haven't taken the westone over there ever. the pickups seem close enough that that shouldn't be the issue either.

 

[franvarin]

So I was just wondering if it's common for a passive bass to be super quiet. I've only every owned active basses. I haven't actually done this intentionally, it's just always worked out that way. Anyway I just picked up a westone electra fretless bass for free off of a friend of mine. Anyway I know it's not active like my other basses. This thing is super quiet when I plug it in. I have to crank my Ampeg SCR-DI preamp pretty much all the way up and still have my amp turned up pretty loud to even hear it at any sort of decent volume. It's a little ridiculous. I was just curious if this is a normal thing with passives or if there is something amiss with this bass. It seems like it shouldn't be normal because I know there's plenty of people who don't use active and it would seem crazy to prefer passive if every bass was like that.

Not at all! I actually prefer passive over active basses (I own both). In some cases my passive basses are louder. I find it has everything to do with the quality of the pickups and the setup of the Bass. One point, are the pickups set very low on the body? i.e. far away from the strings? That has a profound effect on the "loudness" of the pickups. It could also be that in that specific bass, the pickups are shot. I had that situation on my fretless jazz bass. How/why that happens, I have no idea.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

It could also be that in that specific bass, the pickups are shot.

I hope that isn't the case. The bass is more or less on loan, so I wouldn't really want to spend money to fix stuff like that as I'll be giving it back eventually.

The pickups don't seem too low to me but I could always raise them a bit and see what happens. I'd say they're about a quarter inch from the strings.

 

[blastbass]

Time to get a multimeter... I think.

 

[katalyzt13]

Maybe someone did a hack job of putting pots in with too low of a resistance value.
It sounds like you might have 25k Ohm pots in it.
They should be at least 250k Ohm.

That's what I was wondering about, too.

 

[BwBass123]

Was there any progress or solution to this issue?