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What Little Mod Made All The Difference?

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plangentmusic

Inactive
Jun 30, 2010
1,922
45
Manhattan
#1
I'm not a big believer in modding basses. I get it - if you're into tinkering. But changing this and that rarely gets you what you ultimately want, goes against the inherent nature of the instrument, and winds up costing you more than if you got what you wanted in the first place.

As momma used to say; "Buy cheap...and you buy twice."

HOWEVER...

Sometimes the tiniest little thing can change a dud into a gem.

For me it was a Carlo Robeli 6 string. Played great, looked great, sounded great. $250!!!!!!! But alas, after a few months it started crapping out on me and I thought, oh well, that's what you get for $250.

It turns out there was a short in the input jack. Fixed it. Cost me 30 bucks. And it's been great ever since.

So what little imrpovement turned out to be BIGGER than expeted for you?
 
#3
That's not so much a mod as a repair though, eh?

For me, it was replacing the volume pot on an old ibanez 4-string. For whatever reason, it was the wrong impedence and it was a linear taper. It was working fine, but it was also nearly useless. A tech suggested I replace it with a 500K audio taper, and the thing worked beautifully after that.

I'm not sure if that counts as a mod, but there it is.
 
#6
Pickup changes are generally to "smallest" thing you can do to radically change the tone of an electric bass or guitar.

The only "mods" I ever really do, besides that, are swapping the pots for push/pull DPDT pots so I can control how the pups are being used (coil taps, series/parallel, etc.).
 
#8
Guitar mod, but still representative: My son has an Epiphone Les Paul. It didn't stay in tune very well. I replaced the tuners with real Grovers. It now stays in tune much better. He was somewhat disappointed with the overall tone/sound/whatever you want to call it. He was sure it was gonna need new pickups. I told him "Instead of dropping a wad of cash on new pickups, let's try modding it in small steps." I replaced all 4 pots with the appropriate CTS ones, replaced the selector switch with a genuine Gibson switch, replaced the jack with a better one, replaced the caps with better caps and replaced all the wiring. Total cost of the parts was less than $50. That's all it took. My son discovered that the stock Epi pickups were just fine for his purpose (mostly metal) and that the jacks, pots, caps, switch and wiring combined for a big improvement.
 
#9
scottbass said:
Guitar mod, but still representative: My son has an Epiphone Les Paul. It didn't stay in tune very well. I replaced the tuners with real Grovers. It now stays in tune much better. He was somewhat disappointed with the overall tone/sound/whatever you want to call it. He was sure it was gonna need new pickups. I told him "Instead of dropping a wad of cash on new pickups, let's try modding it in small steps." I replaced all 4 pots with the appropriate CTS ones, replaced the selector switch with a genuine Gibson switch, replaced the jack with a better one, replaced the caps with better caps and replaced all the wiring. Total cost was less than $50. That's all it took. My son discovered that the stock Epi pickups were just fine for his purpose (mostly metal) and that the jacks, pots, caps, switch and wiring combined for a big improvement.
Click to expand...

This is what I always do first when somebody brings me their "dead" guitar. You, sir, are a good father!
 
#11
plangentmusic said:
HOWEVER...

Sometimes the tiniest little thing can change a dud into a gem.

For me it was a Carlo Robeli 6 string. Played great, looked great, sounded great. $250!!!!!!! But alas, after a few months it started crapping out on me and I thought, oh well, that's what you get for $250.

It turns out there was a short in the input jack. Fixed it. Cost me 30 bucks. And it's been great ever since.

So what little imrpovement turned out to be BIGGER than expeted for you?
Click to expand...

Carlo Robelli for me too! Was an 8 string (doubled) I bought on sale for $150 (normally $300). WORST neck-dive on the PLANET! And on top of that it had a related problem of the strap buttons pulling out of the soft "whatever" the body is made of.

After large gyration on my part, I ended up getting some strap locks, some REALLY long screws and a piece of rod to move the button out about 3" from the stubby upper horn. I moved the rear strap button up quite a bit. Installed the extension using the super long screws (with heads ground down to fit inside the straplocks).

Dive now totally gone! Buttons in to stay! And amazingly the really great active electronics in that dog pull just the most amazing tone out of that soft nasty body "wood". I guess if a Bongo can do it, so can Carlo Robelli! It's still kind of a special purpose bass, but I LOVE that thing! Total cost of fix including straplocks less than $20 (plus a huge hassle).
 
#19
The best mod I ever made was actually an un-mod. Soon after I got my Alembic Epic 5, I found an upgrade at Alembic's website where I could replace the stock two band EQ with a sweepable high end rolloff with a Q switch that provides a 3dB "bump" at the rolloff point. It's supposed to make it sound more "Alembic-like". I ordered it and installed it, and it was in my bass for nearly 5 years. I was never happy with the sound of the bass, and I finally realized the problem I was having with it was that I could not cut the low end. I put the stock EQ back in a couple of months ago and it's a totally different instrument.

To paraphrase an old song, I can hear clearly now, the mud is gone.
 

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