Excuse me ahead of time for a bit of a long story. I want you to understand the context of my situation...
I've got an Ibanez BTB 510E that I've modified with an Audere Classic 4-Band preamp and Nordstrand Big Splits.
It's a great sounding bass, especially strung like it is with TI flats, and I can cop a pretty good Jazz Bass tone by boosting lows/highs and cutting high mids/low mids.
I then bought an MIM fretless Fender Jazz and proceeded to replace the bridge, pickups, tuners, and install an Audere JZ5D preamp into it. I then discovered that fretless is not my thing so I decided to trade the neck for a fretted one and had planned on refininshing it. Finally I decided to replace the body and make my own parts Jazz, and right now I'm only missing the body and neck.
I've always liked the sound I get from older American Sterlings and also wanted to get myself one of those, and then it hit me - I could install a Nordstrand MM pup in between the Big Splits and, according to Carey Nordstrand, get a pretty good MM sound, plus the MM and the BS's would sound different enough to make it worth doing. I'm going to wire the BS's to a pickup selector switch and then to the pre as the "neck" pickup and the MM to a series/single-coil/parallel switch and then to the pre as the "bridge" pickup. I can then blend the two in any combination I want. I don't have the money to do this project at this time, though. It would look something like this when it's finished:
This brings me to the parts Jazz. Since I can already cop a nice Jazzish tone I'm afraid that I'm going to put $700+ into a bass that I'm not going to play that much - I can't justify having a bass for the sake of having a bass. I could finish the Jazz, which would be a very nice bass with all the parts that I've got, or I could sell them off, do the BTB MM pup project, and buy a cheaper P-Bass, which is about the only fretted tone I couldn't get from the BTB with the added MM pup.
I'm not a pro and don't record, so I don't need exactly a jazz bass tone. What would you do in this situation?
I've got an Ibanez BTB 510E that I've modified with an Audere Classic 4-Band preamp and Nordstrand Big Splits.
It's a great sounding bass, especially strung like it is with TI flats, and I can cop a pretty good Jazz Bass tone by boosting lows/highs and cutting high mids/low mids.
I then bought an MIM fretless Fender Jazz and proceeded to replace the bridge, pickups, tuners, and install an Audere JZ5D preamp into it. I then discovered that fretless is not my thing so I decided to trade the neck for a fretted one and had planned on refininshing it. Finally I decided to replace the body and make my own parts Jazz, and right now I'm only missing the body and neck.
I've always liked the sound I get from older American Sterlings and also wanted to get myself one of those, and then it hit me - I could install a Nordstrand MM pup in between the Big Splits and, according to Carey Nordstrand, get a pretty good MM sound, plus the MM and the BS's would sound different enough to make it worth doing. I'm going to wire the BS's to a pickup selector switch and then to the pre as the "neck" pickup and the MM to a series/single-coil/parallel switch and then to the pre as the "bridge" pickup. I can then blend the two in any combination I want. I don't have the money to do this project at this time, though. It would look something like this when it's finished:
This brings me to the parts Jazz. Since I can already cop a nice Jazzish tone I'm afraid that I'm going to put $700+ into a bass that I'm not going to play that much - I can't justify having a bass for the sake of having a bass. I could finish the Jazz, which would be a very nice bass with all the parts that I've got, or I could sell them off, do the BTB MM pup project, and buy a cheaper P-Bass, which is about the only fretted tone I couldn't get from the BTB with the added MM pup.
I'm not a pro and don't record, so I don't need exactly a jazz bass tone. What would you do in this situation?
