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Will adding a maple laminate help my highs?

#21
very quickly taken photos after a solid week of playing so it's a bit battered now compared to when I first made it:
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because of the way I'm reusing the centre strip from an old project (and my love of ramps) I had to create a big ramp to cover the very ugly oversized route from the previous project.
 
#23
There's a second MM pickup under the ramp which adds most of the highs. .

the bridge pickup is rather dull sounding, the dark tone bart doesn't help this, I think I'm gonna make a wooden pickup cover to cover the route and place a jazz bass pickup at the neck side of the route to try and coax some more growl from it.

I also have a cheap Pbass P'up somewhere that I may squeeze into the neck pickup route under the ramp to see if Pbass' inherant growliness can change the tonal palette of the bass.
 
#27
Cheers Miziomix and hello Uber!

the knob configuration has changed a lot since I made the bass. it started with stacked vol/vol and master tone then became 2 volumes no tone and now is passive blend and master tone with push/pull coil split switch.
I rarely use the master volume on any of my basses so thought I'd built one without, my volume pedal can mute the bass if needs be.

as for the pickyp location i think a rough estimate would be that the MM sweetspot is probably somewhere between (a combinationn fo the placement of) the neck coil of the bridge pickup and the bridge coil of the neck pickup, achievable with the right coil splitting options but the barts darker blade magnet tones don't work too create in single coil mode unless you're after a little more top end for slap... and by a little I mean exactly that.

if I get the time this afternoon I'll try swapping pickups for some stacked jazz pups I have in my spares box and see how they sound in comparison to the barts MMs. will report back.
 
#28
I also seldom use the V. For my next build I am having an eq designed to replace it with an on/off toggle.
BTW, someone earlier mentioned the Bartolini's CB series. They sounds very good to me - Über mounts two X44CBJD in F Jazz position and with proper eq they're very slap friendly. Just in case you have them in your spares box ;)
 
#29
Try eliminating the tone control entirely, it could be sucking the high frequencies. If that alone isn't enough, then swap to different MM pickups. You might even want to try a ceramic magnet version to increase the output and add high end. What value capacitor is on your tone control, and what value pot?
 
#31
although one pickup is marginally brighter than the other it is only apparent because he bridge pickup is so thin and upper mids dominant and that is the fault of it's location, I don't think swapping them would cause that much of aa tone shift but then again it could be worth a try... We'll see, looks like I hhave a free afternoon later today so will undoutbably crack the bass open and rearrange it's innards :p

I've found that over the years of playing a volume control is almost usless to me so it remains missing on most of my built or modded basses.

As for the tone pot it is actually a 1M pot which I use only really for it's push/pull switch, I will admit that the tone cap is a cheap one and I can't recall the value but it's not a very deep cut, when fully cut it still lets a lot of the mid growl through.

Would either of these factors actually kill treble?

I'll be trying different pickups later so will report back on any headway made cheers all.
 
#33
BarkerBass said:
although one pickup is marginally brighter than the other it is only apparent because he bridge pickup is so thin and upper mids dominant and that is the fault of it's location...
Click to expand...

Placing a pickup too close to the bridge will cause it to sound thin and weak. Also, these Barts are 4-conductor, right? I recall you mentioning that you split them out to single coil... Do you ever note better low end response when in single coil mode? If so, your wiring may be faulty, in that the coils may be out of phase. I have a friend in college who had an MM pickup added to his P-bass in the bridge location, but because he didn't want to mod the pickguard, the MM pickup ended up being too close to the bridge and sounding like crap (it was also wired out of phase, which made it sound thin and midrange-y, but even after correcting that issue, it was still thin and weak sounding). His only solution now is to either fill the hole, re-route and refinish, or to replace the body.

BarkerBass said:
...the tone pot it is actually a 1M pot which I use only really for it's push/pull switch, I will admit that the tone cap is a cheap one and I can't recall the value but it's not a very deep cut, when fully cut it still lets a lot of the mid growl through.
Click to expand...

1M tone pot should have a HUGE sweep through it's range. There should be a marked difference from one end to the other, if it's properly wired, ad the cap value is correct. I'd double-check the tone cap value, and that it's wired up right.

BarkerBass said:
Would either of these factors actually kill treble?
Click to expand...

All factors of your electronics will affect your tone/sound. Your issue could be related to bad components, bad solder joints (less likely, but could happen), incorrect wiring (series/parallel/phase on pickups), etc.
 
#34
SDB Guitars said:
Placing a pickup too close to the bridge will cause it to sound thin and weak. Also, these Barts are 4-conductor, right? I recall you mentioning that you split them out to single coil... Do you ever note better low end response when in single coil mode? If so, your wiring may be faulty, in that the coils may be out of phase. I have a friend in college who had an MM pickup added to his P-bass in the bridge location, but because he didn't want to mod the pickguard, the MM pickup ended up being too close to the bridge and sounding like crap (it was also wired out of phase, which made it sound thin and midrange-y, but even after correcting that issue, it was still thin and weak sounding). His only solution now is to either fill the hole, re-route and refinish, or to replace the body.



1M tone pot should have a HUGE sweep through it's range. There should be a marked difference from one end to the other, if it's properly wired, ad the cap value is correct. I'd double-check the tone cap value, and that it's wired up right.



All factors of your electronics will affect your tone/sound. Your issue could be related to bad components, bad solder joints (less likely, but could happen), incorrect wiring (series/parallel/phase on pickups), etc.
Click to expand...

Wow thanks for all the advice :)

The bridge pickup isn't out of phase, it sounds thin because of it's location and when coil split sounds even thinner.

The tone pot does effect the tone but because the cap isn't a very deep sounding cut cap it doesn't reduce treble much in a bass with very little treble to start with so it doesn't sound like much of a change but were the pickups to yield more highs i'm sure it'd be far more use.

Cheers guys, keep the advice coming
 
#36
well I've swapped out the MM pickups for a Precision pickup I had lying around and an old split coil Jazz pickup from a Deluxe fender which I swapped out a while ago and they yield a lot more treble, pleasantly aggressive too BUT I have a phase issue which I'm hoping one of you can help me with:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f38/p-j-wiring-help-2-conductor-phase-issues-762077/

There's the pickup forum thread I started for it but since several bona fide pickup gurus are chiming in so helpfully on this thread I thought I'd be cheeky and as for your help too.

Soooo close to a better tone, just need this last piece of the puzzle solving for me!

Thanks again all :help:
 
#37
Ok so after some Precision pickup splicing and dicing I now have a functioning P/J set of pickups in this bass and it sounds right! I'm clearly a jazz bass guy at heart cos the sound these pickups make is music to my ears, more definition, more growl but because of the mahogany core it has a nice punch to it too, more so than say an alder body but no tone holy grail.

I had to do a little rewiring of the pickups to solve the phase issues, if you care to know there's an explanation in the pickup thread above.

The P bass pickup fits snugly under the ramp but the split jazz leaves a lot to be seen, mainly a huge ugly route, so tomorrow I'll be taking my bass into the wood workshops at my Uni dept (I'm an art student and so have access to plenty of cool machines) and will make it a cover/ramp to match the neck pickup from some mahogany off cuts I have left somewhere.

The slightly unusual positioning of the pickups creates some nice tones. The bridge pickup is now almost exactly in standard 60's jazz bass bridge pickup position but the mahogany's natural girth adds some meat to its tone however the neck precision pickup's treble coil is at best about 10mm from the edge of the bridge pickup, they're very close together, I'll try and get a photo of their placement. This means that the bass has a tighter than usual tone with a lot of punch while the precision pickup has slightly more articulation and slightly less warmth than usual, but only marginally... I find this logical but still fascinating... sorry for going on about it...


:hiding:
 
#38
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Here's the new ramp with thumb rest built in.

just for your information the jazz pickup at the bridge is under the new ramp at its joint with the older ramp and the P bass pickup is about 10mm further towards the neck than this with the treble coil being the closest to the bridge. very pleasantly punchy snappy tone and enough growl to keep me satisfied

I'll probably start a thread of it's own to document (in hind sight) the build
 

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