Yamaha BB3000AF

[Fred vd W]

hi guy's

i'm a bass player from the Netherlands and bought a beautiful Yamaha BB3000AF from 1980...

it'a a P & J pickup setup and i use Labella deep talking black strings..

what i like to know when i use only the jazz bass bridge pickup the volume is not that loud when i turn the knob to the middle it's getting better.. the Precision pickups are louder..

is this normal? or shoud i use metal flatwound strings?
who plays BB basses and give me advice?

sorry for my English

best regards
Fred vd Wende

 

[Badwater]

I use a passive BB424x and had a similar problem. My P pickups are alnico 5 putting out 11.5 ohms and was a little bit louder than the J ceramic putting out 10.3 ohms. And when I go in the middle, some of the J bridge pickup's highs were softer where I need to increase the high using the tone knob. Anyway, I got them pretty close in volume by adjusting pickup height. As for the center position on the switch, there is a small drop in the bridge's highs, but the volume is pretty consistent in all 3 positions (P, both, J). I don't know if this is helpful as your bass is active with a blend knob. But if you want to get the volumes balanced, you may need to adjust the pickup angles and heights. I would start with the bridge to get the volume balanced across the strings first, and then balance in the P pickup as it has more options for angles and heights. With the P pickup you can adjust for tone with the G side of the pickup. That way, you can tune it to how you feel is right.