For those brave souls who wish to go fishing in their F-holes
, I present to you a case study in implementing the fabled EB2 choke-bypass modification. This was my attempt at it, and I was happy with the outcome - especially since no irreversible modification to the bass was required.
To recap the whole bypass thing, the goal of this mod was to enable a means of selectively severing a section of the circuit (the choke/filter) - in order to eliminate a residual filtering effect. This filtering colors the sound of the mudbucker by removing most of its mid and high frequencies, leaving only that resounding muffled, "low-hovering-cloud" sound. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the nasal "baritone" sound, which is devoid of bass. No real happy medium to be found.
As it turns out, the choke/filter circuit is always present and doing something in the overall scheme of things, even when the baritone mode is supposedly disengaged. In bypassing the choke circuit, the full-range output of the pickup can be realized, yielding a tone with more midrange punch - not unlike the SG-style EBs. This tone works wonders in live settings, helps the bass cut through the mix, and still retains that EB "girth".
In order to implement this mod, and still retain the two original settings (I like them for recording), I chose to replace my pushbutton (SPST) baritone switch with a 3-position (DPDT) toggle. The stock switch had a 3/8" diameter shaft, yet the hole it was situated in was drilled out to 1/2". Given the fact that I would not have to touch a drill to install it, I opted for the
3-position Les Paul pickup selector switch. Unlike the dual-pickup selector, this switch will give you DPDT capability.
The original schematic from Gibson looked like this:
Note the red highlighted connection to ground is a mistake, and should not be present. This was an error on the original schematic that I obtained from Gibson, and if implemented would result in no output whatsoever.
Here is the modified schematic, depicting the new switching capability:
I realize this is an EB-2D schematic, but the choke circuit should be similar in EB-2 and Rivoli applications - so don't let that throw you off. Someone had drawn up a modded EB-2 schematic - wish I would have saved it.
One note about the switch that I had chosen. The switching behavior had to be altered by bending one of the prongs using needlenose pliers - prong #4 to be exact. I snapped a photo to illustrate exactly what to modify, if you end up using this type of switch:
The pins are numbered #1-#6, starting at the top. The goal is to make is to make it so that pin #4 never comes in contact with #5 - otherwise, the center position would enable the original unchoked mode as opposed to the bypass mode. Once that change has been made, the switching behavior will work as follows:
If you're not into that approach, a
regular DPDT toggle switch should fit the bill as is. I just prefered the look and feel of the LP toggle - so I made it work.
That's really all there is to the mod. I made a quick recording that highlights each sound, so you can hear the differences. The first eight bars feature the original "unchoked, but filtered" mode, the next eight bars feature the "new" unchoked/unfiltered mode, and the final eight are the original baritone mode. Note that it is kind of hard to appreciate the difference between the original unchoked, and the choke-bypass modes at low volume, but you can hear the mids open up, and the boominess start to subside. The effect is more exaggerated at volume. (EDIT: I just realized I had both pickups on the whole time. I meant to switch it to neck only for a good baseline (and bassline
) comparison - oh well.)
When I did this mod, I just gutted the bass, and built an entirely new harness with push-back wire, CTS pots, etc... Here are some photos of the whole process:
Guts and glory:
My new, modified wiring harness:
Completed bass with toggle switch:
Hope this helps!
