Since I have have been put on "vacation" by another bass forum, I have decided that it is time to expand my horizons. I've been here for a bit but haven't posted much. Looks like that's going to change...
I am going to start with an ongoing project that is one of my personal basses, a double cutaway with a bot on 31" scale neck and a swamp ash body; this is the fourth pickup swap. So far it has had a: Peavey T40 (blade) (sounded killer, very aggressive). Hammond Darkstar ( my favorite so far... Fat, creamy, thick... why did I take it out?), an OEM Ovation Magnum neck pickup (HUGE! 4 separate coils... I thought it would kill. I was so wrong. What an odd sound..).
To fit the Ovation pickup I had to route a really big hole. I really didn't think about to at the time but it came back to haunt me when the Magnum pickup sounded nothing like I had thought it would, not even sure how to describe how it sounded... Hollow is the only thing that comes to mind, no mids and hardly any bottom... Major Bummer.
The bass ended up in a gig bag; I loved this bass, it weighs under 6 lbs!!! It feels like an old pair of jeans... It used to sound Killer.
I've been thinking about what to put into this bass next; I had sold the Darkstar but I had several other options, I was mainly looking at a pair of (Gibson) Thunderbird pickups or Bartolini soapbars (mainly to fill the enormous hole on the bass).
I have been slammed (very thankful) but with the end of Summer NAMM I took a week long break to clean the shop and take care of some repairs that have been waiting. I also decide to take a look at this bass. Awhile back I purchased a pair of single coil Paul Reed Smith bass pickups. I honestly had no idea what I was going to do with them at the time; they looked cool and I was sure I could use them at some point (the Grainger bass uses these as a humbucker which what I am using these as). They both registered above 7.60k.
At first I was going to install them as a standard humbucker (side by side) but then I thought about separating them and installing a ramp in between them; I'm hoping it will give them a slight tonal variety but I'm expecting to use them wired together in series, originally I was going to wire the bass that way only, but after thinking it over I decided to add a mini toggle for coil selection (or series/parallel/single coil).
Here is the cavity (canyon? Man, that pickup took up a lot of real estate!), I have already added a piece of ash to fill the original route for the T40 pickup. The depth of the route for the Ovation Magnum pickup is perfect for the single coils but O am going to add wood to close up the surrounding space.
Next I'm using a forstner bit to remove material on the treble side of the route, then I cleaned it up with a router.
Here is the route with wood added and cleaned up.
Finally I added a piece of ash to split the route.
Next I will be making a pickup ring to cover the now filled route...
Moonshine