The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Fender Basses => Topic started by: Johnny Crab on January 28, 2008, 04:57:18 PM
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Has anyone installed a LARGE humbucker at the neck in a P/J?
In the 70's BEFORE Billy Sheehan got popular and no one knew of this mod, I had a P that was butchered with a humbucker at the neck and a Rickenbacker pickup at the bridge.
Now I've got an inexpensive P/J and a brand new OLD-STYLE humbucker to work with. Initial plans are to wire it with three volume controls running through a master tone and maybe having a bypass switch for the tone(I've got one bass with 3 pickups and NO tone control that sounds AMAZING).
Comments?
Pictures?
How did you do it if you did?
Here's Billy's oldest one:
(http://www.billysheehan.com/gear/images/instr_34body.jpg)
PS: I don't plan on digging canyons in my fretboard.
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How did that old bass of yours sound? I've always had the idea of doing a project bass with pickups the way you describe.
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The Gibson pickup and the P pickup worked GREAT together(now I understand why Billy does it). I could never get the Ric pickup to give enough output to keep up with those two pickups. The current "experiment" P & J pickups both can hold their own so it should turn out much better this time around.
The three pickup bass I own now is the inspiration to try this again as it has only three volume controls. The volume settings actually act as "tone" control on that bass.
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Not to throw out a cliche, but the sky is the limit. I guess how I would do it depends on me, so how do you like to mess around? If tone is kind of important you could use a stack pot, like a 62 RI Jazz, for one control. It could hold the master tone for all three pups. I would incorporate push-pull pots for any tone mod that I would not use all the time - so for your humbucker (is it a mudbucker or something else like a DiMarzio?) you could have the push/pull mod the wiring from series to parrallel, and you can do that to the P pup as well. I don't know how hard it is to get those S-1 switches from Fender, but that is a neat trick to do the same thing. You could have a push/pull pot to bypass the tone as well. I personally don't like mini toggles, so if I can replace one volume or tone pot with a push pull I do that. In theory you could have all three pups run in series, or anything else you can think of. I try to limit myself to Sleeper mods, to use a hot rod term.
My personal concept is if you don't like a pup, you can turn it down, so I would use push pulls to alter wiring.
I almost installed a mudbucker in an old Fender, and didn't have the heart to cob it up. There was a thread here about other people who have done it besides Billy Sheehan, and it was not unknown in the 60s. I would do it to an aftermarket body or copy.
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How about this to start with?
http://www.squierguitars.com/products/search.php?partno=0326902500
I like its looks and it got a very good review in Gitarre & Bass magazine, neck is modern, not the halved baseball bat of old P/Telecaster basses. You could probably use the cavity for the (real) mudbucker and still have lots of room for other pups.
Uwe
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on a side note,i wonder if ol' Billy skates.he always has skateboard stickers on his basses.those on the pic above are from the mid 80's.OLD SKATERS NEVER DIE,THEY JUST SMELL THAT WAY.
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How about this to start with?
http://www.squierguitars.com/products/search.php?partno=0326902500
I like its looks and it got a very good review in Gitarre & Bass magazine, neck is modern, not the halved baseball bat of old P/Telecaster basses. You could probably use the cavity for the (real) mudbucker and still have lots of room for other pups.
Uwe
I've seen one, last July in the Fender booth at Summer NAMM. No chance to plug it in, but it sure looked and felt very low quality to me. I'd get something a bit better than that as a starting point.
FWIW, the 1977 Tele Bass I owned and the other humbucker era ones I've played did not have the baseball bat necks of the early single coil models.Nice profile and not even as wide at the nut as Precisions of that era.
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I used to have an `77 Tele2
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a377/BartWitte/Telebas1.jpg)
and the neck wasn`t baseball shaped. Last summer I played Chrisp`s Squier Tele and the neck was the same, lovely shape. The humbucker is very good too. We compared it amongst other basses of Chrisp, Basvarken and me and it really stood out as a good bass for the bucks. It`s defenitly worth a try.
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Of course the tuners and pots are bad o the Squier, but it really is a nice bass, especially with that price tag. As Bart! Said: Basvarken he and I tried several Gibsons, Fenders, Epiphones and other brands and my '64 Burns and the cheap Tele were real surprises. try one out.
Uwe; Tell us about the Fieste P.
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Well, what do you know....;
http://cgi.ebay.com/FENDER-PRECISION-BASS-MODIFIED_W0QQitemZ120215059186QQihZ002QQcategoryZ64401QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
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there actually was a guy before Sheehan who modified his Fenders with a Gibson Mudbucker. John McVie was the first, having modified his Jazz Bass with a Gibson mudbucker in the late sixties. He can be seen using that bass on many live performances and in the Music Video for "Big love"
See it for yourselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYLkqLSsbg
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Also Tony Stevens of Foghat had this mod early on. Here is my "young wife" tribute to Billy's bass. It has a Dimarzio installed right now but I'm going to put a mudbucker in when I find one. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v102/godofthunder59/Billybass001.jpg) I used to go see Billy in Talas in the 70's Back then his bass had quite a lot of finish on it !
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Here's the experiment platform that already sounds good, plays good, and looks good(IMO) for an F-clone. I could not see spending a lot of $$ on something to carve up and especially since it's one of my least favorite-to-play-live bass shapes. The previous experiment way back in time was a <GASP!> 1966 or 67 sunburst P bass. I am not proud of doing that to such a now-great bass. The current owner has actually restored it except now it's artic(arctic?) white. Kinda hard to sunburst over a filled up crater where the Ric pickup was.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/Johnny_Crab/WhitePJH.jpg)
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Plus 1 on the SX basses ! They play and sound great for the price. Nice use of tone woods. Excellent fit and finish.
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That looks like a nice enough platform. It is cool that it has the side jack as well. My thought - and I am sure others will offer other options - is to add an additional pot above the top one. That would give you 4 pots, and I would make each a push pull. So you would have 3 independent volumes, and one master tone. Pots one and two could push pull the Gibson and P pup series or parallel. The others could do anything else - a playground! You could have all coils run in series, or a stand-by switch, something to run pups in and out of phase, take a coil from one and the other, whatever. You need imagination, a sketch pad, and maybe the Brosnac book. Good luck.
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I've got an early-'70s Tele bass that the previous owner added a P-pickup to:
(http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/4530/telehall2wg2.jpg)
(sorry for the bad pic)
Right now, the bass is wired mono. The humbucker is MUCH higher output than the P-pickup, but when you have both pups on 10, the volume is more like the P-pup, and the sound is round and deep, kind of like a Jazz Bass. I still think about having it rewired in stereo, with separate outputs for each pickup - I'm pretty sure that's how Billy Sheehan's was wired as well. That way you can get the booming lows from the humbucker through one amp and the mids and highs from the others. Just something to think about...
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man that looks like a sweet bass. 8)
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There was a new set neck Sheehan Yamaha at the Messe. I quite like it.