The Last Bass Outpost

Posted something along these lines on the Other brands forum,
but as these are Mudbucker sized objects ( MSO's? ) I thought I'd see if anyone could descibe the differences, Dimarzio says the WPs' poles are spaced for longer scaled basses ( I'm thinking about my Guild B-302 ) but tonally it has a little more low-end than I may prefer. They don't give the pole spacing for either one, only saying it's a drop-in for a Mudbucker ( like anything is ever a "drop-in" ) Anyway, any thoughts?

Scott ( BassVI )

Hello All,

In response to requests for an explanation of this scheme I did when I built my G3/Ripper clone " The Anna Tomick " model ( too long story ) I'll try to give fairly clear instuctions as to what it does and what I did.
AFAIK this should work for any stock G3, I used essentially the same parts and values on mine. One warning, this will change your bass from "stock" and though I feel it's a significant improvement, please don't hold me responsible for burnt fingers, solder splashes, lost sleep...........and I apologize in advance if my desciption isn't really technical, it was pretty hit or miss, me and several sets of jumper wires and no reall "theory".

What you will need:

One NOS 6-way switch, I picked up several from our friends on eBay, they don't have any listed at the moment (you can use a 6 position 4 pole switch like Allparts sells but it is deeper and will probably require routing...)

http://www.allparts.com/store/electronics-switches-ep-0920-000,Product.asp

I used one of these (above) on the original but this one (below) is much more elegant



Here is the Allparts switch



And the NOS switch



As for anything else, it should all be in your G3 

What it does....
Pos 1 Neck pickup
Pos 2 Neck/Middle
Pos 3 Middle
Pos 4 Middle/Bridge
Pos 5 Bridge
Pos 6 Neck/Bridge

As you see, it eliminates the "buck and a half" all three pickup setting, position 6 could be wired that way with another jumper but the Neck/Bridge (which you can't get with the stock setup) seemed more "natural" to me.

Now the process.....

Unsolder the three way toggle, I assume (hopefully ) that these will be the white wires. Gibson used several different color schemes, what you want is to find the "hot" wire (white in the pic), the other two, the one that appears to be soldered to the plate on the bottom of the pickup (black) and the "other one" (in this case orange) both solder to ground....this pic may make it a bit clearer......



In the above pic the white wires go to the switch, the others to ground, in this case the back of the volume pot. I believe ( but since I have no original G3 to look at ) that you should be able to unsolder the wires at the switch and leave everything else as is, if I'm wrong let me know and I'll try to modify the scheme.

For the actual connections please refer to these crude illustrations....




The lower ring refers to the terminals on the bottom of the switch (closest to you when installed on the pickguard) the upper being the row of terminals next to the guard itself.

Neck pickup hotwire connects to upper ring terminals 1,12,13
Middle hotwire to lower ring 3,4,5
Bridge to lower ring 2

Now the jumpers

Connect upper ring terminal 2 to lower ring terminal 1 and then to upper ring 8 (this terminal[8]* is the output to the volume pot )
Connect lower ring terminal 2 to upper ring terminal 10

*Connect [8] to volume pot, use whatever connection previously coming from the toggle, in my case it was the middle lug.

Here are several other views hopefully they will help you visualize what I have tried ( all I can say is I tried! ) to explain.













Best Wishes, hopefully this will explain more than mystephy! Please let me know if anyone needs more info or a better pic. Really any decent tech should be able to figure out what's going on I did! and building/finishing not wiring is my strong suit.

Cheers!

Scott

Hello all,
Well I'm into yet another project, but I thought I would share a finishing procees (using water-based Minway POLYcrylic clear) I'm trying out, though the idea is certainly not my own. Check out this shortcut to the ReRanch discussion board and the I'll add my two cents......

http://www.reranch.com/reranch/viewtopic.php?t=21213&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

First comment; It really dosn't matter if you brush it, spray it or use the areosal cans, I tried all three. Spraying is obviously fast, but since it's being used as a filler/sealer and will be block sanded, brushing works fine and clean up is really easy.
Second; as stated in the RR forum, it runs, be prepared to......block sand.
Third; It really fills and seals well, I used it on a swamp ash body and got a glass smooth base for my NITRO color coats.

Anyway the first post in the link has most of the info you need, I wanted to let everyone here know about it and give a "hands on" report. I've exclusively used the tried and true lacquer sealer, oil-based grain filler and lacquer top coats for years and if I'm doing a Gibson finish on Mahogany I'll continue to do so ( for tradition sake if nothing else ) but for a Fender type finish, I think I may be a convert.

Questions? Comments?

I'll post some pics over the weekend, I should add the project is a Phil Lynott "tribute" bass......

Cheers,

Scott

Ok, I've been building guitars for a while, really is time to get back to basses..............................................Thinking about an RD, anyone have a tracing of theirs' ? Pics would also be helpful. I've got the pickguards and pickups for both an Artist and a Standard and a lot of the hardware.....

Thanks in advance...............

S.

Thanks to Mod Dave ( and Blazer ) for the info 

A few audio samples of my R/G3, the first is the neck pup only direct into Cubase through a Zoom H4, no eq or effects, played with a pick ( of course )
Open E,A,D.G......chromatic from open E to c, then the chorus to one of my bands songs.....if this works I'll add the other combinations in order, neck, neck/middle, middle, etc.
 Please see Daves' reply below: at his suggestion I was going to reload these as mp3s, however my version of Cubase just informed me I've reached my max number of mp3 transfers and I need to update @ $24.95.
While I love you guys, I just don't feel like messing with it right at the moment, so please bear with two snippets and a bit of a wait downloading them. I'll try to figure a better solution.......

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gekmrv

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7pihxg

And a pic

 Well it's done.........
Most significant observation.....the two-point bridge and tailpiece do add to the sustain, not entirely suprizing, but a very cool side effect! One question.........Gold knobs or Black?

Before



During





After/Now













Woo-Hoo!!