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[quote name='silddx' post='1103214' date='Jan 26 2011, 09:40 AM']I realise they are not to everyone's taste, but ..[/quote] I don't have many answers, but I think your first line is the best explanation. Those of us who like Warwicks, like them a lot, so they get a good reputation, and people buy them. And then half of them find that Warwicks are just not for them at all. Btw, if you want a thin neck profile you'd really better try a brand new Wick. I'm not usually sensitive to these things, but my 2010 $$ has a neck to die for.

That is great news - it's so good to get a happy ending!

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1100945' date='Jan 24 2011, 03:58 PM']For a good example click on the Pingray in my sig. Here I think is the only pic I think I have with it being worn front on (by BC's very own Greeneking) [attachment=69872:Moffat_Peter_low.jpg] You can see that even though the button has been raised, when it is at rest it still becomes the most "westward" point of the bass thus tilting the neck up a bit. ...[/quote] Thanks for that. I'll have a think about what you're saying, but I don't think it matters much where the strap button is in relation to the most westerly point - it's where it is in relation the centre of gravity (and the other button) that matters. Perhaps I should point out that I don't think moving the button will have a big effect either way.

[quote name='Mod_Machine' post='1100857' date='Jan 24 2011, 02:41 PM']Ok - that makes sense. So best thing would be to strap her up, play it a while and see what needs to be changed, moving the button down towards the centre if the neck is diving to help balance it up if needed. Cool.[/quote] Yep, strap her up and see. OTOH, if it were me, I'd work out where the centre of gravity is, decide what angle I want the bass at (probably using a camera to take a picture of me holding the bass at the right angle), and then see where the bottom strap button should go to achieve that angle. And then probably end up compromising, cos this ain't an exact science How do you work out where the C of G is? Connect the strap on to one button only, and dangle the bass freely (by holding the strap). Take a photo and draw the vertical line through the strap button. Now do the same from the other button (or from any convenient point from which you can dangle the bass). Where those two lines meet is your C of G.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1100862' date='Jan 24 2011, 02:43 PM']And yet my headstocks point to the stars. [/quote] Well, of course, my argument is based in theory, and we all know how close theory is to practice Seriously though, I'd be interested to see the details of a bass that has had the strap button moved up, and balances in a more upright position as a result. Ideally, I'd like a picture of the shape of the bass, with the strap buttons marked on it, and the centre of gravity.

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1100682' date='Jan 24 2011, 12:42 PM'].... Firstly it raises the angle that the neck sits at ....[/quote] Actually, no, it may do precisely the opposite. Yep, I really did mean that. Moving the strap button up the bass may make the neck sit at a lower angle. So it may cause neck-dive where there was none before. Yes, I know that sounds bizarre, so let me try to explain. Are you sitting comfortably? This may take a while. Perhaps first I should say that I play a Thumb, which has taught me a loooooot about neckdive and general balance issues, and I've discussed this at extraordinary length on the Warwick forum, and with a couple of engineers and physics graduates. The conclusion I reached is that the key thing is the horizontal spacing between the centre of gravity and the strap buttons. When the horizontal distance from the C of G to both strap buttons is the same, the bass will be perfectly balanced. So what does that mean about moving strap buttons? Put your bass at your ideal playing angle. If the neck is at much of an angle above the horizontal then by moving the strap button up the body you have effectively moved it to the right, i.e., away from the centre of gravity. This means the bass will pull down more on the top strap button (the one nearer to the C of G) pulling the neck downwards. On the other hand, if your preferred playing position has the neck horizontal, then moving the strap button up the bass will move it towards the C of G. That will put more weight on the back part of the strap, so will pull the neck up. In this case moving the strap button would raise the neck angle. So the precise outcome depends on 1) what angle you like to play at, and 2) what shape your bass is. And yes, you can use this to work out where to put the bottom strap button to get the best balance, as long as you know where the centre of gravity of your bass is. The OP's bass has a fairly flat bottom, so any angle above the horizontal will tend to move the bottom button away from the C of G, making the neck dive more than it would. To get back to the original question: I wouldn't move the button unless you are sure you know how this will change the balance of the bass!

[quote name='SS73' post='1098320' date='Jan 22 2011, 03:17 AM']If that's not the case and it seems ok, then it's the string cut on the nut, basically the string could be sat at the back of the nut, where it should be sat at the very front edge, making your first fret longer by a nut width, check there is an actual angle in the slots, if not then you'll need to file the back of the slot, so it peaks/rises to the front.[/quote] +1. I bought a new Martin guitar that had intonation problems on the first few frets, which was caused by the nut slots not being cut right, so the highest point within the slot was somewhere in the middle, not right at the front. I'm not sure how you check this (I took it back to the shop under guarantee and got their guitar tech to sort it out) but it's definitely worth investigating.

Glad you got it fixed!

Here are two wiring diagrams. The first I have drawn from scratch, the second is my attempt at correcting the Seymour Duncan circuit I posted earlier, with a phase switch wired in. I've re-wired a few basses and guitars in my time, but my electrical qualifications consist solely of an O level. So I will quite understand if you don't trust these circuits. In fact, I'd hope they can be a basis for further discussion and improvement in this thread. The first circuit uses both volume controls in their traditional roles: one for each pickup. Some posters seem to suggest that the two controls will both act as master volumes; I believe they will adjust the balance between the pickups. But I haven't used the circuit so I don't know whether to believe me or everyone else! Although I have drawn the pots separately from the DPDT switches, any push/pull DPDT pot can be wired according to this diagram. The second circuit, I think, uses one control as a master when in series mode. Sorry about the poor quality of the diagrams - I was never very good at technical drawing, and now it seems I can't even get the scanner to take colour images! But I think the only colours that matter at all are the wires from the pickups and the connections to the jack socket. For the pickups the upper wire is the white one, and the lower one is the black. For the jack socket the upper tag is the hot one (the tip), and the left one is the ground (shielding).

Yep, that I understand. It's a more complex circuit that I'm trying to get my head round, but I just don't seem to be able to explain my question, so I'll go and think about it some more and see if I can either understand it, or explain it better! Thanks for your patience

[quote name='LethalLion' post='1096444' date='Jan 20 2011, 03:16 PM']The sound's from the amp, yeah. I'm definitely not up to soldering anything. I don't really want to poke around inside too much as I have literally no idea what I'm doing and I don't want to knock anything out that shouldn't be knocked out. EDIT: I can take a few photos of the inside, but I'm not sure how much that's going to help.[/quote] If the sound is coming from the amp, then I think your jack is working fine, and your volume control is not. It's an easy job but, equally, that means it should be a cheap job if you need to pay someone else to do it for you.

[quote name='ikay' post='1096428' date='Jan 20 2011, 03:04 PM']Look at it this way - imagine you have one single coil pickup with a volume control (A) wired on the 'cold' side and another volume control (B ) wired on the 'hot' side. Turn both controls up full and you get max volume. Turning down either vol A or vol B will reduce the volume - ie. they both do [u]exactly the same thing[/u] so one is effectively redundant.[/quote] Thanks. I kind of understood this. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "cold" side and "hot" side - do you mean the two wires coming out of your pickup? If so, then I see your point and agree. [quote name='ikay' post='1096428' date='Jan 20 2011, 03:04 PM']Now imagine the same setup with one twin coil/humbucking pickup replacing the single coil pickup. Exactly the same is true. Both vols do exactly the same thing and one is redundant.[/quote] Ok; we're still treating the pickup as a single electrical device, with two wires coming out from it, right? If so, then, yes, I agree. [quote name='ikay' post='1096428' date='Jan 20 2011, 03:04 PM']Wiring two jazz pickups in series is the same as having one twin coil/humbucking pickup. The only difference being that it's a very wide aperture humbucker (the two coils are some distance apart).[/quote] Well, yes, ok, but I don't see the connection. The two pickups in a jazz bass have four wires between them. If I put a volume control on each of those pickups then I can reduce the signal coming from each of them. If I then take those reduced signals and put them in series then both volume controls will affect the result. In particular, reducing the volume on the bridge pickup will give me less high frequencies overtones. So in the combined (series) signal there will be, relatively, more low-frequencies. Conversely, if I lower the neck pickup volume, I'll get relatively more high-frequency tones. The two volume controls are having different effects. People seem to be saying that with parallel wiring it's good to have independent volume controls, but with series, the volume controls can't work independently. But I just don't get this - it seems to me that they work the same in both cases - affecting the overall volume and the balance between the pickups. I wish I understood

When you turn the volume knob you get a scratching sound - is that sound coming out of the amp, or just from the knob? That sounds like a dodgy pot, which could be cleaned, or could simply be replaced. And if you're getting no sound through the amp then there's probably a loose wire somewhere. If it were me, I'd open the guitar up, have a look around, and spend 10 minutes with a soldering iron to sort it. If you're not up to that, then it should be an easy (and cheap) job for a local guitar tech.

Very pretty, and a great price!

Strange. If the ground lift doesn't help, then I'm lost! But as a last resort, did you also try the tuner output? The manual says that can be used for any "high-impedance recording device". I guess that may be why they say not to plug anything else into the headphone socket, although I can't see what the problem would be.

There was some discussion of this in a thread a while back on basschat - apparently it was for a Fender ad and he was annoyed at having his photo taken so perversely picked up a bass instead of a guitar.

[quote name='willyf87' post='1096130' date='Jan 20 2011, 10:49 AM']In a nut shell in series mode the neck volume control becomes master volume, you turn that down it will turn both pickups down, it doesn't matter what you do with the bridge control nothing will happen... in parallel mode the two volumes turn back on and it acts like a standard passive bass with no mods.[/quote] Surely that depends on the circuitry. The Seymour Duncan circuit I posted above works in the way you describe. But you could wire things up differently, and put the series/parallel switch after the two volume controls, in which case they'd still work as individual volume controls just as before. I think this is what Subthumper has done (see his posts above). That seems better to me - it seems to give more flexibility. But Subthumper says "Dont forget to turn up both pickups when using the series mode" - I'm trying to understand why you need both pickups on full! What would be wrong with running, say, the bridge pickup running at half volume in series with the neck pickup running at full volume?

That sounds like a grounding issue. When you use the XLR output, the bottom of the 3 switches next to the XLR socket will either connect your ground to that of the computer, or disconnect them. Try flicking that switch and see if it helps.

[quote name='Doddy' post='1095739' date='Jan 19 2011, 10:16 PM']I've had no problems reading it,it has a really clear display.[/quote] +1 for the polytune. If you use it in "poly" mode then the details may be harder to read, but if you use it in the traditional mode - tuning one string at a time - then the display is beautifully clear. The only thing I don't like about it is that it switches between poly and single mode automatically. So if you don't hit the string cleanly then it suddenly switches to poly mode and essentially gives random information. But this is a minor niggle that only causes occasional problems - 99% of the time it's a brilliant tuner.

[quote name='henry norton' post='1095555' date='Jan 19 2011, 07:55 PM']Because having the pickups wired in series is basically running the output of one pickup through the other one, whereas parallel runs them both individually. If you turn down one pickup in paralell you're still listening to the other one but if you turn down one of the pickups in series - you can end up with no sound at all![/quote] Sorry, but that makes no sense to me at all. Can anyone explain this in terms that my dull brain can understand?

[quote name='dan2112' post='1095626' date='Jan 19 2011, 08:33 PM']No I am not![/quote] Sorry, just my idea of a silly joke [quote name='dan2112' post='1095626' date='Jan 19 2011, 08:33 PM']Also if anyone is interested, I could bring my Rick copy to the bass day...be interesting to have a shoot out between a copy and the real deal! Dan[/quote] Now that sounds like a really cool idea! And if we can get Pino to bring his old Fender along, we can have a shoot-out between that and my Squier!

Sounds like a bargain. I'm easy with either Saturday or Sunday. @dan2112: Are you related to Chris2112?

[quote name='Subthumper' post='1095157' date='Jan 19 2011, 02:03 PM']Hi again, the phase reverse makes no difference to the series parallel. So you should get, 1. neck 2. bridge. 3. neck and bridge parallel in phase. 4. neck and bridge in parrallel out of phase. 5. series in phase 6. series out of phase. Mine has 2 vol controls so as I said before dont forget to turn both volumes up when using series switching.[/quote] Why is it so important to have both volumes up when you're in series? [quote name='Subthumper' post='1095157' date='Jan 19 2011, 02:03 PM']You'd need a triple pole double throw switch in order to revert to one vol control when using series and I dont know if any one does one on a vol pot as a push pull but I could be wrong. Cheers Just[/quote] There are some wiring diagrams on the web that do this with a DPDT switch, such as this one: [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=jass_bass_sp"]http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wirin...ic=jass_bass_sp[/url] Personally, I don't trust that diagram (despite it coming from SD - everyone is fallible, and the way those volume controls are wired just looks wrong to me), but it shows that it can be done. (And you can easily put the in-phase/out-of-phase switch in by intercepting the two wires coming from one of the pickups). Obviously this circuit is designed to ensure that both volumes are on full when you're in series mode, but I don't understand why this is so important - hence my first question!

[quote name='Grand Wazoo' post='1095201' date='Jan 19 2011, 02:30 PM']Yeah I like that idea, I would imagine people would be looking at their beer bottles to check exactly how much they've drunk. [/quote] And then for the second encore you come back on with the Squier and leave them thinking they must've just imagined the squint frets