Waddycall

Did you buy this bass blind?

I’ve been mulling over options for connecting this up permanently and have been considering a change to V/B/T with a push pull for MM/Jazz bridge pickup. I’ve also considered V/B/T with two mini toggle switches to select jazz or MM bridge and to select series or parallel for the MM. I’ve also been pondering the fact that I have a redundant John East MMSR4 preamp in the drawer. 3 band with variable mid. Could I add a blend pot and pickup selector switch to this???

thoughts appreciated.

Thanks a lot for the nice words chaps. I'm really pleased with this. Its made it into a really versatile bass. In my hands it was a bit too limited before but I really like everything about this bass now.

Here's some dodgy slap playing for you to sample. It cycles through the following settings and changes every four bars when there's a cymbal crash. I fumbled around in real time to make the changes so was quite limited to what I could fiddle with. The active settings have a slight treble and bass boost and passive has the tone wide open. Its straight through my interface to Cubase with no tweaking.

In active the bridge pickup is in MM mode and when passive its in J mode.

1. Active Bridge (MM)

2. Active Centre (Bridge MM and J Neck)

3. Active J Neck (bit harsh!)

4. Passive J Neck

5. Passive Centre (Bridge J and J Neck)

6. Passive bridge (J)

Cheers,

Pete

That looks awesome!

1 hour ago, Maude said:

Thanks for that. On the strength of your post I'm going to fit the pickup a few mil towards the neck so that a standard scratchplate fits correctly. So if anything goes wrong it's all your fault. 😆

You’ve got me worried now! You can hear me playing a repetitious cheesy riff on it here-

Ive just fitted a MM pickup (Nordstrand MM4.2) to my fretless Jazz. I’ve put it between the jazz pickups as recommended by a member on here so it’s about 15mm (I think) further from the bridge than it should be. It’s passive. As it’s on a fretless it’s a bit tricky comparing tone to my fretted ray34 but I’d say it sounds a bit fatter but still got a good bit of the stingray tone. I wasn’t sure about fitting it there initially but I experimented by taping the pickup wires onto the end of a guitar cable, connecting it to my amp and holding the pickup in front of the strings whilst randomly plucking. Worked surprisingly well!

How do you make soundcloud appear in the thread???

2 hours ago, songofthewind said:

Great work! I'm looking forward to sound samples.

What switch are you using to go between the Jazz and MM pickups?

Cheers! There's no switch at all yet. The jazz bridge pickup is disconnected and the MM pickup connected instead. I believe all I need is a double throw toggle switch to select either the jazz bridge or MM pickup (please correct me if I'm wrong!).

I've done a quick recording with some midi drums to give you an idea. The bass is going direct to my Zoom R24 acting as an interface and into Cubase. No processing at all. Hopefully this link should work....

https://soundcloud.com/user-693218768/vm70s-jazz-fretless-neck-and-mm

Interestingly the tone pot doesnt work on the MM pickup unless the volumes reduced a little bit. No doubt due to the values being matched to the jazz pickups. Shouldn’t be a problem.

Edit: actually it does, its just very subtle

Well I’ve had a while to play around with this and I’ve decided it’s spot on! The tone from the MM pickup is exactly the tone I have in my head when I think fretless. I also think it’s good to retain the jazz options too so thanks to paul_5 for the idea. I’ve cut and fitted the pick guard to suit and put the bridge pickup back in. Just need to order a switch to select bridge or MM for the second volume pot. Also need to sort out the shielding properly.

thanks for the help 👍

9 hours ago, paul_5 said:

Nice, clean bit of routing that, good work!

Thanks Paul. Took two attempts to make the MDF template. I got impatient and didn’t test it before using it on the body which was a bit silly but glad it came out ok!

Update!

i decided to try the between the pickups position. The body is a VM 70s. Ive no idea how that affects pickup position but the ocd made me put it slap bang in the middle. I’m going to keep it like this for a while until I decide whether or not to shift the pickup. Definitely has a bit more punch. Could be good!

If it was between Ashdown and Fender, quality and price etc equal, I’d go for the fender as it may hold a better resale value.

I think they’ve missed a trick. They have a core range of quality products that are well respected. They’re trying to play it safe with a guaranteed market. Bit of a shame. When I saw the thread title I was expecting something more interesting.

10 hours ago, paul_5 said:

Can I suggest ‘plan B’? The ‘sweet spot’ for a MM is between the 2 pups on a Jazz. I put a MM humbucker in my Jazzes and there’s just enough room for all 3 at once.

 

It’ll require some work on the scratch plate too, and either a selector switch or an extra volume pot, but it’s well worth doing.

That’s actually quite tempting. Not least because it only requires hacking out a hole. I could do that without ordering anything. Hmmmmm

Having recently fitted the Delano hybrid pickups to my Ray I’ve found myself with a spare Nordstrand MM4.2 . I have a bitsa fretless Jazz I’ve been putting together and can’t get the idea of fitting the MM pickup to the jazz out of my head. It seems like a no brainer. The only concern I’ve got is the fact that the rout for the MM pickup won’t fully cover the old rout for the jazz pickup so there will be gaps. 

Im thinking I would need to fill in the old rout, cut the new rout, and touch up the black paint.

the only thing that concerns me is the paint. How hard is it to patch up the paint on a black squier jazz body???

7 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Play it like this and you'll be fine!

😁

 

???

I’m trying to get immigrant song right. Left hand aches a bit after a couple of choruses.

All done! Bit of a nightmare doing the wiring. Probably the fiddliest thing I’ve ever done! Had a couple of issues including wiring the jack socket up the wrong way round and I also managed to overheat the treble pot with my dodgy soldering iron. Once I moved to the garage and kept the tip super clean with a wire brush on my pillar drill it got a bit easier! I think I’ll order a spare treble pot. Contact cleaner has got it working ok but id rather be safe than sorry.

after a quick set up it’s sounding as I’d hoped. Really nice to get some passive jazz tones out of my ray! The Ray pickup sounds pretty authentic to my ears too. I’ll see if I can post some recordings later.

Well, I’m going to quit before I ruin this today. I’ve got the components mounted on the control plate and have soldered a few connections. Unfortunately my soldering iron tip has seen better days as has my eye sight for detailed work. I think I need to sort out my soldering equipment and get a magnifier before I carry on with this!

7 hours ago, songofthewind said:

Oops, sorry, I see the balance pot in the diagram. Which looks very clear.

Yep, pickup pan control instead of two volumes.

10 hours ago, Jabba_the_gut said:

Nice mod. Those Delano hybrid pickups are really nice - wiring is a bit more complicated than usual. I presume you are going to wire it the standard way i.e. humbucker is active, jazz pickups are passive, or do you have other plans?

Cheers

Got to admit I’m not looking forward to wiring this up! I’ve got a Sonar 2 pre which I think will just fit in the bottom of the cavity. It’s going to be a tight squeeze. Otherwise it’ll need more butchery. I’m going with the schematic below which I think is the standard way of wiring these up. Looking forward to trying this out! 

Not really a build but definitely my most adventurous mod to date. Just got the wiring to do now. Better not drink too much tonight!

1 hour ago, jassbass said:

Id deffo have it if posted 😁

You can have my address Jay if you want to get it collected!

Nice bass. Psycho killer is fun to play along to! Always try and get bands I’m in to do it. The french bit tends to put the singer off though.