Funkfingers

The bass guitar in the photograph has some sort of onboard active EQ/pre-amp electronics. No obvious evidence of the EQ running at extreme settings.

1965 - 50 = 1915 2017 - 100 = 1917

If you provide a rough idea of your location, offers may materialise from local forumites who are willing to help you (and, admittedly, themselves). Ideally, there should the opportunity to view and play the instrument(s) that you are considering. There could even be scope for haggling yourself a good deal.

According to this guy, it's all subtractive. He MIGHT know what he's talking about. My most recent purchase of his products was built in 2017. Some of the wood used in it is reputed to be over one hundred years old.

I reckon that an EMG FT would just about fit diagonally across the 'Tron rout. If you wish, disguise it with a 54 style P Bass metal screening cover. The price includes USA pots and a Switchcraft jack socket. All good stuff. Be in no doubt. This little pickup can deliver plenty of low end.

A TV Jones pickup will probably cost more than the bass did! Option 1 - Find a pickup that will drop into the existing 69 x 35mm rout. Option 2 - Consider enlarging the rout to accept a larger (but less expensive) aftermarket pickup. Option 3 - Try the stock pickup through better volume and tone pots.

I know. This might explain why the term set neck does not appear in any of my posts in this thread.

... which, last time I checked, will be fastened to the rest of the instrument body using glue.

S.C.I. Pro-One, anyone?

Makes sense to me. With Jazz Bass guitars, I like passive Fender pickups and pots for certain sounds and fully active replacement pickup/EQ systems for others. i.e. The old Seymour Duncan Active EQ "switch" pickups.

Your AVRI '62 needs to get bashed about a bit. Hit it with your rhythm stick. Maybe, discolour the pickguard to simulate fifty years of cigarette tar deposition. IMO, the current AVRI '63 is closer to the real thing than the earlier AVRI '62. Rightly or wrongly, Fender upped the pickup output a fair bit. Unfortunately, my AVRI '63 left the factory fitted with an AVRI '58 raised A polepieces pickup. (A production line QA oversight, methinks.) I changed to a Duncan Antiquity. The Fifties style pickup was rehoused in my old Squier Silver Series P. The Squier now masquerades as a '59. For your stated musical requirements, the Ibanez SRH makes more sense than a certain Gibson EB-650 would have done - regardless of price considerations. Your description of the piezo sound has made me want to re-evaluate that aspect of my old Yamaha Attitude Custom.

SHORT ANSWER The best pre-amp for a professional quality, passive Jazz Bass is the front end of an Ampeg SVT. Second choice, the SVPCL LONG ANSWER What improvements do you wish the active circuitry installation to provide? Bear in mind that combining passive single coil pickups with boosting electronics will increase background noise. Even if your pickups employ a reverse magnetic polarity and coil winding direction relationship in an attempt to cancel noise and interference, this can only be effective when both pickup volume controls are set to the same level. On a physical level, on a regular Jazz Bass body, the PP3 and all of the electronics need to squeeze into the control cavity. A more practical option is to have a battery compartment cut into the back of the instrument. The downside is that this alteration is not reversible. If you like the idea of the Seymour Duncan STC-3 system, it used to be available as the Paranormal pedal. All the same controls and switching as the onboard version with the addition of an XLR direct injection socket. Nice!

Vintage Gibson T'Bird pickups (and Bartolini T4s) use three screws - two up, one down. IIRC, the Epiphone Pro has a glued in neck and posh pickups. The regular model has a screwed-on neck joint and Asian pickups. To identify your pickups definitively, it will be necessary to remove one of them from its routed cavity. Check the underside for a model identifier stamp or label. In my opinion, it would be worth measuring the rout. This might help when choosing aftermarket replacement pickups. I would not be surprised if the regular Epiphone Thunderbird pickup cavities measure 3.5 x 1.5 inches. i.e. Exactly the right size to accept a whole bunch of popular replacement designs from well-known manufacturers.

The newly relaunched Shergold instruments revive the body outlines of old but use them to host, largely, twenty first century hardware and features. Part of the unique charm of the old Hayman and Shergold instruments was their idiosyncratic approach to hardware design. The bass guitar bridge, for example, had wedge-shaped adjustable saddles, resting on a ramped surface. Action height adjustment was at the ends of the "ramp". I'm surprised that Rickenbacker never sued.

I agree with the consensus that a Fender MIM instrument is unlikely to be significantly better than your current instrument. Certainly not worth shelling out over six hundred quid for. If £600 is your budget, it might be better invested in either gig-worthy amplification or superior pickups for the BB424X. Overall, all that really needs doing is to shunt away some of the wiry treble frequencies and emphasise the really low frequencies. Sockets for either an extension loudspeaker enclosure or an XLR output to run through the public address system would help with dub sub reinforcement. Unfortunately, the Crush 50 Bass has neither of these.

These are fun. The Prod only models mk1 and mk2 filtering. It also offers polyphony. Not true analogue but good enough for Dave Formula to keep after he sold his original Odyssey.

My brother's technique on his Fender Jazz Bass was to balance the pickup volume controls to get the "honk". Then, roll away the tone most (or all) of the way off. The BB424X controls are Master Vol., Master Tone and a three-way pickup selector. Therefore, the Jazz Bass "honk" is unlikely to happen without reconfiguring the controls to Vol., Vol., Tone and, perhaps, a pickup upgrade.

Pictures of the part(s) that you need to make a repair might help.

Pretend that it's blue, with an f-hole and priced according to The Uncertainty Principle.

Rutherford's Shergold instruments were custom order. The "halves" could travel in separate cases. The modular body construction allowed various permutations of twelve, six and four string. There were even the missing body sections to complete individual guitars, if required.

Older readers may recall the Camel album, Rain Dances. The credits for one track describe the bassist as AWOL and, then, Andrew Latimer - guitars, bass, sore fingers! Let the amplification do the work. As an experiment, you can lose most of the high frequency nasties by rolling down the Treble EQ band on the bass itself. (I would also turn up the Midrange EQ a bit.) If the SR600 body is sen ash, it is always going to sound fairly twangy compared to alder, basswood or anything related to mahogany. One thing that is unclear from your posts is how you set the Balance pot between the twin pickups. As a sweeping generalisation, I suggest that you think of the neck pickup as "proper" low end and the bridge pickup as the upper harmonic icing on the full frequency cake. Finally, with all due respect to Ashdown, a super compact bass practice amplifier is unlikely to do justice to the capabilities of your chosen instrument.

Shergold Snickers ... has a certain ring about it.

What about the trolls?

Thank you. This joint cannot possibly be any madder than some of the other forums I have frequented.

"Yeah but don't shout it out or they'll all want one."