TPJ Posted January 15, 2008 Share Posted January 15, 2008 P basses are great, so putting together a P-b@st*rd was a lot of fun. I had a neck, bought a cheap Squire body and bits and got a knock off Bill Lawrence pup. I then proceeded to scavenge the John East BTB01 from the jazz bass and popped it into the scratch plate. The result was a very fat, slightly modern sounding P Bass. One thing with the East pre's I've noticed is that when you roll off the treble, you cut some mids as well which softens the tone and attack too much IMO. This is overcome by adding John's passive tone control. Being a P bass, there was no room for another pot without moving the jack which I thought to be a pain. Reading [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=8662"]GreenKing's mod to his P Bass[/url] to add a passive tone, I got the idea to do something similar. I ordered a stacked pot from Allparts and some .47 orange caps. Now, they sent me the incorrect pot but in the end it has actually worked in my favor. I ordered the dual 500k and they sent me a 250/500k. I used the 500k for the preamp and the 250 for the passive tone. I had to dig out the cavity some to shift the battery. It used to fit snuggly below the single volume but the stacked pot took all that space. Only about 15 mins with the chisel and job done. Covering it back up with the shielding foil helped hide the messy bits. I'm not really fussed about aesthetics too much on my basses. Wow, now I literally have two basses in one. The BTB had a active passive switch which I kept as a fail safe and the passive tone works for both the passive and active wiring. The active is a hotter signal, but rolling off the volume to 8 matches the full passive volume. I suppose you might wonder why would you need all this in a P, but this might be a good mod for you if you only have one axe. The active signal is lovely and really pumps when you slap and is very big for finger style, but is too modern for Motown type music. Flip the switch and hello James Jamerson. Best of both worlds. I'll get some photos up when I get my camera back. Cheers, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7string Posted January 20, 2008 Share Posted January 20, 2008 Sounds like a great way to get an active/passive P bass. Congrats on the mods Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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