OLP mods

[Chris1127]

I bought an OLP MM2 4-string musicman a little while ago with the intention of giving my Ibanez ATK a bit of a rest from gigging and practicing, wit the intention of a few mods just to make it a bit more useable. Its the black one with the horrible silver pearloid scratchplate (that was the first thing to go!!) - bought it secondhand but hardly used so for the money was happy enough with it. From the off the neck feels really nice - slimmer and faster feeling than the Ibanez. there was way too much relief in it when I got it though, and the action was sky high so have tweeked the truss rod a bit and lowered the action - pleased to say that even slung pretty low theres no buzzing so thumbs up from that perspective - is now really nice to play. What a weight difference from the ATK too!!!

Electrics left a lot to be desired though - it's passive so was never going to sound as good as the ibby, but as stock it as flat-sounding - lacking any decent bottom end and "wooly" sounding in the mids and highs; and with a pretty low output. The tone pot was also a bit on-off, and given the lack of definition in the sound anyway didnt do much.

First swap was a Wilkinson replacement humbucker wired up as per the original pickup - 6.5k ish on each coil (=13k series) as opposed to the weedy 2.7k each coil (5.4 series) in the original pickup. This was a slight improvement over stock, but still a bit "flat" sounding and with very little variation using either volume or the tone pot.
Decided that I would rather have the option of a parallel/series humbucker option so have just spent not sure how many finger-burning hours wiring in a rotary switch to give me a few more options - what a difference!!! I replaced one of the volume pots with a 3-way 4-pole rotary switch from Maplin (part number FF76H) and translated a schematic from a single humbucker esquire guitar that was using a 3 way strat type switch to the same ends. I didn't get any wiring guide with the Wilkinson pickup, so took a bit of head scratching and swapping of wires to work out the polarity on both coils and what to do with the shield wire, but managed to finish it about an hour ago.

What a difference though - it has transformed it! In the parallel humbucker position it has a tight, punchy sound with a lot of bottom end, and good amount of definition in the treble end - not very mid-dy but would probably compare it to my ATK in the Bridge position. In the single coil (bridge side) position it sounds smilar to the parallel humbucker but with perhaps a little less output and a bit of a "thinner" tone. Serial humbucker position though is where it is all happenig - it has now turned it into an animal (well, for a passive bass anyway!!). The output is percievably louder than the other two positons, and its a really full, fat sound with a real midrange growl - am really chuffed with it. Perhaps lacks a little of the definition of the other two positions but the overall sound more than makes up for it imo.
The other good thing now is that it responds so much better to tweaks on the volume and tone pots - they are still the original pots but now have a much more defined effect - much less on-off and more gradual.

I had been thinking of getting the body routed and going "active", but after this think I may well just leave it as it is. Pickup only cost me a tenner, and the switch about 2-3 quid so for the money am stoked with it sound wise as well as playability wise too now.

Still got to make a new scratchplate up for it - got a sheet of material just need to cut it and shape it up. Other mods planned are to replace the string tree (whose screw mounting has threaded already!!) with a wider flatter type with more than one mounting screw, and thinking that the bridge is also a bit cheap and thin looking so a conversion including drilling for through-body stringing and a new bridge are on the cards.

Only thing I have to do now is try to find a black gnurled knob for the selector switch pole - the shaft is about 2mm bigger in diameter than the original volume pot unfortunately so can't reuse the one from the redundant volume pot.

[budget bassist]

Sounds pretty cool, any photos?

I'm still planning out mods for my musicman project, it's far from finished!

[Chris1127]

No pics at the mo - will probably post some once I have done the scratchplate. Been looking at your Sub project - looking good!! Really like that shade of blue - are you planning on keeping the black headstock and hardware? Think if I do strip and stain the body would probably go for chrome hardware and a natural headstock - quite a bit of work to do though.

[budget bassist]

Cool, do it if you want! Though i do like natural + black hardware

And thanks man, i do like it, but it's a really brittle finish and i have some routing to do to get my new preamp to fit, so if it all chips off and goes horribly wrong i'm contemplating stripping the whole thing back, cutting the stomach and forearm contours and spraying it white. As for the headstock, i do have plans to strip back the whole neck eventually down to bare wood and laquer the headstock and put gunstock oil on the back of the neck, like a real stingray. I also plan on putting chrome tuners on it. I already have 4 chrome tuners, but they're 4 in a line and i'm having trouble finding a single one that matches the rest and is the other way around. I've found the same ones in 4 in a line and 2+2, but no single ones!! Grr!

Edited January 17, 2009 by budget bassist

[markytbass]

Thanks for the info on the Wilkinson PU, Mrs Tbass wants a Ray copy to take to the open mic nights we frequent but doesn't want to spend nearly a grand on a real one.

Edited January 18, 2009 by markytbass