Lipstick on a Ppppp P-bass

[kodiakblair]

Given my taste in P-basses runs counter to the norm it's no surprise those Italia basses from a few years back caught my eye.

 

 

 

Pity I never got my hands on one and the ones I've saw recently have daft prices😕

 

When faced with daft prices I went with my default setting of "I can do that" 😀

[kodiakblair]

Had the main elements for the bass at hand. 

 

A Paulownia P-bass body and maple neck purchased from @tom1946 a year maybe 2 years back.

 

The body is nice and light plus Paulownia is dead easy to work with 👍

 

 

All I had to to was copy the scratch plate, cut out the pickups and a wee bit router work to the body.

[kodiakblair]

Main purchase was lipstick pickups.

 

I had 3 in the drawer for an un-yet started Dano build. Buying a 4th was complicated, the 3 Dano lipsticks came from Ali-Ex several years back so the chances of finding a matching 4th were slim. I also had a slight concern regards polarity.

 

Artec came to the rescue by selling Strat lipstick pickups where the middle pickup was RWRP. 2 Bridge and 2 Middle were ordered.

 

A wee play-about in Photoshop showed me just placing them next to each other wasn't going to work.

 

 

What I really needed was 52mm between the top adjusting screws and 54mm between the bottom screws.

 

Drawing on paper followed while I waited on the pearloid scratch plate material arriving.

[Richard R]

I've not seen that before, looks rather good. Waiting with interest....

[kodiakblair]

Pearloid material arrived and I got the jitters 😀

 

Get one chance cutting plastic, likelihood of failure was high 🙁

 

 

Thought about ordering up a blank scratchplate, having a custom one cut, getting a pickup template made; anything to avoid cutting plastic 😁

 

 

Stern talking to and I came to my senses. Scratch plate cut 😀

 

[kodiakblair]

22 minutes ago, Richard R said:

Waiting with interest....

I won't keep you in suspense Richard 🙂

 

Scratch plate got pickups marked on then cut out yesterday afternoon. Did a wee bit tweaking this afternoon then when I was happy everything sat nice I switched on the soldering iron. 4 lipsticks in parallel, 250k pots and a 104 cap.

 

 

Just the pickup heights to balance and the cling film to remove; might swap stings for something looser than Fender flats 👍

[bloke_zero]

Wow! How does it sound?

 

 I’d be seriously considering getting a per string preamp and wiring a multichannel cable. I don’t know why though.

[kodiakblair]

2 hours ago, bloke_zero said:

How does it sound?

Well I said it sounds like a P-bass but some boy on TalkBS tells me that's impossible and would I kindly re-string the bass with zingy roundwounds, somehow it'll better reflect the pink and blue lines he's drawn on graph paper.

 

Boy is a genius, doesn't need to play your bass or know what pickups you used. Nope, one look at a picture tells him "there's a 20dB drop off in the higher Mids" 😳

 

He could be right or maybe my penchant for single coil P-bass gives me a different view on "sounds like a P-bass" 😁

 

Anyway, I'm sticking with like a P-bass and have vowed to never  read another TalkBS post by someone on my "ignore member" list, they're on the list for a reason 😁

 

Should say it's not the loudest P-bass so I'll likely try the coils in pairs.

[bloke_zero]

On 07/12/2025 at 15:57, kodiakblair said:

Should say it's not the loudest P-bass so I'll likely try the coils in pairs.

Interesting! I'd have thought it'd be loud as hell - shows what I know 🤣

 

I was thinking of Paul Jackson's bass Geraldine: http://www.pauljacksonbass.com/geraldine/ - has output per string

 

I'm sorry about talk bass, but glad we have BC!