kodiakblair Posted December 5 Posted December 5 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" 😀 1 Quote
kodiakblair Posted December 5 Author Posted December 5 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. Quote
kodiakblair Posted December 5 Author Posted December 5 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. 1 Quote
Richard R Posted December 5 Posted December 5 I've not seen that before, looks rather good. Waiting with interest.... 1 Quote
kodiakblair Posted December 5 Author Posted December 5 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 😀 1 Quote
kodiakblair Posted December 5 Author Posted December 5 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 👍 10 Quote
bloke_zero Posted Sunday at 13:02 Posted Sunday at 13:02 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. Quote
kodiakblair Posted Sunday at 15:57 Author Posted Sunday at 15:57 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. 2 Quote
bloke_zero Posted yesterday at 11:54 Posted yesterday at 11:54 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! Quote
kodiakblair Posted yesterday at 15:58 Author Posted yesterday at 15:58 2 hours ago, bloke_zero said: Interesting! I'd have thought it'd be loud as hell - shows what I know 🤣 No, your thinking is sound. It'll go plenty loud, just not the way it's currently hooked up. Main concern last Friday was practical stuff, had I cut the pickup slots in the right place/ did they fit the cavities/ would the bloody thing make a sound etc 😆 Took the coward's route for wiring, 4 pickups in parallel. Going 2 pairs in parallel or 4 in series will up the output. 3 Quote
BassTool Posted 21 minutes ago Posted 21 minutes ago Great work 👏🏼 👏🏼 👌🏼 Do like most of us on here do, ignore the doubters 😉 Quote
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