Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 1, 2015 at 12:11pm

Welcome aboard. I did a build couple months ago with PBass pups on a 4-way switch and a single 250k volume. The Bass pups work okay and angling that one should do fine. I would angle the top/bass string side towards the bridge and the other side towards the neck to get a balanced tone. Then figure out where to put it: close to the neck(darker tone), close to the bridge(brighter tone) or in the middle. With the length of that pup, you may not have much choice. LOL

Permalink Reply by Graham Wedepohl on November 2, 2015 at 7:37am

LOL, thanks for the advice I was going to ask about which way to angle it.

Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 2, 2015 at 8:26am

If you angle the pickup like a Tele/Strat bridge pickup, you'll get high treble on the high strings and lower bass tones on the lower/wound strings. So, it just depends what you want.

Do you know what value pots/caps your going to use? Have a planned schematic?

Permalink Reply by Graham Wedepohl on November 2, 2015 at 8:27am

I was actually thinking of not adding a volume and tone control.

Not sure if that would work.

Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 2, 2015 at 8:46am

That will work, will just have to adjust at the amp and that can be tiresome after awhile.

If you just use a 250k volume and jack, you'll get a bright sound from the pickup when turned all the way up and darker when turned down, but with some volume loss. Pots that are higher value will darken the sound.

If you go with volume and tone, A250k volume - B250k tone will do fine. Caps that are mostly used for these pots and pups are .047. You can go darker all the way up to 1 meg if you want or go down in value for more treble like .022, .015 or .010.

Hope this helps. If you need any help with wiring, Seymour Duncan website has a lot of wiring schematics. Probably would be the same as a early 50's single pup PBass guitar wiring.

Permalink Reply by Graham Wedepohl on November 2, 2015 at 9:44am

Thanks for the advice, I can always make it with the option of upgrading it later :)

Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 2, 2015 at 11:58am

Something else that I've done in the past, wire 1 cap on each side of a 3-way switch on/off/on for the tone pot. Put  a .047 on one side and a .022 on the other side(or different values) and middle position bypasses the tone circuit altogether for and extra bright option. Kind of a Varitone circuit that was put on some guitars back in the old days.