neepheid

Agreed, it's personal abstinence, only stuff for you and you alone counts.

I have the Entwistle split P pickup and unfortunately they're for show by the looks of things - I did try turning mine but they wouldn't budge and I eventually chickened out. They may be cheap, but I'm still not ruining one finding out if the pole pieces are adjustable

Not a single close up of the bass player - criminal! I think Ovation Magnum is on the money - and I smell an endorsement deal of some kind, because Jeff Lynne looks like he's playing an Ovation also - perhaps a Deacon 12 string?

As long as you're making a new pickguard (and doing any routing underneath required, then you could do worse than this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394653160508 £22 - and Artec is a known brand who make decent pickups. I'd use a bridge strat pickup, higher DC resistance than a middle or neck one. Even if you're putting it in the neck position. I did this many years ago with a Squier Bronco - sounded pretty good as I recall - although it was a different brand - GFS (Guitar Fetish) which I probably imported from the States because the pound was strong then. The only downside to these kind of pickups are the rounded ends - pretty tricky to perch your thumb on. If you're willing to spend a bit more (£60), I have also used these: https://www.armstrongmusic.co.uk/collections/kent-armstrong-split-tube-guitar-pickups These are Jazz bass pickup sized and crucially they have flat ends, so using them as a thumbrest is much easier. I put these in my Burny LSB-70 thus: Hope that helps!

Done a mockup of the pickup template in Inkscape - printed it out and it works - on paper. The hole's big enough to accept the pickup and not so big that it shows past the pickup ring. (snapshot - not to scale) Seeing as it's simply the union of two rectangles, I'll probably just draw it directly onto a piece of MDF then cut it out.

And so it shall be written, and so it shall be done... Now it has a kill switch and a producer/DFA switch. Right, top work everyone, let's get it back together and have a cup of tea... Only kidding, now I can't put off routing any longer...

No, wait. I can procrastinate a little longer, I could move the existing pickup's wiring to go through the selector switch and the switch output to the volume pot. Needs doing anyway...

Selector switch arrived today, so it's big drill time - no pressure, yay! Going super careful, I put masking tape over the hole and its edges, then went up 1mm at a time from 9 to 12mm. Despite the tape, I did chip the finish a little in one place around the hole, but thankfully not a big bit and hidden by the dress washer. Attack a perfectly nice bass with this monster using a hand drill? No, it wasn't scary at all, lol. Unfortunately, that's all the "easy" jobs done. Next step is to make a template for my pickup route, then take a big, deep breath and attack the front of the body with forstner bits and a router.

Well my Z7 (solid finish so not ash, CBA looking up what it is got back to the computer, it's alder) is 9 and a half pounds, and I don't consider that to be particularly heavy.

Well, a MK2 edition would be most welcome, take what they've learned with the Plethora and apply it but unfortunately they haven't. Smells of resting on laurels to me - because the functionality it has would have been genuinely impressive 13 years ago. I still appreciate it for what it is, it's still super handy, and the Spectracomp in default guise is very useable. The Spectracomp Toneprint in the BH amp is the main reason I got a standalone Spectracomp for my pedalboard.

Aw, thanks! The Inevitable Teaspoons are very grateful for your purchase 🥰

My solution for that - a wristband, pulled up to where the forearm meets the body. I play basses with zero forearm contouring, even binding without issue if I do this.

Mini toggle switch installed... Had to remove a little material from the control cavity to get enough threads to poke through the top, because life is never easy. Next job is to enlarge the hole left by the jack socket from 9mm to whatever the pickup selector needs, probably 12mm or something.

You don't need to give me an excuse to show off my korinaburst Triad. It also has a Freeway 10 way switch fitted, for the standard options on one bank, then various series/parallel options not normally available. Pretty simple fit, visually undetectable, very elegant mod (works by tilting the blade switch up/down to access the two banks of options).

Busy evening. Got home and fitted the new pickup ring to the pickup - fit great first time, except the pickup height screw holes were a bit tight but they pushed though OK with a little persuasion. I decided to get stuck in and make some more progress, so I got down to dismantling the bass. Found some interesting things: The channels which the bridge saddle grub screws sit in are actually stamped into the bridge plate, proud and so there are shallow channels routed into the body to accommodate them. # Wonderful documentation - separate date stamps for body (Sept 1998) and neck (Oct 1998). Anyway, after unearthing some hidden treasure, I made my plan: That's a lot of wood to get through (about 47mm)! Body clamped securely in the bench vice. But I wasn't ready just to gung ho so I grabbed a scrap bit of wood for a test run. I deliberately picked one which wasn't much bigger than the 20mm bit so I could see how good my aim was. Turns out my aim is pretty good. Also checked that 20mm was indeed big enough to accommodate a jack socket. It is. Time to take a deep breath and drill for real this time. As you can see I did deviate a bit from the original pilot hole, but not in either of the directions which would matter. The drill did wander a little at the beginning when it was trying to break through the finish, hence the white mark on the bottom edge. But by the time I got to this depth, my drill wasn't making much progress. So I decided to stop there (about 10mm short of breaking through into the control cavity) and simply enlarged the old pilot hole a little to allow space for wires to come through. Jack socket loads in from the outside. A tad unorthodox, but hey, it's an unorthodox bass! Done. As luck would have it, I found a "football" jack plate in my spares box. So that saved me ordering one. Made a couple of pilot holes (using the hand drill this time - had quite enough of power tools for one day!) and fitted the plate to the side of the body. Last of all, I moved the jack socket properly (as in desoldered it, moved it to the side and reconnected it - which would not have been necessary if I had gone all the way through with the forstner bit but it's a small price to pay for sanity etc. Now there's a hole free in the top of the body for a pickup selector switch. But that's for another time.