SimonH

Just acquired a Squier Paranormal Rascal and enjoying short scale on a long scale body (if that makes sense). Also enjoying the looks, if I'm honest. It comes with a pair of passive Squier humbuckers which sound pretty good at home but they lack 'sparkle' in a band setting – I've an Ibanez SR1200 (with Nordstrand Big Single passive pickups and Ibanez three-band preamp) and my bandmates said, A/B, that the Ibanez sounded "more hi-fi, more clarity, sweeter". So here's my plan for the Squier – and I'd really appreciate any input or advice! 1) Split both doublecoils. As standard, the pups route to a 3-way toggle, then single vol and tone. My idea is to install a pair of mini two-way toggles next to the three-way, and split both coils (the coils are wired together with a solder join so easy to spit them). That would give me the option to combine both humbuckers and/or single coils in any config. Don't know if that will help get me closer to the sound I want, but I think it might reduce the muddiness of the humbuckers. 2) Add a preamp. This is the bit I start to get confused about – I've installed a Noll in a Precision, a John East in a Jazz (pre-prepared), a Glockenklang in... I can't even remember now... what was that in? Anyway... they were all kinda like-for-like, or fairly obvious. This will be a bit more involved and will mean adding an extra pot for bass and treble eq. And a push-pull somewhere (vol?) for active/passive. Fortunately there's plenty of room under the scratchplate. Or can I can always rout out a bit more. I'll worry about the wiring later (the guitarist in the band is a professional amp builder). What I'd like to know before I start is, does that sound like a plan that might get me closer to the sound I want? Or do I need to simply replace the stock pups (with what tho?). All advice/critiques welcome (ie buy a different bass, play the Ibanez instead, etc). Thank you for reading this!

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