Today, I had a good old play of the JMJ, using my pedalboard in front of my Yamaha headphone amp. All my long scale basses (passive) love my, always on, Sadowsky SBP2 pre amp, it sprinkles ‘fairy dust’ on the tone and just makes it, er... ‘more’. This feeds my octave and chorus boxes, then my VTDI for a little dirt (eq set to render a flat response against the character control) and then into my MXR compressor. However, the Mustang doesn’t react in the same way to the SBP2, it makes it too bottom heavy and detracts from the great, inherent tone; hmm. This got me thinking, what if I used the VTDI less as a dirt box and use it to make the Mustang more cutting by pushing the mid control (apparently centred @1khz) for a more, bridge centric, J like tone? Hello Mr Honky! Suddenly, the Mustang becomes more of an all rounder and my other basses start to get worried (don’t worry, guys, Daddy still loves you - today 😉). But the experimentation doesn’t stop there, what happens if I now use the SBP2 as well? Ah ha! The normal Mustang tone returns, but now accompanied by the previously mentioned ‘fairy dust’. Oh, happy day!
Now, this is of course using a headphone amp and it might all be a different story through my Phil Jones rig (sadly in storage, 500 miles away) but given that setup’s pretty flat, uncoloured response, I think it’ll be the same. This means, that my idea of potentially adding a bridge p/up may well be moot.
It really does seem that only having one pickup with, by comparison, limited tonal options (even compared to P basses), makes you think more and become more inventive. I’ve seen this phenomena with single pickup guitars (yeah, I said guitars, what of it? Oh, no! I’ve stirred up the natives, where’s my tin hat and hiding hole? 😂) and I think it’s a good thing.
In short, I’m digging the Mustang even more now.