E-P-J 3 pickup build Finished!!!

[Max Normal]

Finally finished my homebuild. Had lots of help from fellow basschatters on this one, so thanks a lot chaps, particularly Ou7shined who chose my pickups and advised on the wiring!

The concept was originally to use the natural tone of each pickup type and its string position to determine the tone of the bass. Each pickup was to have its own volume and tone control so that they could be infinitely mixed. The idea was also so that i could learn passive bass guitar wiring, which is another reason i chose such a wacky scheme. It seems that for technical reasons, unfortunately that when you have multiple tone controls, they influence each other too much and it never really works very well (which is why many multiple tone control guitars have pickup selector switches) . For this reason, I plumped for a VVV(VT) configuration, with a master volume stacked with the tone knob. I still get the tonal characteristics of each individual pickup with infinite mixing, and I tend to have to only use the tone control for small trim adjustments.

To produce the "bass" part of the tone, I used a Dimarzio Model One, orginially designed for Gibson EB basses as a direct replacement (hence the E in E-P-J).
To produce the "middle" I used a Seymour Duncan Quarterpounder and for the bridge "treble/clarity" component, I used a Dimarzio Ultra J. The compatibility of the pickups was checked by Ou7shined, who told me to check the impedance of each pickup was similar and report back to him. This is why such powerful overwound P and J pickups had to be used, as the Model One is a monster!

Some people reckoned that this was going to be a dark sounding and thumpy beast, so I wired both the Model One and the Ultra J with push/pull coil phase switching, and I added series/parallel switching between the P and the J pickups. I have uploaded the wiring diagram in case anyone is interested.

[attachment=96403:wiring.jpg]


I found the single pickup routed unfinished precision body on ebay, it's solid ash and it cost me £27.00 as nobody else bid on it. I have no idea who the manufacturer is, but when I first gave it a tap, it had a nice ring to it suggesting it might be a quite resonant piece of wood. The neck is a WD Fender Jazz bass replacement. Because the wood was so resonant, i didn't want to dampen it by putting a great lump of metal of a bridge like a badass on it (I reason that these maybe work better with denser woods like maple and mahogany?), so I got a Babicz "full contact bridge", which is really light weight so allows the body to resonate, but the saddles touch the base plate along its length and use cams to adjust string height, so resonance is supposedly transferred between the body and strings with minimal damping of the wood.

The routing and scratchplate modifications were done in the workshop at the university where i work. We used a milling machine instead of a router which worked really nicely and easily.

In a final measure to attempt to keep the bass as resonant as possible, the neck is attached to the body using an inlaid metal ferrule neck fixing kit.

[attachment=96404:Angle.jpg]
[attachment=96405:back.jpg]
[attachment=96406:Top down.jpg]

I finished the neck and body with TruOil which was nice and easy and brought the character of the wood out, and lemon oil on the rosewood fretboard.

In use, any fear of this being a dark sounding bass were confounded. I guess Model One pickups must sound different in a mahogany Gibson, because it gives a very powerful, punchy fat rounded sound. When you dial in the Ultra J at the bridge, you get a nice clear top end, and you can add some P-bass growl with the Quarter pounder in the middle. The best thing i can compare it with is a very powerful punchy active bass, but with the warmer tones of passive pickups. Its great for rock and blues and surprisingly, absolutely amazing for slap with the Model one and Ultra J together dealing with the punch and top end.

Obviously, if you dial out the Model One, you get classic P and J tones, but phase switching the coils in the Model One gives a surprising woody, almost acoustic tone, which paired with the Ultra J gives a jazzier, tighter tone, dare i say it, it almost sounds like a jazz bass.......(I'll get me coat).

To be honest, I was half expecting this project to be a bit of a useless experiment, but this bass tonally blows any of my other basses away and i would recommend this mod to anyone. The only things I would not bother with are the phase switch on the jazz pickup and the series/parallel switching between the P and J pickups, which I never use.

Cheers for looking =0)

Mark

Edited January 3, 2012 by Max Normal

[Stewart]

Looking very nice indeed
I've been considering a model one in a P for some time too...


Looks like it weighs a bit though (?)

[Max Normal]

Good call, it weighs a f*ckn tonne! My band always ask why I sometimes spontaneously sit on the floor during rehearsals. I notice you are in Brighton, if you ever want to pop up and have a bong on it to see what I mean, you'd be welcome!

Edited January 3, 2012 by Max Normal

[Ou7shined]

Hey that worked out really nice. I love your methodical approach to the project too... you have teh good science.

[Max Normal]

Lol! Too expensive to bugger it up as the missus sounds like starting a new build will [i]not[/i] be in the near future, that's why I spent so many hours hassling you lot on the forums! Might get a cheap s/h alder body for it just to see how different it sounds from the ash though.
On the downside, my guitarist now wants me to install a phase switch in his Hagstrom and another mate made me install pickups into his Strat, so learning how to do wiring might not have been such a good idea.......

PS, wish I could learn to do proper wood stuff like you but I can't even cut straight maybe one day I'll do one of those residential luthering courses that Shuker run, but in the meantime I can dream.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Max Normal