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Good Pickups In Cheap basses


Hobbayne
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I have ordered a set of Seymour Duncan SPB1 pickups for my Squier P Bass as the originals are a bit bit thin sounding. Would upgrading to 500K pots improve the sound too?
Its a nice looking bass which i,m fond of, so am looking to upgrade it.

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In theory, the lower the value the pot is, the less high end is removed.
In practice, the high resistance of the pot means that the signal becomes so weak at the end of the pots rotation that you can't really hear the difference anyway.

Easiest way to approach it is to experiment changing the capacitor value and the pot value.

Having said that, I'd fit the Seymour Duncans into the bass first and see if I actually needed to make any 'tweaks' with those in place - otherwise you've no idea where you've just moved the goalposts to... :)

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[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1329962055' post='1550607']
In theory, the lower the value the pot is, the less high end is removed.
In practice, the high resistance of the pot means that the signal becomes so weak at the end of the pots rotation that you can't really hear the difference anyway.

Easiest way to approach it is to experiment changing the capacitor value and the pot value.

Having said that, I'd fit the Seymour Duncans into the bass first and see if I actually needed to make any 'tweaks' with those in place - otherwise you've no idea where you've just moved the goalposts to... :)
[/quote]

I may be misinterpreting but that doesn't sound quite right to me. A higher pot value loading the pickup [i]increases[/i] the height of the resonance peak, effectively giving a treble boost centred at that resonance frequency. If you want more upper mid bite, switch to a 500k pot. But I agree it may well be fine as is once you drop the new pickup in.
There's a good illustration of this effect and others here: http://www.hardman-guitar-amplifiers.co.uk/pickups.html

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[quote name='icastle' timestamp='1329962055' post='1550607']

Having said that, I'd fit the Seymour Duncans into the bass first and see if I actually needed to make any 'tweaks' with those in place - otherwise you've no idea where you've just moved the goalposts to... :)
[/quote]

That's advice I've not always followed myself but it is very good advice :)

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