Ideas for upgrading pups and tone circuits please.

[jhenkins]

Hello All,

I'm currently toying with the idea of upgrading my current Cort T34 bass electronics and pups with something a bit more upmarket. It's currently fitted with Cort's standard in-house PDX-4 pair of active pickups, which isn't half bad (if they were, I would not have bought the bass in the first place), however they do miss a bit of "sparkle". I test-drove another Cort (Curbow 5-stringer) which sports a Bartolini pickup, which just highlighted that lack of "something" even further. This is of course a highly subjective thing, not based on proper X versus Y tests.

Other than the lack of sparkle, I really like my Cort. It's got a cool shape, fast and accurate neck, and I find it extremely comfortable to play. Based on my recent experience in pimping my Squire (passive) Precision P-J bass with SD Bass Lines pickups, I saw that it doesn't neccessarily need to be a majorly expensive exercise either, provided of course you don't go completely overboard.

Some of the more promising things I found was the EMG 35 range of pickups (see [url="http://www.emgpickups.com/products/category/27/2"]http://www.emgpickup...s/category/27/2[/url] for more). They make a number of different coil configurations, all housed within a soap-bar style enclosure that looks like an almost perfect size-fit on the T34. But this pickup also comes with it's own tone circuit that does not allow for two pickups. Confusing! How do I wire two of these into a circuit? Hmmm... Does anybody know how I could coax two of these into a working configuration? I've had the pleasure of trying out EMG pickups on a Warwick and a (sob) Fodera bass in the past, and they sound absolutely awesome. A bit pricey, but not hugely so.

And then I also found some active tone circuits on the Seymore Duncan website (see [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/bass/pickups-for-jaz/electronics/stc2_stc32_3ban"]http://www.seymourdu...stc2_stc32_3ban[/url]/ for more) which seem to have the dual/triple EQ bits I am used to. They also have soapbar style pickups that seems to be compatible with the above circuits (see [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/products/bass/soapbars/4string/45_string_black/"]http://www.seymourdu...5_string_black/[/url] for the "Blackouts for Bass" pup). This looks more like something that somebody with my (low) levels of electronic skills could master! My soldering-fu is reasonable, but I'm definitely a Homer Simpson when it comes to electronic theory.

So the question here is not whether it is daft going down this route or not (I already know that it is completely cuckcoo and I probably should leave it well alone...), but whether somebody here has had any experience with the Seymore Duncan active pups. Are they any good for a project like this? Do you know of any alternatives?

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Regards,
Jan Henkins

[geoffbyrne]

I'd swap the pre-amp before the pickups - you might be surprised.

G.

[jhenkins]

Thanks, that is a great idea. I'll look into it, since unless I'm mistaken it's considerably cheaper.

[KingBollock]

No help at all but I have the T35 and it's a lovely Bass. Even though it only has a 2 band eq I find it very versatile. I wish my Warlock sounded as good.

Actually, one thought, have you tried different kinds of strings on it? You might be able to get the extra sparkle you're after that way.