Possible to send passive pickup direct out bypassing vol & tone pots?

[danonearth]

I have an old bass that has crappy pots but great pickups... I don't want to spend much, or take the time, to be honest to rebuild it, but I was just wondering if I could do a quick mod and send the pickups directly out to an amp - bypassing volume, tone and all other circuitry in the bass - just straight out signal

Has anyone tried this with any success?

Thanks!

cheers,
Dan

[bartelby]

Yep, it's possible...

[dannybuoy]

It will work but it will make the tone a bit thinner and brighter compared to having the pots attached. I rewired the S1 switch on my Precision as a volume/tone bypass and didn't care much for the sound when it was pushed in, so reverted it to stock.

[rmorris]

Yes it's fine to do this. The pickup then works straight into the input impedance of the amp / di / whatever you're plugged into.
This will result in a higher input impedance compared to having a volume and/or tone controls on the bass.
Generally this will give a brighter sound (plus more sustain although you might not notice it).
If you want to 'tame' this without pots then simply try different value resistors across the output (from signal to ground / shield).

[danonearth]

Cool! I went ahead and wired the pickups straight out, but at first it sounded kinda weird - like the E string was extra 'boomy' and louder than all the other strings. So, I tried reversing the polarity of one of the pickups (both had a yellow lead, so I had joined them together at first, but then did the opposite) and then all the strings sounded the same volume... Strange, I actually think they might be out-of-phase now, but it sounds more 'even' across all the strings (I did like the bigger 'boom' on the E string - but, to be honest, that's about the only difference I've noticed going straight out direct without any pots)

Thanks everyone!

cheers,
Dan

[Andyjr1515]

Another yes here. If you remember at all 'Toms African Build', the body wood was so thin there wasn't any room for pots so the pickup's directly wired to the jack. It sounds great.

[Grangur]

I've heard of guitar techs doing this to well known artist's instruments. Doing this means the guy at the sound desk knows what he's getting.

[dyerseve]

[quote name='danonearth' timestamp='1487307766' post='3238794']
I have an old bass that has crappy pots but great pickups... I don't want to spend much, or take the time, to be honest to rebuild it, but I was just wondering if I could do a quick mod and send the pickups directly out to an amp - bypassing volume, tone and all other circuitry in the bass - just straight out signal

Has anyone tried this with any success?

Thanks!

cheers,
Dan
[/quote]

Pots cost a couple quid. Why not just sort it properly so you can retain the features of the volume and pickup selector pots.