Precisions and Frequencies

[Danuman]

Hi all,

I’ve been working on my MIM P for a while now. It’s been a slow process, but recently I completed building a new body. 

I just wanted to tinker with the look,  but the improvement in resonance over the original body is really quite dramatic, so i’m absolutely chuffed with the result.

When I plug it in, however, it remains a bit cluttered in the lower mids. Say between 150~250 Hz.

I put in a lovely Curtis Novak PB-V, which to my ears sounds beautifully balanced and hollow and precisiony and flat — provided I boost a touch around 1.5k and cut a similar amount around 200. (On an Eden Traveler, so a little goes a long way.)

Which is a perfectly fine workaround, obviously, but I did have some trouble getting it to sound good on other rigs. So ideally it would just sound like that with the amp set flat, as with other basses.

I’ve already bypassed the electronics, so might this just be what the pick-up sounds like? Or could it be a mismatch between the pick-up and the guitar? Is there anything that could cause a pick-up to lose definition like this?

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Dan

[ikay]

Some pickups can suit a particular bass (specific body/wood/neck combination) more than others, the only way to find out is to try them in situ and decide what works best. Did you have the PB-V installed with the previous body and did it sound the same? You say the PB-V sounds beautifully balanced and flat, but looking at the EQ you're applying it sounds like the basic tone is lacking a little definition. Which is a bit odd as you say you've also bypassed the electronics which should make it sound generally brighter. Does the pickup go direct to the output jack and bypass both vol and tone? Have you tried it without bypassing the electronics? The PB-V is voiced as a vintage P and if you want 'that' sound then the load of the vol/tone pots is all part of the magic formula. Good job on the body BTW, looks great!

 

[Danuman]

Thanks!

Yes - sorry - that was a rather long-winded way to say that a bit of eq is needed to get a flat-ish sound (ooh, there’s a tricky concept, but I mean similar to how it sounds acoustically). It’s a really great sound when I do get it there, hence the suspicion that somewhere something is a bit off...

I only wired it straight to the output in order to see if there was anything obviously wrong with the wiring. With the previous body it sounded mostly similar, except the guitar itself sounded a lot less lively.

I guess I don’t fully grasp what people consider to be the defining characteristics of a vintage P sound...

I’ll see if I can do a recording later tonight.

 

[ikay]

Have a dig around on You Tube for vintage P examples. There's a series of James Jamerson isolated bass tracks which are a good starting point (just search for 'jamerson isolated bass'). A P bass in isolation often doesn't sound like much but they generally work really well in the mix. You may find you're over analysing the frequency content aspect a bit!

 

[Lozz196]

I always change the pots/capacitor/input jack to the same spec as US Fenders, this might well make a difference when put in line, though as has been said, it may be that the pickup just doesn`t gel with the bass for the sound you`re after.

[Danuman]

Ah, yes, of course. Jamerson I’m well aware of.

If capturing the sound of those recordings was the objective, perhaps Mr. Novak tried to make a pick-up that sounds like dead flats on a washing-up sponge even with fresh round wounds!

[Danuman]

You know what, that doesn’t seem quite as silly as I thought.

[bassmayhem]

I had an amp with fixed mid bands, and found that a slight boost at 800 Hz made the Precision Bass more... precise. Sort of. It kinda climbed out a bit. The Jazz Bass got more balls with a boost around 250 Hz. I've tried that on other amps and other P's and J's too, and it works rather well...

[Danuman]

On 14-12-2017 at 21:41, bassmayhem said:

I had an amp with fixed mid bands, and found that a slight boost at 800 Hz made the Precision Bass more... precise. Sort of. It kinda climbed out a bit. The Jazz Bass got more balls with a boost around 250 Hz. I've tried that on other amps and other P's and J's too, and it works rather well...

Cheers, this appears to be much closer to how I like it!

I wasn’t able to recreate the issue on my DAW, as the pick-up’s behaviour appears to be confoundingly unpredictable in different situations.

I played my full rig (amp and both cabs) with a (very) loud blues band this weekend, and the bass had more sizzle straight away. Turning up the 750-1k region did much more to increase definition than it did with other rigs/setups.

I suppose I need to get to know the pick-up a bit better. The string-to-string balance feels unlike anything I’ve ever played, so here’s hoping I can make it work. 🤞