Brighten up my bass please..

[Quilly]

Hi All

I currently have a Mayones Jabba Passive (Jazz) Its a great playing bass. The bass comes with a the standard vol/vol tone set up however it also has a series / parallel switch which is quite handy for boosting the signal. I like it in passive mode but the tone seems a bit dark? I play my Sandberg California in passive mode or else flat across the and it seems much brighter in comparison.  I'm using the same strings and if anything I would expect the jabba to be brighter as it has a hardwood maple fingerboard whereas the Cal has a rosewood finger board. Is it the capacitor , tone pots ? I can usually get around this by using an EQ pedal.  

[itu]

There are quite a few alternatives here, I think:

1) string change to stainless steels

2) pick up adjustment may help

3) make a bypass switch for pots

4) make the bass partially active by using noll's mixpot (removes pick up load issues, but needs a battery)

5) change pick ups

6) EQ pedal = active preamp?

[Phil Starr]

There is much more to tonal differences than those caused by the fingerboard. in fact I would expect that to make little difference with a fretted bass. Many things are going to affect the timbre of your bass but perhaps two of the more important are the nature of the pups and their position. The closer to the bridge the pups are the less bass biased they will be and even fairly small changes in position will change that tonal balance. Not much you can do about that without major surgery on your bass. The windings inside the pickup act as an inductor and inductors will act as a low pass filter, they cut the higher frequencies, are they humbuckers on the Mayones?. The more windings you have the darker the pup will sound and the punchier the bass. Add in the choice of tonewood, bridge design, neck profile, how the neck and body are joined and so on and you can see why no two basses sound completely alike. The upshot is that you might find each of your basses works better with a different set of strings. In the end you have two entirely different basses so just enjoy that and explore to find out what strings work best with the chemistry of each.

[Quilly]

29 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

There is much more to tonal differences than those caused by the fingerboard. in fact I would expect that to make little difference with a fretted bass. Many things are going to affect the timbre of your bass but perhaps two of the more important are the nature of the pups and their position. The closer to the bridge the pups are the less bass biased they will be and even fairly small changes in position will change that tonal balance. Not much you can do about that without major surgery on your bass. The windings inside the pickup act as an inductor and inductors will act as a low pass filter, they cut the higher frequencies, are they humbuckers on the Mayones?. The more windings you have the darker the pup will sound and the punchier the bass. Add in the choice of tonewood, bridge design, neck profile, how the neck and body are joined and so on and you can see why no two basses sound completely alike. The upshot is that you might find each of your basses works better with a different set of strings. In the end you have two entirely different basses so just enjoy that and explore to find out what strings work best with the chemistry of each.

The pickups in the bass have a very high output especially in the mid/lows , they are Delanos with big single pole pieces per string.

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, Quilly said:

The pickups in the bass have a very high output especially in the mid/lows , they are Delanos with big single pole pieces per string.

Sounds gorgeous, but high output is possibly where the brightness has been compromised. If it is something you can eq out then it isn't anything to worry about. looks like a lovely bass on their website.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Phil Starr

[hooky_lowdown]

9 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

There is much more to tonal differences than those caused by the fingerboard.

This is not true. I thought the same, until I recently watched a video where a fender bass was played with its own neck, then a squire neck, everything was the same, but the sound difference was very obvious and different. The fender neck sounded far, far better.

[hooky_lowdown]

Changing strings or the capacitor will have the biggest impact to make your sound brighter.

[itu]

The capacitor has not so much effect when the pot is fully open, but the pot load is affecting the sound all the time.

Only if the neck including its parts is similar to another and the only difference is the fretboard, the comparison would be somewhat reasonable. Setting the instrument has to be done the same way, too.

[Aidan63]

15 hours ago, hooky_lowdown said:

This is not true. I thought the same, until I recently watched a video where a fender bass was played with its own neck, then a squire neck, everything was the same, but the sound difference was very obvious and different. The fender neck sounded far, far better.

same nut ? 

[fleabag]

I never believe such demos unless the test was done blind.  And with more choices. It's too easy with a 50-50 choice to guess right even when blind tested

[itu]

Yes, exactly. ABX and blind testing are very efficient in ruling out these guess and feel based 50-60 results.

But it is true, that if you believe in something, it should be noted. While playing, feeling is included.

[TheGreek]

On 29/01/2019 at 22:26, hooky_lowdown said:

This is not true. I thought the same, until I recently watched a video where a fender bass was played with its own neck, then a squire neck, everything was the same, but the sound difference was very obvious and different. The fender neck sounded far, far better.

We did a blind bass test a few years ago at the Herts Bash and in general Maple boards were brighter that RW . The test is buried away somewhere in the events thread...

[jrixn1]

1 hour ago, TheGreek said:

We did a blind bass test a few years ago at the Herts Bash and in general Maple boards were brighter that RW . The test is buried away somewhere in the events thread...

Was it this one? https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/238458-herts-bash-2-the-precision-test/?do=findComment&comment=2494670

The maple vs rosewood answers look pretty random to me.

 

[hooky_lowdown]

12 hours ago, TheGreek said:

We did a blind bass test a few years ago at the Herts Bash and in general Maple boards were brighter that RW . The test is buried away somewhere in the events thread...

RW and maple difference is a known fact, however the video I saw where two RW necks, one fender and one squire. Very different sound/quality.

[MoonBassAlpha]

Different in what way?

[Guest Marcoelwray]

I don't really understood if the bass is active or passive? You mentioned a VVT + selector series/parallel (which is weird because JMVC's are humbucks 2 conductors I think), seems to me like a passive bass already.... If if I'm right, what do you mean by passive? OR this is an active/passive switch? Sorry, maybe I misread Something.

Anyway,

I used Delano JMVC HE/M2 several times and it's bright as hell, no matter the wood.

In most cases a lost of brightness on a passive bass (except strings and tralalalala) is due to potentiometer value. IMHO.

 

Edited February 6, 2019 by Marcoelwray

[itu]

1 hour ago, Marcoelwray said:

In most cases a lost of brightness on a passive bass (except strings and tralalalala) is due to potentiometer value. IMHO.

You are on a right track: if you increase the pot value, the load to the pickup is smaller and the sound is brighter. You can try a 10 kohm pot and then a 500 kohm and listen to the difference. You can leave all pots out (and at the same time the load to the pickup) and hear some more highs. The tone can be done by a true bypass switch, a trimmer and a capacitor (like in a PRS guitar).

[Guest Marcoelwray]

Ah yeah, BTW, cheapest of cheapest way to know your pickup sound without any influence; weld them directly on the output jack . Then you'll know.