northcountrybob Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 YO! I just picked up a Player Jazz Bass. TBH it needs some work. It arrived with the bridge ground wire detached. Nut edges are a bit sharp. The neck on the bass side around the first few frets feels kind of flat and not really rounded down the side of the neck. The collet for the low E tuners is also sitting quite proud of the headstock... I swapped a guitar for it and it's brand new so... I dunno. it's my first J Bass and I actually dig a lot about it. So it's got me GASing for something better, but as I'm not into this for much I might play around with it once I sorted some of the issues. I have a Gotoh 201B-4 to put on it. I can sort the ground wire when I replace that. I can also press in the collet. Besides that, the volume pots seems to do very very little. A tiny turn down from full volume and then there's no change around 98% of the sweep. I'd replace these with some CTS pots or something but not sure about the best taper. Then I got to thinking about putting in a 2 band EQ and either having the pickups in series or parallel to a single volume (or input to a preamp a la Stingray). Just wondering what simple preamps are out there. I'm not really into multi band stacked pot type things. I do love my stingray preamp on my stingray... not sure if that's useful in this scenario... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supernaut Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 John East seems like the ideal solution. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northcountrybob Posted August 22, 2023 Author Share Posted August 22, 2023 Maybe the MM style 2 band (3 knob) is an option. Pretty steep though. If only John East sold just a PCB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lidl e Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 I put a lusithand single NFP jazzplate in my 97 MIA jazz and i can't say enough good things about it. Great for dialling in a room i find. https://lusithanddevices.com/product-category/pre-amps/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted August 23, 2023 Share Posted August 23, 2023 The Sadowsky VTC is a direct replacement preamp, so it might be interesting too, just like a lot of John East dedicated models as said before: https://www.east-uk.com/product-category/j-style/?v=d3dcf429c679 Check the J-Tone as it seems to be what you're looking for. John is always there and you can talk directly with him to get exactly what you want. And the volume potentiometers not doing much is quite typical for a Jazz Bass. 😉 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Passinwind Posted August 23, 2023 Share Posted August 23, 2023 20 hours ago, northcountrybob said: Maybe the MM style 2 band (3 knob) is an option. Pretty steep though. If only John East sold just a PCB. Inexpensive bare PCBs for MM2B clones and/or near clones are quite readily available from other sources, FWIW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northcountrybob Posted August 24, 2023 Author Share Posted August 24, 2023 Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll take a look at them all. It's a bit of a shame but my J Bass needs to be returned. Too many issues including one I can't fix with it. 15 hours ago, Passinwind said: Inexpensive bare PCBs for MM2B clones and/or near clones are quite readily available from other sources, FWIW. I think I found one link to some PCB's that could be ordered and a bunch of vero layouts. https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/dqkkDv24 I did think about ordered that. I don't know if there are other options. The retrovibe seems a bit steep for what it is. I'm almost tempted to do my own PCB layout with lower profile surface mount parts... but I'm also lazy! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Passinwind Posted August 24, 2023 Share Posted August 24, 2023 5 hours ago, northcountrybob said: Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll take a look at them all. It's a bit of a shame but my J Bass needs to be returned. Too many issues including one I can't fix with it. I think I found one link to some PCB's that could be ordered and a bunch of vero layouts. https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/dqkkDv24 I did think about ordered that. I don't know if there are other options. The retrovibe seems a bit steep for what it is. I'm almost tempted to do my own PCB layout with lower profile surface mount parts... but I'm also lazy! There are at least a few other options but finding them on OSH is a real challenge. Someone on Talkbass already did a nice looking SMT layout that I'm pretty sure he shared, I'll see if I can find it. Several years ago I did a through-hole one meant for modern parts, which was maybe my very first attempt at doing PCB layouts. Came out fine in any case. And then I have a fairly standard Baxandall based two band board about to go on share in the next few days, as part of this project: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-passinwind-open-source-preamp.1259692/#post-19535550 . The two band module works great as a standalone thing, and can be configured for Bass/Treble or Bass/Mids as needed. To be clear, I don't sell any hardware, and my stuff is targeted for relatively self sufficient DIY'ers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bakerster135 Posted August 24, 2023 Share Posted August 24, 2023 Aguilar OBP-1 would be the ideal one I would suggest. It's what's in their DB-924/DB-925 external preamps and those sound perfect with Jazz Basses. Very similar to the Sadowsky pre, just a touch nicer sounding and more transparent to my ears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.