Bass upgrade stories - got a bass that you love, but gave a little something extra to?

[Al Krow]

After churning through over 25 basses over the past decade I've ended up with a herd of 8 including 3 basses that I'm regularly gigging and finally feeling "yeah, this lot are really good!" I guess the fact I've not actually bought a bass in a couple of years is perhaps a good sign that I'm pretty happy with my lot.

However it's fair to say that even my current herd have not been without their niggles and I've started going down the route of seeing if I can put through a few judicious upgrades to sort out the flaws without replacing the bass outright.

 

I've got a couple of stories to share about tweaks to my Spector Euro 5LX which has made a really positive difference to an otherwise great bass and more recently about my Yamaha BB 2005 which is currently being upgraded which I'll come back to shortly and maybe add some more pics:

 

 

 

In the meantime, thought it would be interesting to swap stories of any mods you've put through to basses you really rate, and what it is about them that make them special, where the modifications have had a really positive outcome, or any that you thought "oh dear that was a waste of time & money!"? Pics very welcome! 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Al Krow

[Muzz]

Every posh bass I have has a John East Retro in there, so I have a reference point for the tone; they're not all set the same, because the basses themselves have a character (mostly pickups and placement), but with the JE Pre I know how to get a consistent sound from them all...

 

All my basses have Hipshot Ultralites, because why wouldn't you, and most of them have split-coil pups in them, too.

 

My main gigging bass right now while I'm doing sketchy pubs every week is my BB414, and while that's passive (so no JE), it has Ultralites and a more comfortable bridge - the Fender £30 one...a great bridge, and I don't even care it's got FENDER stamped on it...

 

Oh, and Elixirs on everything...

Edited October 9, 2023 by Muzz

[LeftyJ]

I have always had a strong tendency to tamper with the guitars I've owned. Additional switching options, upgrading the pots and switches, experimenting with various capacitors on the tone control, graphite nuts and string retainers, swapping pickups, and all have had strap locks added. Somehow on my basses though, I barely touch anything. I have one exception (Fender MIJ 70s Jazz Bass reissue) that was originally passive but went through two different preamps, had its stock bridge swapped for a Badass II and its tuners swapped for Hipshots and a D-tuner but otherwise I've kept things limited to just strap locks. 

[Lozz196]

My fave Fender 2015 US Precision has had a Hipshot Xtender and a Fender Stealth Retainer put on it. Neither required any drilling etc so bass can be put back to original status with no signs of the changes having been made.

[jd56hawk]

Dimarzio Relentless pickups, definitely something extra.

Smooth playing Jazz bass is now a heavy hitter.

[Rexel Matador]

Before I got into building basses from scratch I did a bit of modding. I defretted my old Ibanez SR300 just for the hell of it - turned out pretty well. I don't have it anymore but the fretless itch has returned of late...

 

Also early in my bass journey I got an absolute gem of a MIM Fender P bass in Olympic white. Then decided I needed a Squier Matt Freeman in black as a backup. I bought a Seymour Duncan QP and an EMG GZR, tried both in both basses and ended up having to admit that the stock pickups were absolutely fine. The Fender in particular - that bog standard stock P pickup that came with it is one of the best I've ever heard.

 

After that I decided, how hard can refinishing be? The Squier body was a write off, so the neck is now on a cheap and super light pawlonia body, which is great for long gigs. The fender is now surf green with a mint pickguard and white pickup cover - I love it, but it's way too heavy for me these days.

[Rayman]

I don't know about modding basses I love...... I've spent an obscene amount "upgrading" many..... many basses over the years, that I still didn't love and sold on anyway. I've lost a lot of money there I can tell you.

 

I'm over the moon with the Aguilar OBP-1 just fitted to my Warwick Fortress, so that's a success story I guess (until I decide to sell it, like I do with literally everything I own).

[Al Krow]

16 minutes ago, Rayman said:

I don't know about modding basses I love...... I've spent an obscene amount "upgrading" many..... many basses over the years, that I still didn't love and sold on anyway. I've lost a lot of money there I can tell you.

 

I'm over the moon with the Aguilar OBP-1 just fitted to my Warwick Fortress, so that's a success story I guess (until I decide to sell it, like I do with literally everything I own).

 

Aha, that bodes well for me then! I'm just getting an OBP-2 fitted on my Yamaha BB 2005 to replace a rather tired Yamaha pre-amp with an NE1 mid-cut circuit that never gets used. How's your OBP-1 changed the sound to make it such a step up?

 

So what were your top 3 waste of money upgrades and why didn't they hit the mark?

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Al Krow

[Rayman]

14 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Aha, that bodes well for me then! I'm just getting an OBP-2 fitted on my Yamaha BB 2005 to replace a rather tired Yamaha pre-amp with an NE1 mid-cut circuit that never gets used. How's your OBP-1 changed the sound to make it such a step up?

 

So what were your top 3 waste of money upgrades and why didn't they hit the mark?

 

Well the previous owner had removed the factory MEC 2 band eq, and for some reason, stuck in a cheap replacement. So the bass sounded decent but not amazing, a bit flat. Now, it sounds clear and focused with plenty of bass or treble to suit. Personally I have both rolled right back (OBP-1 is boost only) with a little bass rolled back on again. It’s quite a bright sounding bass, but with flats on it, and the EQ set as I like it, it sounds absolutely fantastic.

[Rayman]

By the way…. having had (and sadly miss) an amazing Yamaha TRB1005, I expect a 2005 with an OBP-2 in it will be  absolutely immense.

[Rayman]

51 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

So what were your top 3 waste of money upgrades and why didn't they hit the mark?

 

1: Nordstrand pickup into an OLP Tony Levin, along with a brass nut, new EQ, and tuners….. 

 

2: EMG pickup and new EQ into a Fleabass “water bass”……..

 

3: Quarter Pounders, EQ and Hipshot tuners onto a Squier Affinity P bass….

 

🤦🏻‍♂️

 

Thankfully this was all years ago… I’ve learnt my lesson. At the end of the day, a budget bass is still a budget bass, regardless of the money you spend on it …. you can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Rayman

[Linus27]

So, by all accounts, I've ended up modding all my basses, not from boredom but just because I can never get what I want.

 

So my oldest and most loved bass is a 1986 ESP 400 Series Jazz Bass that I bought from new in 1987. The best bass I have ever owned and I found out, came from the same factory that Fender Japan basses were made. It probably accounts for why Fender parts are interchangeable and has exactly the same headstock etc. Anyway, a year or two after owning it from new, I had a set of Bartolini's fitted which transformed the bass. I then about 12 years ago, had Jon Shuker make an amazing ebony fretless neck for it which is where it has remained. Its got 36 years of battle scares but its still amazing and gets played to this day.

 

Next is my Fender FSR 70's Mexican Precision that I bought new is 2018. Being a lover of 70's natural Fender Precision's and a huge Sting fan, I got Jon Shuker to make a high gloss fretless maple neck which again is where it has stayed and it has turned out to be the best sounding bass for recording.

 

Next is my Fender Japan 62RI Precision. An absolutely lovey bass to play but I felt there was more on offer if I changed the pickups. So as my Fender FSR 70's Precision as above came with Fender 62 Custom Shop pickups and sounded so good, I had a set of them fitted to it along with new pots and it sounds fabulous. I also changed the pickguard from Tort to Black.

 

 

[Jono Bolton]

2 hours ago, Rexel Matador said:

Also early in my bass journey I got an absolute gem of a MIM Fender P bass in Olympic white. Then decided I needed a Squier Matt Freeman in black as a backup. I bought a Seymour Duncan QP and an EMG GZR, tried both in both basses and ended up having to admit that the stock pickups were absolutely fine. The Fender in particular - that bog standard stock P pickup that came with it is one of the best I've ever heard.

The stock pickup in the Matt Freeman Precision is excellent. One of the Matt Freemans I owned came with a Quarter Pounder pickup fitted and I asked the seller to include the stock one too. He messaged me after he'd shipped the bass and said he'd forgotten to throw in the original, so I made sure he posted it to me separately so that it could fit it back in because I love that pickup, and I hate the sound of Quarter Pounders. It's partly the reason why I refer to such things as modifications rather than upgrades, as I find the term 'upgrade' to be entirely subjective.

[Jono Bolton]

8 minutes ago, Linus27 said:

So, by all accounts, I've ended up modding all my basses, not from boredom but just because I can never get what I want.

 

So my oldest and most loved bass is a 1986 ESP 400 Series Jazz Bass that I bought from new in 1987. The best bass I have ever owned and I found out, came from the same factory that Fender Japan basses were made. It probably accounts for why Fender parts are interchangeable and has exactly the same headstock etc. Anyway, a year or two after owning it from new, I had a set of Bartolini's fitted which transformed the bass. I then about 12 years ago, had Jon Shuker make an amazing ebony fretless neck for it which is where it has remained. Its got 36 years of battle scares but its still amazing and gets played to this day.

 

Next is my Fender FSR 70's Mexican Precision that I bought new is 2018. Being a lover of 70's natural Fender Precision's and a huge Sting fan, I got Jon Shuker to make a high gloss fretless maple neck which again is where it has stayed and it has turned out to be the best sounding bass for recording.

 

Next is my Fender Japan 62RI Precision. An absolutely lovey bass to play but I felt there was more on offer if I changed the pickups. So as my Fender FSR 70's Precision as above came with Fender 62 Custom Shop pickups and sounded so good, I had a set of them fitted to it along with new pots and it sounds fabulous. I also changed the pickguard from Tort to Black.

 

 

Those Ps are fantastic 

[ezbass]

I’m an inveterate tinkerer and have messed with almost every bass that I’ve owned, even one of my custom builds (replaced the pickup, knobs and fitted a pickguard). The least messed with have been my old Roscoe Beck signature (perfect as it was, except I eventually fell out of love with the neck width) and one of my current Maruszczyk custom builds, but even that has replacement knobs (Sadowsky style) and a couple of under layers for the transparent pickguard for a change of appearance. Probably the most savaged was my first Fender US J, I replaced the pickups with DiMarzio super Js, fitted an East preamp, put on a D tuner, recessed strap locks and a replacement PG. Then there was the Fender P Roadworn that had an extra P pickup fitted, the neck stripped and a replacement PG. I think I’ve got better over the years and changes tend to be cosmetic. However, guitars are another matter altogether, my 2 electrics have had all manner of changes made, to the point where the Telecaster only has the original neck and tuners, neck plate and PG, everything else is different (it is now perfect).

[paul_5]

Me too. I put together a lovely fretless Jazz - one piece ash body, NW guitars ( I think) fretless neck and loved it.

 

Then I bought a router and added a Wilkinson Stingray pickup, but wired it so that each coil could be selected individually. I put this on one of the volume controls and used a dual gang potentiometer for the jazz pickups and a master passive tone control. 
 

Lovely.

[Lozz196]

1 hour ago, Jono Bolton said:

The stock pickup in the Matt Freeman Precision is excellent. One of the Matt Freemans I owned came with a Quarter Pounder pickup fitted and I asked the seller to include the stock one too. He messaged me after he'd shipped the bass and said he'd forgotten to throw in the original, so I made sure he posted it to me separately so that it could fit it back in because I love that pickup, and I hate the sound of Quarter Pounders. It's partly the reason why I refer to such things as modifications rather than upgrades, as I find the term 'upgrade' to be entirely subjective.

There’s no accounting for taste is there, I can’t imagine why anyone would take out the stock pickups from the MF Sig, those basses are just about perfect as they are.

[neepheid]

Gee whizz, where to start?  Let's limit it to currently owned basses...

 

Epiphone Les Paul Standard bass - well, it's on its third configuration.  Obvs it started stock with 2x Epi humbuckers and VVTT.  Then I EMGed it out the wazoo with 2x EMG-HB pickups and and EMG-BQC 3 band EQ (and fitted a pickup selector switch to it).  Then I went "meh" on active basses in general so I revamped it with 2x DiMarzio X2N-B pickups, rewired back to VVTT (but with push-push pots on the tone controls for series/parallel, and gave it a black and gold makeover, so it got gold Wilkinson tuners, a gold switch (with a custom "poker chip"), black pickup rings and a gold Babicz bridge (because I couldn't find a gold three pointer for a sensible price and Gibson/Epiphone wouldn't sell me one, despite continuing to use them on the Allen Woody sig.  D!cks.)  I'm done with this one now.

 

G&L Tribute LB-100 - the initial idea was to swap out the stock pickup for a split MFD to make a cheapskate SB-1, but I ended up liking the sound of the stock pickup.  I did change the tort pickguard for a white pearl though, after a year and a half of humming and hawing about it.

 

Reverend Triad - stock 5 way switch replaced with a Freeway 10 way switch, for extra pickup options like series and parallel combinations.

 

Future plans - The Harley Benton prototype HB-50 that I snagged recently is getting an electronics makeover.  That will be an upgrade in the genuine sense of the word, because the pots in it just now are garbage (not so much the feel, but the taper is useless!), and the switch is pointless (north coil, both (parallel), south coil - why bother?)

 

There's heaps of stuff gone before, like swapping the black hardware on a Gibson NR Thunderbird for chrome, changing the series/parallel switch on a G&L Tribute L-2000 to a 4PDT on-on-on switch to give series/single/parallel, adding an Artec preamp to an OLP MM3, I could go on - I'm an inveterate tinkerer!

[TheGreek]

I bought a Kawai F2b which had a defective bridge pickup, which had a lower output. 

I really should have left it alone - tbh I could have lived with the lower output,  especially as I'm predominantly playing 5ers now.

Changing the pickups turned out to be a nightmare  - I ordered a set of custom pickups which really were characterless and had to go back.

Replaced these with a set of active Wilkinsons which are "fine" but not as punchy as the originals. 

The whole process took far longer than it should have and I'm not convinced that I've upgraded the electronics - if I was playing 4s I'd probably be thinking about a good quality preamp but since I'm not I'll leave it for the next owner to do if I sell what is an amazing bass. 

Images below are of the original pickups. 

[tauzero]

Antoniotsai 5-string - wonderful to play but a bit lacking in bottom end, due to generic Chinese pickups. Fitted it with Bartolini pickups (it's a long time ago, can't remember which) and a Delano Sonar preamp, and it turned out very well.

 

Handbuilt (not by me) 6-string headless - controls were V-V-pickup select, with the Vs having pull for coil splitting of the generic 4-wire Chinese pickups. Pickups replaced with Aguilar DCBs, preamp replaced with Aguilar OBP2, and a Roland GK3B installed.

 

 

[MichaelDean]

I like to tinker...

 

On my Combustion, I've moved the neck pickup back to the middle position, sourced a new pickguard to hide that hole, and replaced the volume with a stacked volume and tone control. 

 

My Mustang needed a paint job when I got it. Then, in lockdown I treated it to a stainless steel re-fret and a set of hipshot ultralights because the old machine heads were shot and there is t a direct replacement. Nowadays, I can leave it for a few days, pick it up and it's still in tune. It also got a @KiOgon loom a while ago as the volume pot died. 

 

I didn't like the stock white guard that had aged unevenly on my candy apple red Revelation PJ, so I had a black one made. I was curious about the Fender high mass bridges, so one of those got fitted. Really nice, solid thing, with no side to side saddle movement. Oh, and I like flat top knobs, so I swapped those out too. 

[Paulhauser]

There are a couple but let's bring it on with this one. 

 

1. I've already had a history with Spector basses at this point (2016) Back in '07 I had my first Czech 5er (NS-5CR) followed a pre-LX Euro 5 which I've used as my main bass for a couple of years. Sold'em all when I thought I was quitting music for good. Bad move, but anyways. I Love your Green Dragon!

 

2. At this point I was playing my Spector Euro 5 for a couple of years, which had been modified as well. (maybe a next post) This is the sandwich body (alder/walnut/quilted maple) with the EMG 40TW pus.

 

I was contemplating how to reach the classic 80's Spector growl albeit in a 5 string format and without robbing the bank and proceeding to source those ver so elusive 80's 5 string Spectors (or 4 strings for that matter)

So it came to the opportunity to acquire a pre-LX 5 string Czech Euro (full maple wings, that is ) on this very forum. Ohhh, those lovely pre-Brexit times when I (we) were free to deal with our brethren on those cloudy islands....

Upon receiving said bass she looked like this (sounded and felt ACE!)

 

So my plan was to make it look and sound like this came from 1985 (well Spector never had color like this back then but you get the vibe)

I wanted this to be pink, has PJ pickups and also the neck to be shaven.  The previous owner put in a John East preamp which as to be kept and I sourced EMG 40 housing P and J pickups. 

The cool thing about EMGs are that they sound great and also they are interchangeable within reason. So if you have a certan sized housing like mine with the 40s here you have a quite wide range of pickups with different features to be used as replacements with relatively small footprint as to exchange work needed. 

I have ended up putting X series 40 P and J into it and the finish came about after much trial and erroe but I'm still happy with it after 7 years. 

I have used this bass extensively live and in studio and it is on of my all time fav's bringing the grit that is associated with Spectors but offering so much more and especially sensitive to playing dynamics.

 

 

[Munurmunuh]

3 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

There’s no accounting for taste is there, I can’t imagine why anyone would take out the stock pickups from the MF Sig, those basses are just about perfect as they are.

 

They're not perfect at sounding like they've got a Dimarzio pickup, which is why I replaced the stock pickup with a Dimarzio. Someone else whose MF was missing its stock pickup was very glad to be sold mine.

[andruca]

My finest upgrades are probably in my Star Bass. Got a MIK ProSeries Star Bass 5 for real cheap in 2020. First thing I changed was the stupid strap pin at the heel. Relocated it to the upper horn. It helped both with neckdive and most important with the bass facing down when strapped thru' said heel located pin (can't describe how much this sucks, sucks the same in my Epi EB0, but it's somewhat more tolerable due to its nimbleness).

 

I drilled a pilot hole...

 

...filled the tip of the upper horn with epoxy using a syringe, then screwed the the pin in and left it headstock down to cure. Absolutely solid.

 

 

 

I managed to take this photo of the inside of the horn with a mirror and a mobile phone thru the upper f-hole. You can see the solidified pool of epoxy and the tip of the pin screw back there.

 

Then I also added an "armrest" to play more comfy when seated. Yes, it's crappy foamy rubber cornering, the kind you put on furniture edges/corners when you have little kids. Comfy a/f to play seated now.

 

Finally, I don't like VVTT at all, so I changed it to a VVT arrangement, with a tone cap selector rotary switch (values 10, 20, 32, 43 & 57 nF), much more useful now.

 

Chickenhead knob for the win!

 

 

I also did a mod to both my Stingray5s (both pre-2008, 3-coil ceramic pickups) to be able to use the neckside coil on its own (from factory, the single coil -plus phantom- position gets the bridge side coil sounding). With the use of a 4PDT switch I swap the bridge for the neck coil and also invert its coils/change its phase (so that it'll still be humcancelling with the phantom coil). Barely noticeable in terms of timbre to the untrained ear. Made a world of difference to me (was using the single coil position, now this is definitely MY Stingray5 tone). It's like a slightly P'ish Musicman (a more mid/lo-mid focused tone), close to the series tone, but throatier. You can hear al 4 positions here, the 3 stock ones and the neckside coil one.

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by andruca

[Rexel Matador]

5 minutes ago, andruca said:

tone cap selector rotary switch

Interesting! I was just trying to decide what value tone cap to put in the bass I'm building. It never occurred to me I could have them all!