Upgrading a crap bass

[parker_muse]

By crap bass, i mean ultra playable with shoddy hardware.

I've got a vintage stingray and i love how it plays - i'm looking to make it sound as good as it feels. I'm currently looking at a John East 4 knob 3EQ and perhaps pairing it up with a Wizard MM pup as i've heard great things about them. Do you think this is the best combo for the money?

Also, i'd want to replace the bridge - what do you guy reccomend?

Cheers,

Parker

[stevie]

I had the same bass as you and fitted a Nordstrand MM pickup to it. Over £100 - so it's got to be good, wouldn't you think? Well, no. The Wilkinson that was in there originally sounded a lot better to my ears. I swapped back and forward several times (and tried series/parallel wiring on them both) but ended up selling the Nordstrand.

So, try replacement parts by all means but bear in mind that there is a lot of marketing hype surrounding pickups and preamps - just look at the Duncan Antiquity range to see what nonsense goes on. This is why these companies can charge up to £200 for an item with a parts value of less than a fiver. What good aftermarket pickups do give you is consistency, i.e. you pay your money and you can be reasonably confident you've got a good one.

Do buy used, because this could otherwise prove to be an expensive exercise. I'd go for the preamp first if it were me: getting the right amount of bass boost on that bass is key to getting it to sound good.

[JimBobTTD]

Do you have a vintage Stingray or a Vintage Stingray copy?

[derrenleepoole]

I have the Seymour Duncan Basslines upgrades: Alnico pup and 3 band active eq preamp thingy! Altogether it cost about £130 I think - pickup was £70 ish and the preamp £60 ish second hand.

[parker_muse]

It's the copy! Sorry for any confusion. Like hell would i fiddle with a pre-EB musicman...

Derren, what do you think of the preamp and pup?

[derrenleepoole]

Very good indeed, the preamp adds a lot of flexibility, and the tone was great The system was easy to install, and made a huge difference in tone and was very cheap. Perhaps this is the way to go, it would only be worth putting in super expensive upgrades on a super expensive bass IMO.



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[Beer of the Bass]

If you're feeling really DIY inclined, the original 2-band stingray preamp circuit shouldn't be too difficult to build. There's a guy over on Talkbass who had a load of PCBs made up and was selling them cheaply.