J-Bass electronics switch

[one bad monkey]

I figured with the P-Bass pup thread, why leave my beloved J basses out?

I'm looking at switching out the electronics in my Warwick Corvette 5 string. For over ten years it's had Seymour-Duncan AJB-5 pickups in it, and they give the bass a great, gritty rock tone. However, I'd like something much closer to a warm, vintage, motown-ish sound out of this bass. So, I have a couple of options that I'm thinking about.

All options are Seymour-Duncan; I just got an endorsement with them earlier this week and while that's going to help, I was initially looking at them anyway given my 15+ year history of using their electronics and relying on their tone.

Option 1: Custom wound set of Antiquity II pickups (for 5 string) and the old Fender 1962 stacked vol/tone config. The downside to this is that it would have an extra hole on the top where a knob used to be (the 62 config only used two stacked knobs). I've had this setup in another jazz bass and it's nice.

Option 2: Custom wound set of Antiquity II pickups (for 5 string) and the STC-2 active preamp. I figure this would be the perfect hybrid of old and new, allowing me to cover a broad tonal range.

Option 3: Passive SJ5-67/70 pickups with the STC-2 active preamp. These pickups are modeled after the 1962 Fender Jazz anyway.

[metalmariachi]

Option 3 set up so you can bypass the preamp.
Passive they should give you the Motown sound and active (shudder) a different flavor.

MM

[one bad monkey]

All 3 pickup options are passive; the Antiquity series are made to exact specs of the 50s and 60s with correct parts, all hand wound. Plus, I'm not sure you can have an active/passive switch made with the preamp. Maybe you can, but it's not an available option as far as I know.

[dubkitty]

you couldn't just have a toggle in the path to have the signal bypass the preamp?

[one bad monkey]

Maybe, I don't know much on electronics of this kind. At that point, I assume that since everything in the preamp is active the pickups would just go straight into the jack with it bypassed. Which might be alright, but I really like having controls "on deck" as it were so I can quickly make changes.

[dubkitty]

so the preamp is on a board with all of the controls, then? i was thinking that it would be like guitars i've put together which had an active preamp, in which the preamp was a little circuit of its own separate from the tone and volume controls. the signal path went pickups->preamp->volume and tone->jack, and i wired it so the preamp could be toggled on/off on a loop. if that isn't possible, excuse my ignorance.

[one bad monkey]

I don't actually know myself. If it is how you say, then that shouldn't be that hard to put in the toggle switch. I guess it'll depend on whether having the active preamp fits my tonal needs by itself, before putting in an active/passive switch.

[MEC]

I'd go with option 1 and if the extra hole bothers you just put a "dummy" pot and knob there that aren't wired to anything.

[Derelict78]

I'd go with option 1 and if the extra hole bothers you just put a "dummy" pot and knob there that aren't wired to anything.

you could do this and put in a Series/parallel switch in the empty hole.
http://www.lordgoogle.com/bass/s1_mod/

[one bad monkey]

Figure I'd post a follow-up to this. After some more research and talking with some techs at SD, I opted to buy just the STC-2a preamp and install it on the active SD pickups I already had. Took about a half hour (mainly because I was being meticulous in making sure I didn't overlook anything), but the results are beyond fantastic.

My main complaint prior to this was that the bass was missing some nice thick low end, and sounded a bit boxy even with the tone control all the way down (previous config was just the v-v-t setup). Running the new preamp flat, it already addresses my issues. The bass on this one is pretty massive, and using the settings that I run on my Streamer (blend quarter turn towards bridge, bass quarter turn up) yields a great sound. The push/pull slap contour is slick, especially since there's an internal trimpot to dial it in if need be.

So while it's not the "back to passive" option that I was initially looking for, I think the result is really going to work for me just fine. I have a couple gigs this summer I'm definitely bringing this bass on now, whereas before I wouldn't have bothered.