My American Ultra Jazz bass has a pickup pan control with a 'detente' at the 12 o'clock position. When I turn it towards the neck, I get a classic neck tone. When I turn it towards the bridge I get a classic bridge tone. When I leave it at 12 o'clock, I get a weak thin tone that isn't usable and doesn't sound like both pickups together. Also there seems to be little/no tonal difference in either direction between just past 12 o'clock and all the way. I don't seem to be able to blend between the pickups as I traditionally would with a JB. Is it supposed to be like that or do I have an issue? It has been like this from new (bought from Guitar Guitar in Edinburgh in October last year.) and I just assumed it was how it was supposed to be at the time but now I'm not so sure.
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Sounds like the pickups are out of phase…odd that it would come like that brand new, but anything can slip by QC on a bad day.
You’d have to check the wiring and see if one of the pickups is wired incorrectly, and the fix would be to reverse the wiring of either ONE of the pickups, not both.
I’m not sure what the color codes are for the Ultra Noiseless pickups are (Hot or Ground), but typically Black would be ground.
You’d have to check the wiring and see if one of the pickups is wired incorrectly, and the fix would be to reverse the wiring of either ONE of the pickups, not both.
I’m not sure what the color codes are for the Ultra Noiseless pickups are (Hot or Ground), but typically Black would be ground.
Thanks for taking the time to come back to me man, that makes sense. I'll get in there and have a look. I didn't really want to believe that a high end American Fender could be sent out mis-wired, but the truss road needed adjusting and the bridge action was way too high too, so they could well have been having an off day!
So I've had a look inside and it appears to be wired correctly. The connection is made using a snap-on connector to the PCB, although I guess if it is a phase issue, it could be that one of the pickups itself has been wired the wrong way around? I don't want to dig too much further without consulting the shop or Fender but am wondering, do those wires just pull out of and push into the connectors? If so, could I swap them around and see if it makes a difference? just don't want to damage anything. They don't easily come out and I don't want to force it if they're not supposed to.
Interesting. I did wonder if it would be possible to wind the pickup backwards and have the same experience…but maybe they just soldered them wrong color wire to the wrong terminal on one of the pickups.
The plastic clips should come out of the PCB no problem, and then I believe you could remove the wires from the plastic connector using a small tool or pin to depress the metal latch that holds it in place.
Some process like this, depending on where the retaining clip is located:
ECU Pin Removal Guide - VTEC Academy
The plastic clips should come out of the PCB no problem, and then I believe you could remove the wires from the plastic connector using a small tool or pin to depress the metal latch that holds it in place.
Some process like this, depending on where the retaining clip is located:
ECU Pin Removal Guide - VTEC Academy
Not sure about the phase part of the discussion, but I have a Jazz Ultra and can definitely attest to there being very little tonal difference between just past 12 and full on in either direction. For me, all the tonal variation (and there is a tiny bit!) is between about 12 o clock and 11:58 2sec! I put this down to two things...
1. As compared to a traditional J bass with vol-vol controls, you effectively have less granularity of control. For example, if you wanted to back your neck pickup off halfway on a traditional J, you'd simply turn the neck vol halfway counter clockwise. Were you to want to do the same thing on an Ultra, you'd only be turning the bal 1/4 of its full turn clockwise. So you end up with the same tonal difference kind of squashed up (maybe a bad term!) Inside a 1/4 of a turn rather than a 1/2 of a turn, so the control is more severe as it were.
2. This could be twaddle and happy to be corrected, but I think that while the bal control is accurately electrically blending the pickups, this doesn't necessarily translate into the same thing in tone land.
The bal control is so harsh that I actually thought it was a pickup selector at first (Fender confirmed I was wrong, and it is a genuine blend), then I also realised everyone said the same thing and there's tons of variation between passive/active, tone, bass, mid, treb, blend, and stopped worrying about it.
(I always find something to stress about on a bass!)
I do agree they could've maybe somehow made the bal have more intuitive tonal response. I don't think Fender are alone on this though.
1. As compared to a traditional J bass with vol-vol controls, you effectively have less granularity of control. For example, if you wanted to back your neck pickup off halfway on a traditional J, you'd simply turn the neck vol halfway counter clockwise. Were you to want to do the same thing on an Ultra, you'd only be turning the bal 1/4 of its full turn clockwise. So you end up with the same tonal difference kind of squashed up (maybe a bad term!) Inside a 1/4 of a turn rather than a 1/2 of a turn, so the control is more severe as it were.
2. This could be twaddle and happy to be corrected, but I think that while the bal control is accurately electrically blending the pickups, this doesn't necessarily translate into the same thing in tone land.
The bal control is so harsh that I actually thought it was a pickup selector at first (Fender confirmed I was wrong, and it is a genuine blend), then I also realised everyone said the same thing and there's tons of variation between passive/active, tone, bass, mid, treb, blend, and stopped worrying about it.
(I always find something to stress about on a bass!)
I do agree they could've maybe somehow made the bal have more intuitive tonal response. I don't think Fender are alone on this though.
Thanks for your reply @foldyman. That's really interesting. When my selector is in the central position, I get this weak tone that's nothing like both pick-ups blended equally together. When I move it away from the central position, I immediately get a much louder, full tone. Does your Ultra do the same? I tried disconnecting each of the pickups from the PCB in turn to see what happened and when I do, the weak tone in the central position is gone, I get a full tone from whichever pickup is connected. When I move the the selector away from the live pickup, the volume gradually decreases. It seems to me that each pickup acts as you would expect on its' own but when both are connected they act differently, which may support the out-of-phase idea. I have raised a support ticket with Fender but they haven't even acknowledged it yet.
When you wire two pickups in parallel, the "together" tone should be slightly scooped and lower output than either pickup solo'd. That's just the nature of parallel circuits.
It's also much different than out of phase pickups, which will be MUCH weaker, and have pretty much zero bottom end - it'll sound like you're playing through an active preamp with the bass control turned all the way to zero and the mids partway down. Nothing but weak, thin, annoying treble.
When people come into this forum and say "my pickups are weak when they're both on" it's often because they're out of phase, but words like "weak" are relative so it's hard for anyone here to say, definitively, that it's a phase issue.
It'll take 10 minutes to pop the wires out of one of those connectors and swap them, which will give you an obvious answer as to if it's phase or just the nature of parallel pickups.
In terms of the lack of sensitivity with the blend control - that's very typical. You're packing a fairly low sensitivity control into half a pot's worth of travel, which makes it even worse. The "solution" is to replace it with two volume pots, which buys back the missing travel. But it really becomes a personal preference kind of thing in terms of how you like to blend pickups.
It's also much different than out of phase pickups, which will be MUCH weaker, and have pretty much zero bottom end - it'll sound like you're playing through an active preamp with the bass control turned all the way to zero and the mids partway down. Nothing but weak, thin, annoying treble.
When people come into this forum and say "my pickups are weak when they're both on" it's often because they're out of phase, but words like "weak" are relative so it's hard for anyone here to say, definitively, that it's a phase issue.
It'll take 10 minutes to pop the wires out of one of those connectors and swap them, which will give you an obvious answer as to if it's phase or just the nature of parallel pickups.
In terms of the lack of sensitivity with the blend control - that's very typical. You're packing a fairly low sensitivity control into half a pot's worth of travel, which makes it even worse. The "solution" is to replace it with two volume pots, which buys back the missing travel. But it really becomes a personal preference kind of thing in terms of how you like to blend pickups.
Hi, there's a huge difference in tone whenever you snap out of the centre detent, but I wouldn't describe it as weak in the middle
Just a thought (again happy to be corrected)...
One thing that might point to where you're at in terms of phase is any buzz you can hear in certain scenarios...
With a traditional J, having both pups on full essentially makes both coils work as a humbucker, and often (actually, always really), you'll hear noise increase if you turn either one of them down. This is because they're wired out of phase, which is all right and good.
Now on the Ultra you have the noiseless pups, and I think (I don't know), that they are perhaps meant to be wired in phase instead. While I hardly get any noise on the Ultra, any noise is louder in the middle and quieter as either pup gets closer to fully off. To me this suggests they're wired in phase as opposed to out of phase like a normal J, and that they use a different mechanism to be noiseless.
It I face the pups toward my PC that's a reliable way to induce some noise to try. In terms of noise, if you get the opposite to what I get, then maybe that suggests something is wired the other way around somewhere.
Again I'm somewhat having a stab at how it all works, but might be something to think about!
I think you're right @foldyman and I really appreciate everyone helping me out with this issue. I have had a short response from Fender which confirms that what I am experiencing is phase correction, which they say is an unfortunate side effect of having the pickups not reverse wound. They don't explain why they are not reverse wound but again I suspect @foldyman is right, that this is to do with the 'noiseless' architecture. I have asked them to clarify that, but they seem to be saying, 'that's how your bass is and you can't do anything about it'.
I am convinced that there is no blending between the pups except at the mid position which suffers from the phase correction, so in other words there's no usable blended tone. If I tap the magnet poles on each pup with a screwdriver, with the control at 12 o'clock, I get an audible click from each one. As soon as I turn away from 12 o'clock in either direction, even by the smallest amount, I only get a click from one, so no blending at all. My pickup options are therefore limited to neck, bridge or phase corrected and since the phase corrected tone is unusable it's just neck or bridge.
Don't get me wrong, I love my ultra, and I get a beautiful, clear, articulate and noiseless tone from each of the pickups but sometimes you want a Neck tone with a bit of bridge blended in or vice-versa. The use of a pan control suggests that I should be able to do that but I can't. It's just one or the other.
If anyone has an ultra that behaves differently or thinks that there is something wrong with mine. (and I appreciate that it's hard when you can't actually hear my bass) but let me know if you have anything to add, otherwise I will go back to enjoying playing it and get a guitar tech to look it over when I can. Cheers.
I am convinced that there is no blending between the pups except at the mid position which suffers from the phase correction, so in other words there's no usable blended tone. If I tap the magnet poles on each pup with a screwdriver, with the control at 12 o'clock, I get an audible click from each one. As soon as I turn away from 12 o'clock in either direction, even by the smallest amount, I only get a click from one, so no blending at all. My pickup options are therefore limited to neck, bridge or phase corrected and since the phase corrected tone is unusable it's just neck or bridge.
Don't get me wrong, I love my ultra, and I get a beautiful, clear, articulate and noiseless tone from each of the pickups but sometimes you want a Neck tone with a bit of bridge blended in or vice-versa. The use of a pan control suggests that I should be able to do that but I can't. It's just one or the other.
If anyone has an ultra that behaves differently or thinks that there is something wrong with mine. (and I appreciate that it's hard when you can't actually hear my bass) but let me know if you have anything to add, otherwise I will go back to enjoying playing it and get a guitar tech to look it over when I can. Cheers.
It's not the noiseless pickups. On any jazz, regardless of the style of pickup, the pickups must be wired in phase or else you'll get extremely poor performance when blending them. @foldyman - I think you're confusing in phase with reverse wound. But that's still not what's causing this.
Pickup coils are wound on magnets. They detect string movement because the moving strings disturb the magnetic field they're in. Coils also pick up EM noise, which is all around us, all the time. The phase of the string signal depends on the polarity of the magnet (north vs south facing the strings) and the wind direction of the coil. The phase of the noise signal depends only on the wind direction of the coil. Humbuckers take advantage of this. In a humbucker, the two coils have opposite polarity and opposite wind direction. This way, the two opposites cancel in terms of string signal - the string signal from the two coils ends up in phase. But the noise signals are out of phase, since they are only impacted by wind direction, not magnetic polarity. So, you end up with a good string signal and a cancelled noise signal.
That logic applies to any even number of coils - as long as half the coils are reverse wound and reverse polarity from the other half, you end up with expected humbucking performance. On a regular Jazz with single coils, the two pickups are reverse wound and reverse polarity, so you end up with humbucking when they're both on. In a bass with Fender's Noiseless pickups (or any other humbucking J), you have FOUR coils total, two of which are reverse wound and reverse polarity from the other two. So you end up with the exact same scenario in terms of signal phase - noise is cancelled and string signal is not.
When you blend two pickups in parallel, the difference in pickup position means that their signals will be slightly out of phase with each other. This is true regardless of if the pickups have one coil or two or 4 or any other number. That's what you hear when your blend pot is centered. It's due to the nature of the combined signals, not the Noiseless pickups themselves.
Pickup coils are wound on magnets. They detect string movement because the moving strings disturb the magnetic field they're in. Coils also pick up EM noise, which is all around us, all the time. The phase of the string signal depends on the polarity of the magnet (north vs south facing the strings) and the wind direction of the coil. The phase of the noise signal depends only on the wind direction of the coil. Humbuckers take advantage of this. In a humbucker, the two coils have opposite polarity and opposite wind direction. This way, the two opposites cancel in terms of string signal - the string signal from the two coils ends up in phase. But the noise signals are out of phase, since they are only impacted by wind direction, not magnetic polarity. So, you end up with a good string signal and a cancelled noise signal.
That logic applies to any even number of coils - as long as half the coils are reverse wound and reverse polarity from the other half, you end up with expected humbucking performance. On a regular Jazz with single coils, the two pickups are reverse wound and reverse polarity, so you end up with humbucking when they're both on. In a bass with Fender's Noiseless pickups (or any other humbucking J), you have FOUR coils total, two of which are reverse wound and reverse polarity from the other two. So you end up with the exact same scenario in terms of signal phase - noise is cancelled and string signal is not.
When you blend two pickups in parallel, the difference in pickup position means that their signals will be slightly out of phase with each other. This is true regardless of if the pickups have one coil or two or 4 or any other number. That's what you hear when your blend pot is centered. It's due to the nature of the combined signals, not the Noiseless pickups themselves.
Yes, I think I am getting confused there @dwizum - thanks for correcting me.
Hopefully I was clear I'm really no expert!
I don't think the problem is the noiseless pickups, I was just trying to describe (evidently quite badly
) that they are wired differntly to a traditional J, and that might help toward overall understanding.
I also have an Ultra J so am semi-interested anyway.
Anyway, I'll step away now as dwizum has just experted the hell out of it.
Isn't it amazing how many experts you get on here? I love it!
Hopefully I was clear I'm really no expert!
I don't think the problem is the noiseless pickups, I was just trying to describe (evidently quite badly
) that they are wired differntly to a traditional J, and that might help toward overall understanding.I also have an Ultra J so am semi-interested anyway.
Anyway, I'll step away now as dwizum has just experted the hell out of it
.Isn't it amazing how many experts you get on here? I love it!
Try contacting TrevorG he has both Ultra J and P.
I have Ultra P and at 12o'clock detent it is maybe a tad louder than any other position.
Does not sound thin has a 'Stingrayish' tone. [both active and passive]
Yes when turning blend knob slight towards neck or bridge pickup it takes on their general tone but there is obvious differences on neck pickup say from 11:30 to full on same with bridge with my Bass.
I have Ultra P and at 12o'clock detent it is maybe a tad louder than any other position.
Does not sound thin has a 'Stingrayish' tone. [both active and passive]
Yes when turning blend knob slight towards neck or bridge pickup it takes on their general tone but there is obvious differences on neck pickup say from 11:30 to full on same with bridge with my Bass.
Hi,
I have al ultra jazz bass with the same issue, exactly like you explain. Did you were able to fix it or having more information about this problem and how to fix it??
Looking forward to hearing from you
Thanks
QUOTE="TimSpott, post: 26094814, member: 387364"]I think you're right @foldyman and I really appreciate everyone helping me out with this issue. I have had a short response from Fender which confirms that what I am experiencing is phase correction, which they say is an unfortunate side effect of having the pickups not reverse wound. They don't explain why they are not reverse wound but again I suspect @foldyman is right, that this is to do with the 'noiseless' architecture. I have asked them to clarify that, but they seem to be saying, 'that's how your bass is and you can't do anything about it'.
I am convinced that there is no blending between the pups except at the mid position which suffers from the phase correction, so in other words there's no usable blended tone. If I tap the magnet poles on each pup with a screwdriver, with the control at 12 o'clock, I get an audible click from each one. As soon as I turn away from 12 o'clock in either direction, even by the smallest amount, I only get a click from one, so no blending at all. My pickup options are therefore limited to neck, bridge or phase corrected and since the phase corrected tone is unusable it's just neck or bridge.
Don't get me wrong, I love my ultra, and I get a beautiful, clear, articulate and noiseless tone from each of the pickups but sometimes you want a Neck tone with a bit of bridge blended in or vice-versa. The use of a pan control suggests that I should be able to do that but I can't. It's just one or the other.
If anyone has an ultra that behaves differently or thinks that there is something wrong with mine. (and I appreciate that it's hard when you can't actually hear my bass) but let me know if you have anything to add, otherwise I will go back to enjoying playing it and get a guitar tech to look it over when I can. Cheers.[/QUOTE]
I have al ultra jazz bass with the same issue, exactly like you explain. Did you were able to fix it or having more information about this problem and how to fix it??
Looking forward to hearing from you
Thanks
QUOTE="TimSpott, post: 26094814, member: 387364"]I think you're right @foldyman and I really appreciate everyone helping me out with this issue. I have had a short response from Fender which confirms that what I am experiencing is phase correction, which they say is an unfortunate side effect of having the pickups not reverse wound. They don't explain why they are not reverse wound but again I suspect @foldyman is right, that this is to do with the 'noiseless' architecture. I have asked them to clarify that, but they seem to be saying, 'that's how your bass is and you can't do anything about it'.
I am convinced that there is no blending between the pups except at the mid position which suffers from the phase correction, so in other words there's no usable blended tone. If I tap the magnet poles on each pup with a screwdriver, with the control at 12 o'clock, I get an audible click from each one. As soon as I turn away from 12 o'clock in either direction, even by the smallest amount, I only get a click from one, so no blending at all. My pickup options are therefore limited to neck, bridge or phase corrected and since the phase corrected tone is unusable it's just neck or bridge.
Don't get me wrong, I love my ultra, and I get a beautiful, clear, articulate and noiseless tone from each of the pickups but sometimes you want a Neck tone with a bit of bridge blended in or vice-versa. The use of a pan control suggests that I should be able to do that but I can't. It's just one or the other.
If anyone has an ultra that behaves differently or thinks that there is something wrong with mine. (and I appreciate that it's hard when you can't actually hear my bass) but let me know if you have anything to add, otherwise I will go back to enjoying playing it and get a guitar tech to look it over when I can. Cheers.[/QUOTE]
I think it is just a bit of a different beast. Mine is similar but something I learned to adjust to. Truss rod needed a bit of adjustment and now I think I need to shim the neck pocket a bit. No big deal Electronics work fine and fredwork is still good and neck is still good. HAve paid $$$ nmore for other basses and still had to make adjustments or parts replacement.
I just bought an Ultra P that has the very same issue. I bought the Ultra J when it came out that did NOT have this issue, so it seems like issues like this pass QC without no one noticing it. Will take the bass apart tomorrow and just switch the cables of the J-pickup to hopefully fix it since it´s clearly a phase issue between the P and J pickup.
I found two threads on TB with the same issue but both TS´s are long gone and did newer post back how they solved their issue.
To be continued...