|UPDATE - Mod Complete! w/ pics| Finally getting around to putting one stacked knob on my P-Bass

[GnarwhalNick]

A couple of months ago, I posted a thread asking questions about how I could go about putting a single concentric pot in my P-Bass. Basically, in short, is the gist of what I was trying to do:

Years ago I took the stock Squier pick ups out of my Affinity P-Bass. I replaced them with SPB-3s. I then thought it would be a cool idea to get a custom pick guard that only had a hole for the volume and the input jack, because I've always loved the look of one-pup/one-knob instruments. I set my tone at 80%-90% and stuck the pot under my pick guard to achieve the look I wanted, and I was very happy. But, I realized (on another forum on TB) that having that loose pot under there isn't good for the wiring and electronics. I didn't want to cut out the tone altogether because that would mean it would be set at 100% and I don't want that. So I got an idea one day to stick a stacked pot on my bass so I can have best of both worlds. After a few months of back and forth, I found the parts I needed, and they arrived last Thursday. They are:


500/500 Concentric Pot
Amazon.com: Allparts EP-4586-000 CTS 500K-500K Concentric Audio Pot: Musical Instruments

Stacked knobs:
Amazon.com: Allparts MK-0137-010 Chrome Concentric Knob: Musical Instruments

I also picked up a Switchcraft input jack from my local GC.

I'm meeting with a friend this weekend to do a set up/cleanup/shielding of my bass as well as putting these in. I'll end up posting pictures of the process on this thread.

While I trust my friend with everything, this is a bit of a unique project that neither of us have done before. I do have a couple of questions. Will this project require a capacitor? Does the soldering work just like if I had 2 pots? If anyone has done this before, any input or advice would help tremendously. I've also attached some pics as a reference (that white stripe is part of the pick guard, it's not hiding the third hole as many people believe!)

 

[ofajen]

You will pretty much wire it up as if it were two pots. You will need a cap to wire one part up as a tone control. Personally, I think I'd want to be sure the top/inner control is volume and lower/outer one is tone, but YMMV.

Otto

 

[GnarwhalNick]

You will pretty much wire it up as if it were two pots. You will need a cap to wire one part up as a tone control. Personally, I think I'd want to be sure the top/inner control is volume and lower/outer one is tone, but YMMV.

Otto

Thanks Otto! That's how I would want to wire it up. I'll make sure I grab a cap before the weekend

 

[Pocket4]

I'm planning to shield this cavity, mostly for appearance, but this is my lexan plate I call the Cyclops.

 

[GnarwhalNick]

I'm planning to shield this cavity, mostly for appearance, but this is my lexan plate I call the Cyclops.

That looks sweet! and it looks like I'm not alone with this mod haha

 

[GnarwhalNick]

I was planning on posting this after I intalled the new pot but Saturday I got too busy and then the Superbowl took up all my day yesterday, but I'll be attaching the pics here!

I'm very happy with how this turned out. The new pot, cap, and input jack are all working great and have even (in my mind) made my bass sond better. I'm glad the old Squier parts came out. Now there is a catch with this, and it's that while I wanted to tone to be on the bottom and the volume to be on the top, my buddy and I wired it backwards. That, and the tone (top) knob rolls in reverse (to open it up to 100% you turn it counter clockwise). But I really didn't feel like going back in and it wasn't that much of an issue so I'm keeping it the way it is. Here are a few pics:

Here is my bass before we did any work on it:


Here it is about to be "operated" on:


Next, here it is before and after we cleaned the frets (we did a full set up/cleaning of the bass as well, I'm just glad I finally got it all off haha):


Here is the cavity opened (and you can see that the white duct tape is strictly cosmetic, that pick guard was customized to only have 2 holes not 3):


Here is the first connections to the new pot from the pickups:


Here is a few more including the capacitor:


Here is everything connected!:


Here is the final connection to the pick guard:


And at last, here is a close up of the stacked knob and the new Switchcraft input jack once everything for put into place:


Here is what it looks like head-on and another close up:

 

[GnarwhalNick]

So there was one thing that we didn't do, and that is put some shielding in there. I forgot to pick up some copper tape and my buddy didn't have any at the time. I'm just going to do it later. But for the first project I actually did personally (the pick ups were done years ago by a guitar tech), I couldn't be happier.