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Post subject: 1974 Jazz Bass bridge pickup
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 8:50 am
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Hi all, I have an orig 1974 Jazz bass and I think the bridge pickup is shot. When the neck pickup has volume set to 0, the pickup works but sounds a bit empty. More worrying though is that it appears to be picking up excess noise from my thumb when I rest it on there to play or when I tap it with a fingernail for example. The neck pickup doesnt do this. When I switch both pickups to full volume I don't get the classic 'scooped' sound either. It just seems to sound more tinny than it should. I had a 2005 Jazz Deluxe which had the scooped sound and played a non deluxe which was similar but my 1974 is definitely different.

I did temporarily fit a set of spare EMG-X active pickups which sounded great, but wanted to put back to original.


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Post subject: Re: 1974 Jazz Bass bridge pickup
Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2015 1:41 am
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Location: Albemarle, NC
You need to have someone look at it who knows what to look for. It could be any number of things. You could have goofed something up in doing the pickup swap, it could need re-magnetizing, rewinding or maybe just the pickup height needs adjusting. Maybe you cooked the pot too much in all this soldering and de-soldering. Or it could be none of these things. Checking the impedance of the winding and comparing it to the other pickup will say a lot.

Since you broke the original solder joints the instrument will not ever be "original" again even with the original pickups put back in. The factory solder joints were part of the originality. Take your Jazz to a good bass tech and let him find out for sure what is wrong. Without it in hand anything anyone can say here is merely a wild blue yonder guess.


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Post subject: Re: 1974 Jazz Bass bridge pickup
Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:27 am
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Thanks for that. The pickups were already like that when I got it unfortunately, so it wasn't due to the swap. When I went to replace the pickups I could already see that they had been unsoldered at some point so wasn't too phased about swapping them out. I will deff get someone to check them out though.


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Post subject: Re: 1974 Jazz Bass bridge pickup
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 9:19 am
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It sounds like your Jazz bass has been wired with the pickups out of phase.
Just switch the leads on one pickup where it connects to the pots to fix this.

It could be the way the pick up was wound so don't think its your fault in the installation.
This happens on a lot of Jazz basses.

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Post subject: Re: 1974 Jazz Bass bridge pickup
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2015 9:22 am
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That's interesting! I will give that a try!


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