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Post subject: Issues with 60th anniversary P-bass with s-1 switch
Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:33 pm
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Location: Australia
I bought a 60th anniversary P-bass which has the S-1 Switch. Over the course of this bass i have had the pickups and and switch replaced once each (my guy in the store has completely changed over the wiring and pickups) . unfortunately the same problem keeps happening. The bass will work for about 6 months and then the top pick up will then cease to work. Has anyone heard of this happening before? If so do you know of an easy solution on how to fix this. When i press the switch in it cuts out both pickups completely.


This is my first fender p-bass and although i love the tone, it is unreliable as a main or back up guitar.


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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:05 pm
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Take it to a different tech?


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Posted: Sun May 23, 2010 6:56 pm
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Perhaps it is a problem with your amplifier.
It could be putting out a voltage that is damaging your pickup and switch.

I use a 2006 P bass with the S1 switch. I bought it new and I use it pretty
much every day. I never had a problem with a pickup or the S1 switch.


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Posted: Mon May 24, 2010 12:07 pm
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If you are in a coastal area of Australia, and perhaps even playing some seaside gigs, salt air may prematurely corroding the switch contacts. I'm not saying that is what is going on here but it is a possibility to consider. A washer, dryer and refrigerator should last 10 years, but when I lived at the beach they'd start showing some rust in about 1 year and after 3 years I'd have to replace them because I could poke my finger through the sheet metal in spots. Salt air is murder on metal even when covered with paint, but switch contacts are bare metal and corrode much faster than enameled metal.

The S-1 switches seem to cause problems for other people too, so you are not alone. Possibly the problems associated with them led to Fender ditching them when the new 2008/2009 P-Bass redesign came out. But they are out there on the 2000/2001 through 2007/2008 models. That is a lot of instruments.

Sometimes things look good on paper to the R&D people but just don't cut it in the real world. The S-1 might be one of those times. A more reliable functionality could be achieved by replacing the S1 pot with a standard CTS pot and adding a mini-toggle for the switching function. HOWEVER, eventually the mini-toggle will also get noisy and become problematic too!

If the S-1 switch/pot combo is at fault that would not necessitate replacing pickups and wiring, just replacing the switch should be enough.

An S-1 switch (Fender Part Number: 0061256000) costs about $25 to $30 US here and should take about 30 minutes for experienced tech to swap out, so figure being charged for one hour labor tops which here is $35 to $50. Therefore where I live that is an $80 job tops. In reality, I'd just buy the switch and replace it myself. I might consider adding a high quality min-toggle and replacing the S-1 with a standard CTS pot. Fortunately I don't find myself in that position as I don't have any basses with switches of any sort, just pots.

It is entirely possible that the tech assumed the pickups were bad, or maybe you told him you thought the pickups were bad, so he swapped them out without even testing them. When that didn't work he then changed out the wiring. Next when it still didn't work he finally changed out the switch and it worked. He had to charge you for everything though.

Switches are mechanical devices, they wear out. This is just normal maintenance and to be expected, but 6 months is way too soon. Maybe some contact cleaner would help extend switch life. I know on the old Jaguar 6 string guitars back in the early 70's all those slide switches needed frequent shots of contact cleaner and sometimes even that didn't fix it and you needed to replace the switches. I saw a lot of Jags that needed switch cleaning or replacement. I learned my lesson about avoiding switches on my personal instruments from the Jaguar guitar. Even the large blade switch on a Telecaster 6 string can get noisy and need a shot of contact cleaner for smooth static free operation between the three positions. So as a general rule the fewer switches you have the better and the less maintenance will be required.

Always suspect moving parts first. Pickups don't move and the wiring doesn't move. There is only a microscopic chance that the wiring or pickups actually needed replacement so soon. The moving electro-mechanical parts like pots, switches and jacks are usually the source of all electronics problems on a passive bass made in the past 10 years. When you combine a switch with a pot as on the oddball S-1, that is just double trouble.

Unless as pointed out in another post, you have a fault in your amplifier or effects chain that is kicking back enough current to fry everything, my bet is the on the switch contacts being the lone culprit here all along.

Yes, pickups will weaken and may eventually fail due shorts caused by the thin enamel flaking off the winding and bare spots of the windings touching each other which creates a short that reduces impedance and lowers output. After that the exposed winding may corrode and any resulting break in the winding causes a dead pickup. But this only happens after the decades of use required for the grit, dirt and stray metal particles attracted by magnetic force to all work its way into the winding and then normal vibration of use and transport causes this foreign matter to gradually break the very thin enamel on the windings down. This process takes much longer than six months and is usually not a sudden failure. Salt air again may also be a contributing factor to enamel deterioration on pickups, I do not know for sure. But I do know it can eat right through the paint and rust major appliances in record time.


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