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Post subject: Assembled bastard
Posted: Thu May 02, 2013 12:37 am
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Joined: Thu May 02, 2013 12:19 am
Posts: 1
I have just assembled a kind of bastard; P-body (Mex), Jazz neck (China) and original P-bass pups and electronics from a 73-Precision I once owned. All parts are Fender.
Does anybody have some knowledge/opinions about the China-neck? The bass is a dream to play!
I never really liked the 73 pups though, not in -73 and not now. I was thinking of getting a set of 62 reissue pups, but I am unsure what difference I can expect, compared to the 73's? I also notice that they are (at least some of them) made in Japan, according to an ad on eBay. The ones pictured with the tweed-like box has no info about country in the ads. Are all 62 RI's made in Japan or are there some US too? Any differences between them?
Production country in itself is not that interesting (the bass is fairly international already, maybe I could get a gig in Esperanto), but the sound quality is. Tips/comments/advice is most welcome!


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Post subject: Re: Assembled bastard
Posted: Thu May 02, 2013 10:36 am
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Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 3:12 pm
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Location: Albemarle, NC
Those were most recently called the FENDER ORIGINAL PRECISION BASS PICKUP. I think at one time it may have been called something like the FENDER 62 instead of ORIGINAL.

It is Fender part number 0992046000 and was used as the stock pickup on the Fender 57 RI and 62 RI P-Basses. Since those are now discontinued I'd not be surprised if Fender discontinued this pickup too. That would be a real loss. I hope they never discontinue them.

This is the brightest P-Bass pickup I ever used. It has medium sized bass tones that aren't overpowering with a surprisingly strong output. It is not voiced to be bass heavy or extra loud because it is not overwound. It is vintage wound (meaning NORMAL) and really very different from most aftermarket P-Bass pickups which have been overwound more and more and more as time went on after the CBS takeover.

I'd call the tone it has TRUE FULL FIDELITY. The main thing about it is the refreshing upper mids which are simply absent in almost every P-Bass pickups today.

The main impression I get is that it sounds airy and open with touch sensitivity. The tone and touch responsiveness really reminds me of a first generation P-Bass single coil pickup, but it is way more RFI immune and has a slightly hotter signal. With a tone cap around 0.05uF this pickup yields what I can only relate as a nearly active EQ type tone that is very, very, very bright.

This pickup has such strong treble that Fender thought they should tame it down with a 0.10 uF tone capacitor instead of the usual 0.0 5uF tone cap which they used in almost every other passive P-Bass they ever made. That was a good choice for an "all around" tone cap because pick players will probably find it too aggressive otherwise.

Being a tone cap freak, I tried the following values in a Sprague Vitamin-Q paper in oil capacitor with this pickup: 0.047, 0.068 and a 0.10. When I first got the pickup from Darren Riley's shop I didn't have the 0.068 cap on hand and after trying the 0.047 and the 0.10 that I did have on hand I thought I'd be happier with the 0.068 so I ordered one from Axegrinderz dot com. It came in about 2 days.

In the meantime I also tried vintage Ceramic Discs, REAL vintage ones, which would have been the actual cap used in 1962, in values of 0.05 and 0.10. I found that the 0.05 ceramic disc combined with this pickup emphasized the upper frequency distortion more than it does with a modern P-Bass pickup simply because there are more upper mids there to get distorted in the first place. It wasn't really terrible but you could really hear the brittleness with the ceramic disc. The 0.10 had less distortion merely because it had less highs. The Vitamin-Q is far more pleasing and for lack of a better word, Hi-Fi.

IMPORTANT! If you play with a pick then I might go with the 0.10 cap as the 0.047 is really, really bright and the 0.068 still isn't nearly enough of a treble roll off to make it pick friendly until you have the tone knob almost to full roll off. The difference between the 0.047 and 0.068 was surprisingly slight. As similar as they behaved some people might like the 0.068 better than the 0.047 for finger style, but I'm sure the 0.068 was not enough of a roll off for most pick players. I think the difference between 0.047 and 0.068 will also depend partly on what strings, processing and amp you use. I use really, really bright strings on it and heavy compression.

This is the brightest split coil P-Bass I ever owned and it gives my first generation single coil instruments a run for their money in clarity and brightness. This pickup has great RFI rejection and better low end than any of the true single coils I have right now. I love it and it might be the best passive P-Bass tone I've ever had including the single coil ones which I've always favored until I tried this split coil.

If you like bright up front tone that cuts through like a single coil then I highly recommend it. If you prefer deep lush lows with no real upper mids then I do not recommend it.

Mine was made in the USA. I didn't know they were making these offshore at all. Since I've never used a Japanese one I can't say for sure about them but I've never found a Fender Japan bass pickup I liked before, so if I liked the Japanese version it would be the first one.


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