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Hey all, I have one of these...



Fender American Deluxe Precision Bass, mines Black...

I've had it since '99 and I think I really hate the Active circuitry but want to keep the Pups... I kinda looked around but have never torn out Pups before so I wanted to ask; Can I keep those Pups and just rip out the preamp and add something or what??? The Mids knob has ALWAYS been fucked and I leave the Bass and Treble pretty much flat, I just love blending the between the Pups... Could I keep the Blend and get rid of the rest???

Can some Low Brow Bass Bros help me out??? Unless this is something that will be cheap (free) I would probably have to wait but it's been bugging me and I want to play my Bass with Pedals...

I believe you could wire it vol/vol/blend/tone but i've never wired a blend control so I'm not sure exactly how. I believe it's basically wiring each pickup to the outside poles of the pot so that each end of the pot is basically one p/u or the other and then using the middle pole as the signal send and of course grounding to the casing, I may be completely wrong on that though. I know how you feel with active basses though, my emg equipped p-bass sounds great with no effects but is glitchy with hi gain fuzz pedals in comparison to my passive jag bass which sounds amazing through pedals but not as good clean as the active bass.

I'm pretty sure that the pickups in those aren't truly active pickups; the current ones have Fender Noiseless or whatever, so it's regular passive pickups with an active preamp. So you can just remove the preamp and wire it like a normal passive bass without any problems. I think that's what you were asking, anyway. If you had crazy Alembic pickups or high-end EMGs that were really low impedance and whatnot you would need an active circuit in your bass, but with what you have, you shouldn't need the added amplification of a preamp. You might need to change some pots to your preferred values, but it'll still be like $10 max for the project. Stewmac http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electronics/Pots/i-4137.html and the intarweb in general should be able to give you the necessary wiring diagrams for whatever controls you want.

Did this to a friend's active j bass. Blend is easy, just wire the leads of each pickup to different sides of the pot with the middle then being the lead out. Though, with two volumes, blend would be redundant IMO.

I still want to do this but I need a walk through for dummies... Should I leave the active electronics in the bass and disconnect from the board and just wire knobs to pickups or what??? Halp again...

sonidero wrote:I still want to do this but I need a walk through for dummies... Should I leave the active electronics in the bass and disconnect from the board and just wire knobs to pickups or what??? Halp again...

I just cut them out, and rewired it using the old pots. Worked fine?

Quick question. I have a Warwick Streamer LX4 and I wanna get rid of the active electronics and just have a blend (P/J)/tone/volume config. Some MEC pickups are inside (they sound ok). Which pot values and kinds of pots do I need for the tone and volume considering the pickups? 500 or 1k? what what?

alexa. wrote:Quick question. I have a Warwick Streamer LX4 and I wanna get rid of the active electronics and just have a blend (P/J)/tone/volume config. Some MEC pickups are inside (they sound ok). Which pot values and kinds of pots do I need for the tone and volume considering the pickups? 500 or 1k? what what?

I think the Streamer LX has active pickups as well as electronics (do they have gold lettering?) which means you will still need to power the pickups with a battery. Since they are active pickups, you would want to use 25K blend, volume and tone controls, and a 0.047uF cap for the tone pot. You can probablyuse the existing blend pot, and just replace the volume and add the new tone control.

The pickups have black MEC letters, no sign of color, I'm not sure if it's peeled off or if it wasn't even there to begin with. (and I might change those anyway. we'll see) The bass is from 2001 if it makes any difference.
I want a fully passive bass, no batteries, just plug and play. What pots would I need if the pickups were passive?

Not an expert, but all the MEC pickups I've seen have either gold or silver lettering (silver on passive pickups). Black could mean worn off - part of my gold lettering has worn off. Anyway, go to the MEC website www.mec-pickups.de to see the differences between the lettering on the passive vs. active pickups. The passive ones say "Dynamic Correction" at least on newer ones, and the logo is oriented differently. The other way you can tell is if there are three wires going to the pickups (the third one being battery power). If they are passive, you'd want to use 500K or 250K controls (500K will sound a bit brighter).

Excellent! Thank you! ^^