It’s been a busy 2 weeks since I last posted anything. Here’s what’s been happening:
I’ve been testing my Gecko bass (with the Purpleheart neck, Black Korina body and the custom “turbo” pickup configuration) with other pickups. First up was a brief test with a Seymour Duncan “ASB-5″ active pickup. Next was a replacement of the Bartolini “classic bass” dual-coil soapbar pickups with a pair of similar Bartolini pickups, but in the “deep tone” quad-coil variety.
The result was pretty much what I expected. The “deep tone” is an accurate moniker, since these pickups seem to focus more on the fundamentals and lower-midrange. There is practically none of the sweet, juicy upper-midrange resonance of the Bartolini “classic bass” pickups. I had tested one of the “quad-coil” pickups in another bass, and found that I didn’t like it as much. It was interesting to try, but it’s not a tone that I think I would like to have for the long term. So I’ll be putting the “classic bass” pickups back in soon.
Side note: the Bartolini “classic bass” pickups really seem like they were made for this kind of configuration, instead of the more typical “neck+bridge” pickup configuration. I wonder if this was intentional?
Also, I finished up the Gecko bass with the new Maple neck, which is mounted on a Mahogany body with a Figured Walnut top. The pickups are a pair of Delano “HE” models: one Precision-style split coil humcanceller in the neck position, and one Music Man (wide, no tabs) quad-coil humcanceller in the bridge position. I’ve wired it up with 5 unique coil combinations, so this is an extremely versatile bass.
Unfortunately, this bass has a few shortcomings. The first isn’t my fault, but I’ll list it anyway: it only has a 1/2″ diameter output jack route, which limits me to using the notorious (and somewhat fragile) Switchcraft deep-panel jacks instead of the very nice Planet Waves jacks (which only Warmoth appears to sell, by the way). I have these jacks on all my other Gecko basses, and using the Switchcraft seems like a step down. (I wonder how hard it would be to enlarge this route to 3/4″ or 7/8″ diameter with just a power drill?)
The second shortcoming is due to my prior incompetence. When I received this bass body (purchased from eBay) it had no holes for controls. So I took my trusty power drill, installed a 3/8″ bit, and started drilling directly on the body, top-down. This ended up chipping the gloss finish and made the drill hole really ugly from the front. Next, I drilled a 1/4″ diameter hole for a toggle switch, that I thought I was going to need later but never actually needed. This was a mistake, since now there’s a hole that’s too close to where I need to drill another 3/8″ diameter hole (in the right place, this time). Ah well, live and learn, and use the blue painter’s tape next time.
See next post for a continuation.