Bass Wiring Help

[Tekker]

A friend of mine accidentally ripped the plate off his bass that had all the volume and tone knobs attatched to it and ripped all the wires off. So I'm trying to put the wires back on because he doesn't want to spend $40 to take it in again 'cause the previous guy he took it into (a while ago) kinda screwed it all up... He's also had a pot replaced so I'm trying to figure out how this thing originally went together.

I took a look at it before I started messing with it and looked at a few guitar/bass schematics ('cause I've never worked on a guitar before, but I'm fairly decent with electronics) but couldn't find anything about this paricular setup. But, I thought I had it all figured out and figured this would be pretty easy to fix...

He has an OLP (an Ernie Ball Music Man rip-off) and previously (before being dismembered) it had a volume knob for the high frequencies, a volume for the low frequencies, and a tone knob. But how they had this thing set up for a high and low volume I have no idea... There is one humbucker pickup in it, with two sets of wires coming out of it. So this is how I connected it...

But when both volume knobs are up and you turn one down, the volume doesn't go down, so you have to have volume one turned all the way down in order for the other one to actually adjust the volume. So I'm assuming that one set of leads isn't for the high frequencies and the other set for the low frequencies (like I said, I've never worked on a guitar before )... So how did they have it set up like that before with just two regular pots? (unless there were some components that didn't make it back onto the guitar when the pots were replaced??).

Also, the tone knob doesn't adjust the tone either, it just barely makes any difference when you turn it... I've looked at a bunch of other guitar/bass schematics and they ALL have the tone set up the same way, so what am I doing wrong?

Any help would be greatly appriciated.

-tkr

 

[Clive Hugh]

I'm no electronics expert but that looks like the system used on the Fender Jazz bass, it looks to me like your cap is not wired in correctly, go to stewmac.com they have schematics for most available and I have emailed them in the past over tricky ones, they have always come thru.
Also try music man, who ever owns the company now may have a help section on their web site, if they still exist.
Clive

 

[Tekker]

I actually was using the schematic for the J Bass ('cause it was the closest one I could find to what I was trying to do), but I was using this one and the one on stewmac.com is pretty much the same thing but they just had the cap and the positive wire reversed... It should still give the same results though... (at least, you'd "think" they would )

I told him I'd try to have it done by tomorrow (for youth group), so if any of you guitar electronic gurus can help, that'd be great!!

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

I just sent an email to the OLP sales email address (since they didn't have a tech support address), so hopefully they'll be able to send me a schematic so I can get this thing fixed...

I'll post the problem if/when I get it fixed, in case anyone's interested.

-tkr

 

[DeadPoet]

Hmmm... I thought I'd help you out by looking at the wiring in my MM Stingray 5 (3band eq), but that's active EQ meaning there's a circuit board in it, so it's wiring we *definitely* be different from the OLP's...

sorry, can't help.



Herwig

 

[Tekker]

Hey, that's cool!! Thanks for trying!

Hopefully I'll hear something back from OLP in the near future...

-tkr

 

[acorec]

If you have a humbucking pickup, then the four wires are for the TWO pickups that are wired in series OR parallel. Each humbucker has two pickups. Usually they are wired in series for "hum" cancellation.