Any Ways To Get More Highs Out Of A Pbass Pickup?

[low end fuzz]

inherant to the beast; i know its a pbass pickup and there meant to be beefy and low; but is there any little things i could do to give it more snap?

i dont mean trying to turn it into a jazz pickup; but i really like my P (heheh)

there QP Duncans wired straight up volume tone 250k w/ orange drop cap .047

i was gonna build a box w/ a 8" and a 10" to top off my cab (its a 15"; which is another culprit in my lows, but the 4x10 is waaaay to high for my jazz which is my main bass; and 12s sound awful for bass)

i was thinking of changing the cap; but that wont do anything if its still too deep with it right off; but would a resistor added to the off position (of tone knob)filter lows?

dont know much about resistors; the way i understand them is they do the opposite of capacitors;

someone set me straight

thanks

grant

[Ripthorn]

The capacitor will actually do something even with your tone on 10. Changing it out for a different value will have an effect, as will changing the value of the pots. If you put in 500k pots or 1M pots, you will hear an increase in level and highs. If you read about RC low pass filters, that's all a tone control is. In the most basic sense, capacitors store charge and let AC pass and blocking DC. Inductors do the opposite, letting DC pass and blocking AC and are thus used in series in power supplies while capacitors tend to be used in parallel. You can use an inductor in a tone control if you want, but they tend to be more expensive and bulky to get the same performance compared to a capacitor.

Long and short, change cap value or pot value and you should see a marked improvement (as long as you change them the right way).

[low end fuzz]

ah yes; thanks;

i was under the impression the higher pot value the more highs were filtered out;

i will try another cap aswell; any suggestions? or just keep trying till i find one that suits me the best?

[kpcrash]

There are so many out there You could always get crazy and install a rotary switch with different caps used with each switch position. Not to difficult to wire up and allows you to adjust the sound of your instrument to compensate/augment whatever amplifier/environment you might be playing in.

[Samba Pa Ti]

you could just remove the tone cap altogether (depends if you actually use the tone). an EQ pedal might be useful as well or some sortof booster (mid boost treble boost) i dunno what they sound like on bass tho so i cannot recommend it, just suggest.

[psw]

As suggested, a higher value volume pot will let more highs and volume through (it is kind of anti intuitive, but this is the case) and also, put a treble bleed cap on the volume and turn it down a bot, this produces the opposite effect of the tone control...reducing the volume of the lows and leaving the highs...so effectively a treble boost as you turn it down!

P-bass pickups are great, but if you are using only a 15" it is not going to be able to reproduce a whole lotta highs regardless of the guitar...the amps tone controls and especially things like a graphic equalizer can help. but you may really want to look at the amp side of things more than the guitar itself.

Have you tried a different bass through your rig? The other thing is of course, where the pickup is placed...did you make this bass? Perhaps adding a J-bass pickup or something closer to the bridge might help...but the "precision" bass is a fantasitic bass and a classic, used on plenty of funk and popping and with the standard P-bass pickup...so you know, it certainly is capable of bring those out with the right rig and in the right hands...

[WezV]

i wired one with a series/parallel switch recently. obviously you lose a lot of output in parallel mode and many dont like that, but it may do what you want and give it more of a single coil character