Help me put my bass guitar back together

[linda barth]

Years ago I removed all of the electronics from this old wooden bass that my husband had in the closet. Someone had painted it with ugly blue paint. I wanted to strip it back to it's original wood...which I did. I put it back together fine and the next time I wanted to work on it I wasn't so lucky. Some of the wires broke and became un-soldered and I couldn't fix them. I put all of the parts in a plastic bag and in the drawer with all of our other instrument parts. Didn't label it. Guess I thought I would remember. Duh! Now I would love to get it back together. It had a wonderful tone, but mostly
I just want to make it right. I have several bags of parts I would like to show you. Even if it's not the original ones, if you could tell me which ones you think I should use I would be very grateful. The body has no name, if that matters.
The attachments are named bag 1, bag 2, etc. so you can refer to certain parts by their bag number.m Bag 1 has most of the parts that I think were in the original bass. Looks to me like there aren't enough parts for a full re-assemble.


That's all I can think of right now. Please feel free to ask questions. Hope you won't yell at me for taking the bass apart. My husband didn't get mad.

[Eric Baack]

I don't think anyone here is going to get mad at you.

Do you have a soldering iron and a heat gun? Those along with a decent wire stripper and some new wire would probably be about all you need. They don't have to be expensive items either. Take a look at youtube for some soldering basic tutorials. Soldering isn't difficult really, with a bit of practice you can do fine with it. I like to put heat shrink over all of my solder joints as well, it adds some protection against the wires breaking and any parts getting shorted.

[Mark Swanson]

Welcome Linda, you will find all the help you need here but we don't see the attachments that you mentioned so we can't say much.

[linda barth]

I added them at the bottom where it said upload attachment and browse. let me try again. Oh...I see it also has an "add the file button". I didn't use it.

Do I have to press add the file after loading each photo?

I'm loading them again.

OK I see them loaded now.

Here they comne

Linda

[David King]

Hi Linda, Welcome to the MIMF! That's quite an interesting collection of parts you have there.
This was originally a "passive" precision bass and at some point it was modified to an "active" bass with a 9V battery. So you have two sets of pickups and 3 sets of control pots along with a bunch of unrelated bits and pieces.
The active electronics appear to be made by Alembic and they are quite valuable. You could send the photo with the red background (bag # 1) to Mica Wickersham-Thomas at Alembic and she could tell you more about what you need to update or repair/replace what's missing there or if that's worthwhile.
In the meanwhile you might as well start with the original passive pickups that have the brass plate attached to them (bag number 2).
A P-bass is one of the simplest instruments to wire up and your's in mostly intact. I'd search the internet for photos of p-bass wiring that will show you where everything goes.

[linda barth]

wow...thanks. That's a lot of good information already. OK, but you know what? that bass was magical. I don't know how to play (I'm thinking of learning), but I could pick up that bass and any note you hit sounded good. My husband, Tom, said the same thing. I didn't mention it but he passed away a few months ago suddenly. I'm now the keeper of the equipment and I'm trying to figure out out things work. If you find the wiring diagram for the original configuration I would like that one too.

Bag 2 that you are suggesting I use has to 2 regular looking pickups and then those 2 small ones that look like pickups. Are they something else? Will I need to drill more spaces.

You guys really need to get spell check. Lately my typing is all crazy. I always have lots of words to fix

The parts in the pictures are not just from that bass. I found lots of parts ion the drawer so I photoed them all.

[Peter Wilcox]

Use the stuff in bag 2, but leave the switch out (for now anyway). The 2 pickup-looking things on the plate are the pickup magnets. Just flip the pickups over onto them (they are already attached via ground wires) and they should stick on magnetically. The pots and jack should go into holes in the pick guard (that I see in the bass photo.)

Here is a diagram of how to hook it all up: http://www.seymourduncan.com/wp-content ... andard.jpg

The white wire from the bottom pickup (that I can't see the end of) should probably be soldered to the empty terminal on the top pickup.

BTW, there is a spell check - misspelled words are underlined in red - right click on it to see alternatives.

[linda barth]

Thisis very exciting. Here I go.

[Bill Raymond]

Condolences on the loss of your husband, Linda, and good luck with your project. I know that with the help of the folks on the Forum you will be successful.

[linda barth]

The pickup magnets don't fit down into the cutout area because the plate they are attached to is a little too large. Should i cut more space so that they go down inside the cut area? I think I have to anyway. The pickups are about 1/8"
bigger than the holes also. I have tools. Or I can try to put in the old pickups.

[Bob Gramann]

If those pickups don't fit, they couldn't be the ones you heard before.

[linda barth]

Sorry. When you said use the ones in bag 2 , I thought you were giving me something easier because everything is all put together in bag 2. Bag 1 is my original stuff. I have attached new photos. The thing was they have 6 colored wires and I don't know what they solder to. I'll do the work just tell me where they go

White
Lavendar
Brown
Yellow
Red
and then Brown again

[linda barth]

I forgot to send you the new photos. Here they are:

Which pickups are the fancy ones?

[David King]

Linda,
These pickups look like they came from the California company called Alembic. I don't know that for sure but Mica at Alembic dot com will be able to identify them for you. These pickups look to be missing the active module that they would have been connected to. It's a small circuit board and it's quite an expensive piece of this puzzle so I'm hoping you can locate it.

The most recent version of the Alembic system can be see here: http://www.alembic.com/prod/pickups.html

[linda barth]

So uyou're saying my original pickups were the good ones. I don't remember ever seeing a circuit board looking thing. i will try to get a photo.

Should I attempt to install them? What color wire goes to what?

[Bob Gramann]

I have a Fender Squire P-bass but I don't have time until the weekend to take the pickguard off and photograph it for you. If it it might still help you by Saturday, I will do that.

[linda barth]

That would be fine. So I'm still setting it up like a P-bass. Maybe I can find something on line and I just sent pictures to Mica.

You've been such a great help. Thank you. It's funny, I have a lot of musician friends and everyone was too busy to come help me when Tom passed. I would have given them equipment. I sure needed some help and a hug or two. Since then I have gotten some good help from writing to strangers and explaining what I needed. I try not to mention about Tom because I need to stop having that open every conversation.

To quote Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers". Oh and my cat. I recently bought this great tee shirt that sums it up for me.

It has a cat playing guitar and it says: There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life...music and cats.

Talk later...nice meeting you

[Peter Wilcox]

Do the pickups in bag 2 fit the pick guard? It might help us if you photograph the pick guard (both sides), and the other side of the brass plate, the passive pickups (bag 2), and the presumed active pickups (bag 1) where the wires come out.

The brass plate with the magnets is of the wrong configuration anyway to fit in the pickup cavities, unless it were to be turned upside down with the magnets on the bottom, which doesn't make any sense to me, unless you just have the magnets sitting on it and they belong on the other side.

[linda barth]

Mica says they are not hers and OH...look...... when I turned them over for your requested photo they have a name of their own. Schecter...made in the usa. Let's concentrate on getting the stuff from bag 1 back into the bass. We can both research where all those wires go. If I am missing any knobs or jacks I will get them from another bag.

I'm attaching the photos. That stupid chrome pick guard is hard to photograph. and when I walk into the room my reflection is there and I get startled....hahahaha.

[David King]

Well "Schecter USA" is a big help. Sorry I bungled my first I.D.
I found out a bit more about them here: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/vintag ... s.1186961/
They have coil taps which explains the extra wires coming out. You will need a volt-ohm meter to figure out what the color code is.
They would have been wired with a switch to split the coils. That's pretty far off the beaten path for a P-bass pickup and the first one I've ever seen. In bag 2 there is a switch with a big black box, yellow, green and black wire coming out, I think that must be the active module for the Schector pickups. I'll see if I can find any diagrams for how that thing worked. It all goes back to 1979 when I was mere a youngster.