Four strings oughta do it.

[bagman67]

My son, I think I may have mentioned, has begun drum lessons.  One key to his success will be to learn to play as part of a rhythm section.

As for me, I'm not gonna kid you people, nothing will make me happier than playing music with my boy.  Further, I have long desired to really learn how to play bass as a bass, and not as a great big guitar.

So, having hankered for a long time, I allowed myself to be induced to purchase one today during my periodic wanderings through the guitar stores of the San Jose area.

Behold, a Squier Jaguar bass, P-J configuration with some really very nice sounding stock p'ups:

And a Gallien Krueger MB115 combo - 200 watts will be more than enough to piss off the neighbors, in addition to which it has a balanced output so I can go to a PA if necessary.

Now I just need to set the bass up - the action's kinda on the high side, even for a bass, so hopefully the neck will be amenable to a little tweak-age to get it dialed in.  If not, well, at 200 bucks, I didn't expect a Fodera or a Roscoe.

Wheee!

 

[Cagey]

Nice. Now, go buy a metronome and use it. Drummers and bass players who can't keep time are a special kind of hell. The rhythm section can be forgiven a lot of things, but being off the beat isn't one of them.

 

[bagman67]

Got one.  I do use it.  And I agree.  I would rather slam my own junk in a car door repeatedly than be stuck with (or in) a rhythm section without good time.

 

[dNA]

That thing is beautiful. Before I read your thread I just assumed it was a Warmoth build. The body just looks great.
Jaguar bass isn't the same shape as a Jazz Bass right? I like the look of that body way more than any Jazz Bass I've ever seen

 

[line6man]

Hey Ian, I've got a question about that bass. If this is one of the models with the two passive tones, when you play both pickups on full, do the tone controls interact?

(I'm curious whether or not Squier did the vintage-correct 220k resistors in series with the signal paths to prevent the tone controls from running in parallel.)

 

[bagman67]

ACtually, it's not even remotely vintage-correct.  The control lay out is two volumes, an active bass boost, and one tone knob for the whole kit'n'caboodle.  I like the bass boost at about halfway through the knob's travel - it overrides the tendency for these thin indonesian pickups to want to wuss out a little bit.

 

[Corey P.]

Nice grab, I love the Jaguar reissues and the price tag is phenomenal.

 

[bagman67]

That thing is beautiful. Before I read your thread I just assumed it was a Warmoth build. The body just looks great.
Jaguar bass isn't the same shape as a Jazz Bass right? I like the look of that body way more than any Jazz Bass I've ever seen

Thanks, dNA.  The phone photo is not great - the clear red on ash looks a lot better in person.

You are correct that the Jag is a different shape from the Jazz bass  - lower horn his much smaller on the Jag, and the upper horn is more pointy.  I would have liked to build a W, but I couldn't justify the expense.  I got this bass, a nice gigbag, and a 200 watt GK combo for what it would have cost me in just parts to do a Warmoth.  Maybe when I have some idea what the hell I'm doing I'll treat myself to a W. bass, but until then this Squier is a surprisingly well built machine.

 

[Cagey]

Hey Ian, I've got a question about that bass. If this is one of the models with the two passive tones, when you play both pickups on full, do the tone controls interact?

(I'm curious whether or not Squier did the vintage-correct 220k resistors in series with the signal paths to prevent the tone controls from running in parallel.)

If the controls are wired in parallel, they'll interact. Adding resistors anywhere doesn't provide any isolation, they just change the response curve. If Fender ever installed them, it was probably to compensate for a pallet of surplus caps they bought with the wrong capacity.

 

[line6man]

ACtually, it's not even remotely vintage-correct.  The control lay out is two volumes, an active bass boost, and one tone knob for the whole kit'n'caboodle.  I like the bass boost at about halfway through the knob's travel - it overrides the tendency for these thin indonesian pickups to want to wuss out a little bit.

Hmm, so it's a one-band boost-only EQ and a standard LPF tone control? That's quite odd. As long as it sounds good and gives you the tweakability you want, though.

Anyways, one of the Jaguar basses Squier makes has two volumes and two tones, which is essentially a worthless control scheme without a pickup selector switch, like on Les Pauls. :blob7:
Wire it normally, and the tones both act as masters when the volumes are all the way up. Wire it with the vintage-correct 220k resistors and you attenuate the output, shift the resonant frequency downward, and to some degree, increase the thermal noise. (To what degree is questionable, I'm too lazy to go do the math and try to relate it to real world performance.) The only way to win is with active buffering, but then the pickups can't load against each other the way they normally do in parallel, and everything sounds different! :doh:

Fender stopped doing Jazz basses like that in the '60s. I found it interesting that Squier was offering basses with that setup.

 

[line6man]

Hey Ian, I've got a question about that bass. If this is one of the models with the two passive tones, when you play both pickups on full, do the tone controls interact?

(I'm curious whether or not Squier did the vintage-correct 220k resistors in series with the signal paths to prevent the tone controls from running in parallel.)

If the controls are wired in parallel, they'll interact. Adding resistors anywhere doesn't provide any isolation, they just change the response curve. If Fender ever installed them, it was probably to compensate for a pallet of surplus caps they bought with the wrong capacity.

Are you not familiar with '60s Jazzes and bass wiring at all?

Put a 220k resistor in series with the output of each volume pot, and that puts a 440k resistance between the tone control for one pickup, and the other pickup and it's controls. This means that the tone controls can function independently, but at the expense of output, resonant frequency and thermal noise.

 

[Cagey]

Study the drawing closely, then re-draw it as a schematic instead of a "Electronics For Dummies" paint-by-numbers diagram. Everything will make sense to you at that point.

Most guitar builders, including the major manufacturers, are not electrical engineers. Electrical/electronics engineers are expensive, and there's generally little for them to do as guitar controls are astoundingly simple. As a result, you end up with control schemes that are simply the manifestations of their marketing weenie's mental masturbations and some DeVry institute guy who couldn't get a real job.

Edit: Also, you don't have to worry about "thermal noise" in circuits that never even hit a whole volt.

 

[line6man]

Study the drawing closely, then re-draw it as a schematic instead of a "Electronics For Dummies" paint-by-numbers diagram. Everything will make sense to you at that point.

Most guitar builders, including the major manufacturers, are not electrical engineers. Electrical/electronics engineers are expensive, and there's generally little for them to do as guitar controls are astoundingly simple. As a result, you end up with control schemes that are simply the manifestations of their marketing weenie's mental masturbations and some DeVry institute guy who couldn't get a real job.

Edit: Also, you don't have to worry about "thermal noise" in circuits that never even hit a whole volt.

Do you have a better way to do it that no one has thought of in the past 50 years?

 

[Cagey]

Not anything that hasn't been thought of, because as I said there's nothing to it, but not that would sell, either. Kids like a bajillion knobs and switches on their guitars and won't pay the Big Bucks for something that doesn't look like the Instrument of Doom.

All you need, and all that works properly, is a single volume and tone control and a pickup selector switch. Anything past that is just ostentatious and impractical.

 

[line6man]

Not anything that hasn't been thought of, because as I said there's nothing to it, but not that would sell, either. Kids like a bajillion knobs and switches on their guitars and won't pay the Big Bucks for something that doesn't look like the Instrument of Doom.

All you need, and all that works properly, is a single volume and tone control and a pickup selector switch. Anything past that is just ostentatious and impractical.

You have it totally backwards. The fact that the setup is ridiculous is exactly the point. This is how Jazz basses started in the '60s. Players eventually realized that a single tone control setup worked better both functionally and tonally, so Leo changed it.

Usually the only time you see two tones on a bass, resistors or not, is when people want vintage-correct.

 

[Cagey]

"Totally" backwards how?

And do you think Leo changed things to make them worse? Give the man some credit. He knew a lot more about electronics than he did about guitars. If anybody changed things from his original control design, it was against his better judgement. But, it's poor practice to ignore marketing weenies if you wanna be successful. They understand stupidity better than anyone.

 

[line6man]

"Totally" backwards how?

And do you think Leo changed things to make them worse? Give the man some credit. He knew a lot more about electronics than he did about guitars. If anybody changed things from his original control design, it was against his better judgement. But, it's poor practice to ignore marketing weenies if you wanna be successful. They understand stupidity better than anyone.

This is ridiculous, I'm done arguing it.

Kids never wanted this setup on their basses, there was no wild marketing to make it appeal. Leo did it that way in the '60s, then it was simplified, and the majority of Jazz bass players now prefer it the simplified way. I'm not advocating the setup either, it's an absurd compromise.

 

[hachikid]

you know.....Warmoth totally makes a production Jaguar Bass body.... *points to signature*

 

[bagman67]

you know.....Warmoth totally makes a production Jaguar Bass body.... *points to signature*

I do know it - and if I didn't also need an amp, I might have gone that route instead.  But I'm really a guitarist who knows a thing or two about bass, and cannot really justify the expense of building a full-blown Warmoth deluxe thunder-broom.  Maybe next year.

 

[hachikid]

ah, gotcha. yea, it's sorta like me buying a $200 used Ibanez Jet-King. hehe.