Re: 2008 Warmoth J Bass with Duncan Basslines
Congrats to you both! They look sweet.
BT, what made you go for the 3-pup setup?
I'm also very curious on how the 3 pickup setup is and what lead to that decision BlueTalon
Thanks! Why the 3 pickups? I wanted something with more tonal range than a typical Jazz. Normally, J's aren't known for their bottom end. Whenever there's a discussion about P's and J's, the conversation usually involves something about how the J's are better at mids and highs while P's are better at lows. I wanted something that could do it all. And I wanted something unique, something eye-catching.
The bridge pickup is in the normal location (not the 70's reposition Warmoth offers as an option). The other two slots are custom routes I had them do, 2" edge-to-edge. That puts the neck pickup 1.5" - 2" closer to the neck than either a normal neck J pickup or a P pickup. That gives me a bassier oomph. The pickups are bright and crystal clear.
A lot of people see the bass and immediately think "strat". I think strats are great guitars, except for two things I hate about them -- single coil noise, and the inability to select all three pickups at once. (I always wondered why strats have that either/or 5-way switch, until I put 2 + 2 together about the single coils.) The setup on this bass is three humbucking split-single-coil pickups, which eliminates the need for a switch to select a humbucking combination of pickups. Every combination of pickups is humbucking, because every pickup is humbucking.
At the heart of the bass is the
Turnstyle 6-position rotary switch. Position 1 gives me full manual control of all three pickups. I can dial up any combination I want using the individual pickup controls. Doing it that way allows me to fade pickups to influence the sound, for example, full open on the bridge pickup and 80% each on the other two. That sort of thing is impossible with a 5-way switch.
Positions 2-6 are tone presets. Michael at Turnstyle incorporates tone circuitry to create whatever tone you want to reproduce. In my case, those tones are P-bass, J-bass (with the pickup mix in the sweet spot), Rickenbacker, Thunderbird, and Overdrive. When the switch is in any of those positions, the individual pickup controls are bypassed, and I control everything with the master V/T.
The other thing the Turnstyle switch does is make it possible to have a master tone control in series with the individual tone controls. Normally that's a problem, but Michael developed a proprietary work-around.
End result -- a very unique, tonally flexible bass, and a very proud owner.
