Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Cool, looking forward to hearing your opinions of those.

Funny you mention the inside switch. I'm thinking of doing the same with a mini-switch I have around here to put my Warwick's neck pickup in parallel.

Just got your QP and strings. We forgot to check our mailbox yesterday. They sat there all night. Thanks man. I'll probably plug this QP in this morning.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Nice. Hope you like the half-rounds more than I did

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Blend pots are fairly new inventions, but as others have pointed out Jazz basses allow you to mix the two pickups, but there’s no master volume, not that I ever turn the volume down on my bass. Unless I’m muting it.

Les Pauls use a different wiring, whereas turning one volume all the way off mutes both pickups. Jazz basses and Ricks have independent volumes.

But if you think about the way Gibson set it up, you have a preset rhythm and lead tone at the flick of a switch. And all these instruments were designed like 50 years ago.

I put a blend control on one of my two humbucker guitars instead of a switch. It wasn’t as useful as on a bass. The blend options between the two pickups was meh, and I ended up putting the switch back in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

I'm not sure if it's even correct to call my Toby a "jazz" bass per se. I call it that because it has "jazz" pickups. Other than that, it looks nothing like a Fender Jazz bass. It has passive pickups, that go into an active preamp, that has master vol / blend / treble / bass. The funny thing is, it sounds best with the volume dimed, and the other three all in their center detent. Maybe because I'm such a novice bass player. :dunno:

 

[chadd]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

I'm not sure if it's even correct to call my Toby a "jazz" bass per se. I call it that because it has "jazz" pickups. Other than that, it looks nothing like a Fender Jazz bass. It has passive pickups, that go into an active preamp, that has master vol / blend / treble / bass. The funny thing is, it sounds best with the volume dimed, and the other three all in their center detent. Maybe because I'm such a novice bass player. :dunno:

Center detent is my base bass tone. That still leaves room in either direction for tonal adjustments to fit the song.

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

. . . base bass tone.

Can I steal that?

 

[uOpt]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

I'm not sure I've ever seen a 2-pup bass with a 3-way. And you don't see a guitar with a blend very often. (If ever.) I wonder why they're done that way. Would it be weird to do a 3-way on a bass?

Any kind of resistance as load lowers the amplitude of the resonance peak in passive pickups. For guitars that is very undesirable since they become lifeless very quickly. For bass this is often either acceptable, desired, or an acceptable price to pay for mixing the two pickups to position the bottom of the bass correctly (aka the price for being able to blend).

ETA: to clarify, there is some load on the guitar pickups, too, via the vol pot even when full open. But that is only a fraction of the suppression that blend pots would have if you actually use them.

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Yeah, and to make it worse, my Toby bass uses passive pups that connect to a dual 25k blend pot right on the input. (Green and red dots.) That means they both see 12.5k. That's got to be sucking the life out of those pups. I'm going to swap in a 250k/250k and see what impact it has.



P.S. If a company is going to go to the trouble of putting in an active preamp, why the heck wouldn't you provide an input buffer on both pups. It's literally a small handful of inexpensive components.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

That is an interesting choice of pot values and positions

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

That is an interesting choice of pot values and positions

Yeah. I'm going to change that "blend pot" value. I'm even thinking of doing the EMG ABC pot. (Active Blend Control.) It looks like a cool product, but kinda expensive for what it is.

And . . . we have Apollos in da house. :banana:

 

[Mincer]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Yeah! Let me know how those Apollos work out.

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

I put a blend control on one of my two humbucker guitars instead of a switch. It wasn’t as useful as on a bass. The blend options between the two pickups was meh, and I ended up putting the switch back in.

That's interesting. I was thinking of trying this with one of my LP's. If I do, I'll report back.

I did go ahead and order the EMG ABC from Sweetwater, but it's a special order item and takes time to get. I may go ahead and install the Apollo's just to get a baseline tone. Then I can tell better what the tonal impact of the ABC is.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

To the original question, I am gonna go with 'tradition' more than anything else. We guitarists and bassists love it, and anything different frightens and scares us.

 

[dg27]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

My '76 Rick 4001S and '84 MIJ Fender Jazz Bass Special both had 3-ways. I replaced them with a blend in both cases.

Update: I redid the '84 MIJ Fender Jazz Bass Special, replacing the blend with a DPDT tone/series-parallel switch.

Not really a fan of blends, but I love S-P switching.

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

On my Toby, I find that it sounds best right in the middle. I'd probably eliminate the blend altogether if I hadn't ordered the ABC pot.

 

[Erlend_G]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

best tone I ever had, was with a Strat, with the middle/bridge pickups wired in series...

i kid you not

 

[Artie]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

I've added a push-pull to do that mod before. It does make an interesting virtual bridge humbucker.

 

[Aceman]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Guitar is a rhythm and lead instrument. There's often call to quickly switch between very different sounds in a tune. Bass tends to be largely a rhythm instrument, and there isn't as much call for switching between particular sounds in a song.

I'm not going to call you an idiot. That would be wrong and disrespectful. I will say I believe you just made that up and have no basis for that other than your own opinion.

 

[dg27]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

Guitar is a rhythm and lead instrument. There's often call to quickly switch between very different sounds in a tune. Bass tends to be largely a rhythm instrument, and there isn't as much call for switching between particular sounds in a song.

The four basses I use most have s-p switching and I do indeed switch the setting during different parts of songs because the difference is dramatic.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why do you suppose bass's use "blends", while guitars use switches?

It's weird, I'm totally fine with active boost/cut 3-band on-board EQs and blend knobs on a bass, but try as I might, it just doesn't work on a guitar. I like my guitars simple and stripped down and my bass to have complexity to the wiring.