Bass Problems

P-Bass

Ok, Precision Bass it is. Lets start by laying some towels on a table to protect it from scratching. Now lay the bass on the towels and remove the strings. Remove all the Phillips screws holding the scratchplate down. Now, CAREFULLY, turn the scratchplate over as if you were turning a page of a book from left to right, lay it down so there is no tension on any of the wires. Now we can give all of the soldered joints a good visual inspection. Now take two spanners, 10mm I think, and tighten the two nuts that hold the jack plug in place, DONT OVERTIGHTEN, there is one co-axial wire that goes to the jack, the central core wire goes live, that is, it is soldered to the base of the part of the jack that contacts the tip of the jack plug, the braided outer wire goes to earth, (ground), or the part of the jack that contacts the shaft of the plug. Re solder any that have come loose. I'm gonna go into great detail now to give you a better understanding of how your electrics work. A pickup is an electro magnetic coil, a thin copper wire is wrapped around a magnetised frame with one or two steel pole pieces for each string, the P Bass pick up is a Humbucker, it has two coils, the wire leaving the first coil starts the winding of the second coil, humbuckers were designed by Gibson to reduce ‘Hum’ or feedback. The coil (or coils) has a start and a finish, both ends of the coil are soldered separately to the baseplate and a co-axial cable is connected to them, the central core wire goes to the start wire and the outer braided wire goes to the finish wire. The wires then go through two potentiometers, one for volume and another for tone which is filtered through a capacitor. Below is a simple schematic for the P Bass layout