Help - weird electronics one

[Al1885]

@John_E

OK< this is a very odd one, need some help…

I had a Fender Vintera MIM P bass that I sold to a guy locally.
Original pickups, factory rounds put back on for him, everything worked fine.
He called me the other day to say something was wrong with it, it was ‘dead’, could he come have me take a look.

So he came today…and a few things were different from when I sold it

1. He had put tapes on it
2. He had a guy at GC do a setup
3. He said he did some fiddling with it

Here is what I found.

1. Put it on a tuner - had signal, able to tune, however, the lower strings appeared to be ‘cutting out’, but said ‘hey, I can tune it, try plugging it in and playing it’
2. Hooked up to amp - very very low output, so, checked pickup height - which was huuuuugggeee - aha! - found the problem. Adjusted pickups
3. Replay - overall, I feel like the output is lower than it should be, I couldn’t get my Berg’s clip light to come on with gain all the way up, but, could be played - EXCEPT - when you rolled the tone knob off all the way - then - could still hear it but almost silent. The string noise was louder than what was being amplified, tone knob back up - reasonable output and sound. HOWEVER - some very odd distortion on the E string. So, swapped out tone knob and capacitor, retuned, and…SAME ISSUE. As soon as you start to roll off the tone, volume gone!

My gut tells me there is something with the tapes he is using that is giving a much lower output to whatever stock P pickups Fender use on this thing, and when the highs are cut with the tone knob, there is not much left. I also think the E string distortion is because, with the tone knob up, the higher fundementals of the E is mostly what is being picked up or something.

He claims everything was ok with the tapes on then all of a sudden it wasn’t. I am not quite buying it.

I would assume tapes put out less magnetic field, and perhaps these pickups are kinda junky and not really suited for tapes, and the signal is just too low (high enough for the tuner to pick it up, but not high enough for proper amplification).

I then passed the signal through the B7K and upped the level quite a bit, played with tone rolled off but lots of background noise - I assume from all the gain adding.

My thinking is incompatible strings/pickups, even though he said they worked fine (for a while).

Thoughts?

@Al1885 - ever run into this?

@John_E sorry I was held up on another meet up thread, lol.

I came across this issue before my problem was the hot cable was solder to the wrong spot. Do you know what GC did, and what he did when he diddle with it?

You are right the Vintera is a bit low output right off the bat but it should not be that low. As for the string that could be another issue all together. If the output is low low I’d check first if the string is dead or not. If you use the screwdriver tip to poke at the pickup pole piece, is it loud(normal) funny enough that happened to me too, I installed the D’Addario Tapewound and the bass fell and hit the table on the string, just like that I had no volume, well very little, I had to change the strings.

Hope this help. If it’s not the string my initial thought would be the wiring got crossed or crimped somehow and it block or interfere the hot wire.

Let me know how it turn out so I can put this diagnosis in my tool bag,

[John_E]

Got it!!!

The dope at GC must have bent the tabs on the Jack just enough to let it gently touch where it shouldn’t and added some unwanted extra load to the circuit. Quick bend back and all is well.

[Al1885]

Dopey indeed.

[MikeC]

D’oh! Sorry, I missed that mention of a cap.

[howard]

And this is why everyone should learn guitar maintenance themselves. Good find.

[MikeC]

Very cool. Glad the mystery is solved.

[Korrigan]

But is it possible that you burned the cap (applied too much heat for too long)? I’m not doubting your soldering skills but it can happen.

Edit: Ah, I see you got it sorted, but I’ll leave this here for educational purposes for future generations of frustrated bass players. A burnt cap can give the same symptom of acting like a volume control or even an on/off switch at the end of the pot’s range.

[mr.crispy]

@Moonshine

Man. I’ve never heard of “fake strings”, but nothing surprises me anymore (grumpy old man rant. “get off my lawn!”).

I only recently found out about this and it caused me to go down one heck of a fascinating rabbit hole but apparently there is a massive problem with counterfeit strings. It’s rather insane how bad it is.

This is the video that originally got me started. It seems the counterfeit strings are quite terrible, as can be expected.

FAKE Guitar Strings