Lobster did a really good job demoing all the crazy (albeit confusing) tone options of the T-40.
No other bass can do what the T-40 can…if you can hold it long enough (mine is 12 lbs).
Hah! I was just about to post this and tag you, @John_E .
That phase switch is astounding. I love how much growl it gives. Working on the electronics would be a nightmare, I think. What’s the nut width? Is it 1.65 like the Patriot?
No clue, he mentions it but I don’t ever really consider nut width, etc.
I am so used to playing saxes from sopranino to baritone that size/feel really doesn’t matter.
Size doesn’t matter, so long as it’s long and thick
Edit: in this case 1 11/16" or 43mm.
Kind of weird that the coil tap is built in to the tone knobs like it is. That actually sounds kind of unfortunate; I’d rather have the tone be just tone and the coil tap separate rather than always splitting the humbuckers at 8+. In fact that’s a big bummer as my preference would be to run the humbuckers wide open on tone, but apparently you can’t.
I generally never split coils.
Yes you can.
Single coil tone is from 8-10
Humbucker tone is from 1-7
They both work quite well.
I think he made a few mistakes when he was describing what’s what. He said “8” a lot when it wasn’t really.
so, 7 on the tone knob is a humbucker with no tone attenuation? In other words, it undoes the single-coil rolloff from 10 to 8? That seems… weird?
This seems like a very odd setup to avoid having a separate coil split switch.
10 is single coil tone up
8 is single coil tone rolled off
7 is humbucker tone up
1 is humbucker tone rolled off
My guess is some circuit geek at Peavey figured out a way to do this, so they used it.
Versitility in two less switches.
Saves room for the phase switch
Innovation is not always useful or solving a problem.
I look at this as circuit art.
For its own interesting approach.
It adds character to a bass already full of it.
but… why not just make the tone knob a push/pull for splitting the coils, like everyone else does?
This is really common. I even have a guitar with a coil split, three-way pup selector, tone and volume, with just two knobs and one switch.
Yes, a pot with a center detent, controlling the individual coil volume (center detent = humbucker) would probably be simpler. I don’t know if the phase switch would work with that, though.
Simplest is just the standard method. Coil is split or not (which disables one coil of the humbucker), the split is either a push-pull on one of the pots, or a separate switch.
The bass seems really cool, I’m just kind of boggling at why they would choose to do it that way.
Cause it was 1980?
Dunno…