Pottin’ the Bass Pickups

I’ve had this bass for quite a little while now. It’s nothin’ special. I think I bought it for around $125.00.

Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed it, and tracked with it some since I got it, but I noticed pretty quickly that the pickup was microphonic. With a little QC-ing from Aubrey Van Gelded and Jerry Actually, I discerned that the first and least expensive option to try would be to pot the pickups in wax.

So on this lazy Sunday morning, I started up some candles and pulled the face off of my lil Samick P-Bass.

The pickups had always kind of been coming apart, so I was able to remove the garbage ties that were holding the bass-side pickup together, and finally also removed the thumb rest that to me serves no purpose whatsoever.

The whole process was relatively easy, but time-consuming, and messy.

I plugged the bass back in after struggling with the spring-floating screws. In retrospect, I should have removed the tension from the strings much earlier in the process.

When I plugged ‘er in, I was stoked! The treble-side pickups were no longer very microphonic at all, but somehow, after futher inspection, the bass-side pickups had become microphonic.

I got the whole bass screwed back together and tightened the strings back up. This result is not ideal, but since I don’t really touch the bass-side pickup too much, except to rest my thumb there, it’s really a marked improvement.

This should do me well enough until I’m able to stash away a little cash to get ‘er into full working order. Plus a little messy, seancy project is always a good time on a vacant, idle Sunday.

You’ll be able to hear this bass on the upcoming track “Tell Me”. I’m pretty sure it’s on “Shine On,” too. I used it today before starting this project to track the bass for “Junebug.”