Converting Pickups

S

SS4Luck

Joined
May 14, 2006
Messages
38
Reaction score
0
Ive had my corvette for about 2 years now and am still completely in love with playing it. After stepping up my amp and playing some more basses with active pickups i just wish i had that sound with the actives. My question is how hard would it be to convert my Corvette from Passive to Active pickups?? I dont really have the money to sell my corvette and buy one that has actives, not that i would want to as this is the bass i played my first show with and i have alot of memories attatched to it, but i want the active pickup growl...

thanks for the help
 
Hi,

Im just about to do the exact same thing to my passive corvette. I have bought a set of used pickups and 3 band eq from a thumb. Looks an easy enuff job to do if you can handle a soldering iron. I did a full pickup and eq swap on my old tobias, that was easy.
 
My gues is that it would be quite easy to have it converted to avtive, since the control cavity for the Corvette Standard is as large as the one in the active basses.

Here's an idea that you might consider: Aguilar (and perhaps Sadowsky) make outboard preamps that attach to your bass strap and as I recall the Aguilar model is identical to one of their internal preamps. I know that they are a little bit pricey, but converting your bass to internal active electronics might be too.

The added bonus is that the external preamp can be used on more than one bass, if the need arises.
 
^ I'm not much on having two basses and I dont think i ever will be. It seems that whenever i get two of something, I favor one and never use the other. Ive seen the outbaords from aguilar that your tlaking about and i dont think it is as clean of a look as it would be to just wire everything inside.

on that note, which pickups should i go with? I play in more of a rock/hardcore band but still like to play stuff like 311, red hot chili peppers, the more jazzy stuff. Would the Thumb pickups like said in a previous post be the ones to go with?
 
SS4Luck said:
^ I'm not much on having two basses and I dont think i ever will be. It seems that whenever i get two of something, I favor one and never use the other. Ive seen the outbaords from aguilar that your tlaking about and i dont think it is as clean of a look as it would be to just wire everything inside.

on that note, which pickups should i go with? I play in more of a rock/hardcore band but still like to play stuff like 311, red hot chili peppers, the more jazzy stuff. Would the Thumb pickups like said in a previous post be the ones to go with?
Click to expand...

the Thumb pickups i have are the same as the ones that would have been in a active corvette. most Jazz shaped pickups should fit into the corvette. Think about Seymour Duncan, EMG, Bartolini etc, but i find the MEC active pickups that are standard on Warwick active basses are excellent
 
i'm thinking of SD AJB-5s. it says on the SD webbie that P-nut uses them but his warwick signature model has MECs on them.

i'm probably gonna get the pups w/o tone controls to save $$.

or should i just get a preamp along with my passive single coiled MECs?
 
Z3r0_G said:
i'm thinking of SD AJB-5s. it says on the SD webbie that P-nut uses them but his warwick signature model has MECs on them.

i'm probably gonna get the pups w/o tone controls to save $$.

or should i just get a preamp along with my passive single coiled MECs?
Click to expand...

The Seymour Duncan 3-band circuit is very very good, probably complements the pickups well. Wariwick used to use a Seymour Duncan circuit with its MEC pickups on the Jazzman models. They worked well together
 
but i'd rather have stacked coils. guess i'll just go ahead and get the AJB 5s.

another question: does warwick use the same pup sizes for both the neck and bridge? or is it the same? i don;t have the tools to measure up.
 
I did the swap. Bought an EMG-J Set online, shipped it to me. I put them in, which was easy, then I had a bad pup. Sent it back and hen had them in within 30 minutes. I need to put in a better pre-amp.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top