Warwick upgrades

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gene bass

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Hello, my name is gene rice and i play an fna jazzman.i was wondering if anyone has ever experiment with changing out the stock pickups and preamp with something different like aguilar,nordstrand,etc.?
 
G'day Gene & welcome aboard.
Another member called Rusty,recently swapped the Seymour Duncan pups in his custom Thumb NT5,for a set of Nordstrand fat stacks & posted some before & after sound clips.A quick search will locate it for ya.
Also,our good host,Florin,did something similar when he made his custom Streamer stage 2 passive.I forget the exact details of the changes he made.
Now as far as your Jazz man goes,I think it's a prime candidate for modding pups & eq.Is there anything tonewise,that your bass is lacking,or not doing,so that those of us that know about these things,can better advise you of what approach to take?
Personally,most of the changes made that I've heard from before and after,have been subtle at best & never have I had the opportunity to actually hear the bass in a band setting,which,is were it really counts.I play a Streamer stage 2,& a popular mod,particularly amongst early Incubus fans/Dirk Lance fans,is to swap the stock MEC system,for a Seymour Duncan set up.The stage 2's I've heard that've had this change made to them still sound great to me,& typically still 100% stage 2.So I thought to myself,is it worth a few hundred bucks,just to compare & see if I experience a tonal revelation & find my own,holy grail of tone?Naaa.
But then again.This is only swapping electronics,so it's easily reversed & not too expensive if you feel like you failed miserably.
 
i agree with Greg.

all the mods ive heard here had a very small effect to the bass's sound.

a thumb will still sound like a thumb, the same way a stage 2 would still sound like a stage 2.
 
I don't think Rusty's change has a small efect in sound. I also replaced my MEC P's with Bartolini, and the diference was pretty big.
You don't hear the difference very well on forum's soundclips, but in real life, those subtle changes feel a lot different.
They all are good pickups. The MEC's are great too, so it is only about getting a different sound to match your taste.
In order to do that you should really know how the new pickups will sound.
You can experiment with pickups, as you can always get back to the original configuration.

Good luck!
 
+1

I was doing such 'small' changes as swapping a MM-style Seymour Duncan pickup to another MM-style Seymour Duncan pickup (a ceramic one to an alnico one). The difference was quite big. Even when I exchanged an SD alnico J p'up (quarterpounder) to another SD alnico J p'up (stacked vintage), it had really different tone. It is for some reason that there is so many types of them, and that so many people pay extra money to have particular pickups in their instruments.
 
Florin said:
I don't think Rusty's change has a small efect in sound. I also replaced my MEC P's with Bartolini, and the diference was pretty big.
You don't hear the difference very well on forum's soundclips, but in real life, those subtle changes feel a lot different.
They all are good pickups. The MEC's are great too, so it is only about getting a different sound to match your taste.
In order to do that you should really know how the new pickups will sound.
You can experiment with pickups, as you can always get back to the original configuration.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks flo, yeah the change in Live tone is huge compared with in the studio. My other basses use nordies, so I know what they sound like & the output they have, i was so impressed, that why i bought them.

I would love to see the big "W" offer them as a custom fitment!!:shock:

Cheers,
Rusty
 
But you can use any pickups you like in CS as long as you deliver the pickups.
 
I find that the jazzman has a great smooth jazz sound obviously, but the 30 different options on the preamp sound professional but are pretty much useless. I end up using the blend pot turned all the way to the humbucker with the selector switch set for full output on the humbucker.the jazz pickup in the neck doesnt get used and the treble and mid are pegged. Im sure i could get sounds out of the preamp that i like by tweaking my amp but i cant really do that at a gig.i guess im looking for a swiss army knife preamp that has something more to offer than the stock warwick one.my passive fender jazz has a good sound through my rig but its one sound and a tough neck to play for a whole night.
 
gene bass said:
Hello, my name is gene rice and i play an fna jazzman.i was wondering if anyone has ever experiment with changing out the stock pickups and preamp with something different like aguilar,nordstrand,etc.?
Click to expand...

I also have a Jazzman and i swapped the preamp for an Aguilar BP-3.
It sounds fatter but i think i should have swapped the bridge pup first :confused:
The stock preamp is not as bad as i thought, the lack of bottom and sparkly highs are more the fault of the bridge pup IMO.
 
Wow, Flo, Warwick CS will route and install any pickups you send to them? That's really cool!


Andy
living.syndication
 
swap pups

I went with a bart mm pup swap on my fna jazz and made a big improvement.thanks for all the advice
 
rano bass said:
i also have a jazzman and i swapped the preamp for an aguilar bp-3.
It sounds fatter but i think i should have swapped the bridge pup first :confused:
The stock preamp is not as bad as i thought, the lack of bottom and sparkly highs are more the fault of the bridge pup imo.
Click to expand...

thanks,i almost went with a new preamp until i read this
 
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