Fattenin' up a bass

[ChristoMephisto]

Hi All,

A friend of mine left me his Ibanez Geo bass to mod for him. He wants it fattened up. It has a single humbucker pup, one volume and a toggle . The toggle is for a 15k in series, .015uf in series, or a combo of both.
Other than replacing the toggle with a standard 250k/.047 tone combo, is there any other way to fatten up the sound?
Would wiring it to the tone pot then the volume help? Vintage gibson/fender style?
I've modded guitars and effect pedals, but bass guitars escape me.

[ChrisK]

By "fattening" I presume that you want a more midrange sound.

You indicate

The toggle is for a 15k in series, .015uf in series, or a combo of both

.
Connecting the pickup directly to the volume pot will help with a louder signal. Connecting a capacitor in parallel with the pickup will filter the high frequencies and make it sound more midrange.

You might try the following;

1. The pickup connected directly to the volume pot
2. The 0.015 uF cap in series with the 15K resistor, the combination in parallel with 1.
3. The 0.015 uF cap in parallel with 1.

[sumgai]

Let's first define "fat".


Everybody in the pool! ;D



sumgai

[gitpiddler]

I'll bite. Looked at a ebay photo, the p'up is just south of the body's waist, in middle position. Not gonna get much definition.
prolly sounds kinda muddy.

[ChristoMephisto]

Yep, thats the one, just below mid on the body.
Had read if it was closer to the neck, it'd be deeper sounding.
Kinda limited with what can be done with this, eh?

One of my guitars(pic in profile) has a .0047 cap in parallel and it sounds great, almost like a hard treble cut compared to a rounded tone cut with a tone pot and cap.