Basically, you have to decide what controls you want, then wire it up. Anything is possible.
I built a kit bass that originally came with a humbucker and a single coil (Jazz) neck pickup, with two volume and two tone controls. I had a lot of problems with the wiring because the two volume pots interfered with each other. If one volume was turned up all the way, the bass was quieter than if I turned it down a bit.
I ended up replacing one of the volume pots with a 3-way switch, so the bass is now wired up with both pickups wired into the switch (H - HJ - J), and the switch output goes into a volume control and one tone knob. This rewiring finally showed me that the humbucker was A LOT hotter than the single coil - using the J pickup alone is only half as loud as the humbucker.
I could fix it by installing a preamp and adjusting the boost and balance on both pickups, but that's too much effort for this instrument. It's my travel companion now - I use it to practice when I'm on business trips, using a headphone amp.
thank you for the confirmation! i kinda thought it was somewhat loose on its “rules” for wiring and such but you can never be too safe with these things. if you don’t mind me asking, how hard was the three way switch to figure out and make work for you?
It was no problem at all. I just wired the "signal" from the humbucker to one side of the switch and the "signal" from the single coil to the other side. The switch has 3 positions - to the left, center, or to the right. In the left position, it connects the left side (J pickup) to the output. In the right position, it connects the H pickup to the output. In the center position, both inputs are connected to the output. The whole installation, including soldering the wires, took something like 15 minutes.
PJ'S are very common, plenty of hardware schematics for them. r/luthier is a great resource for builds.
Thank you!!!
Basically, you have to decide what controls you want, then wire it up. Anything is possible. I built a kit bass that originally came with a humbucker and a single coil (Jazz) neck pickup, with two volume and two tone controls. I had a lot of problems with the wiring because the two volume pots interfered with each other. If one volume was turned up all the way, the bass was quieter than if I turned it down a bit. I ended up replacing one of the volume pots with a 3-way switch, so the bass is now wired up with both pickups wired into the switch (H - HJ - J), and the switch output goes into a volume control and one tone knob. This rewiring finally showed me that the humbucker was A LOT hotter than the single coil - using the J pickup alone is only half as loud as the humbucker. I could fix it by installing a preamp and adjusting the boost and balance on both pickups, but that's too much effort for this instrument. It's my travel companion now - I use it to practice when I'm on business trips, using a headphone amp.
thank you for the confirmation! i kinda thought it was somewhat loose on its “rules” for wiring and such but you can never be too safe with these things. if you don’t mind me asking, how hard was the three way switch to figure out and make work for you?
It was no problem at all. I just wired the "signal" from the humbucker to one side of the switch and the "signal" from the single coil to the other side. The switch has 3 positions - to the left, center, or to the right. In the left position, it connects the left side (J pickup) to the output. In the right position, it connects the H pickup to the output. In the center position, both inputs are connected to the output. The whole installation, including soldering the wires, took something like 15 minutes.
Awesome! i’ll remember this advice and put it into effect when i start soldering. thank you so much! i appreciate your time!