2009 Epiphone EBO bass guitar

[Lee Gendvilas]

Hello,

It's been a while since the last time I posted. I just recently acquired a 2009 Epiphone EBO bass guitar and would like to rewire it to the early 60's format. I would like to use the pickup that is already on the bass and the two 500 K pickups. The 60's wiring diagram is using a 0.01µF and a 0.033µF capacitor in the circuit.

Any thoughts on whether I might fry the pickup if I wire it this way?

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments.

Lee

[Joshua Levin-Epstein]

Hi Lee, You'll never fry a pickup unless you plug it straight into the wall. Don't ask.

I was preparing a long diatribe on the shortcomings of the original Gibson EB basses, I spent my formative years playing  a mid 60's EB-3. We were young once, and terribly loud. I thought you had an EB-3, but I reread your post and I think you mean "2 500K pots" not "2 500K pick-ups". I looked up the EB-3 wiring and there seems to be a .02mfd cap and 220k resistor wired between the neck pick-up and the switch (or volume pot, in your case), to keep the tone less bassy. If my bass had this circuit (before I knew most anything) it didn't help very much. Perhaps the Epiphone pick-up has more high end and thus is more useful. You can wire that cap/resistor combo in and see if you like it. If you wanted to get fancy, you could replace one of the pots with a switching pot that would bypass the cap/resistor for a more direct comparison.

(warning, opinion and hubris to follow): Unless the Epiphone pick-up is totally different tonally than the Gibson, in my opinion, it is not very useful. The Gibson EB-0 had no high-end made worse by the pick-up being so far away from the bridge. If you're adventurous, you might be able to wire the two coils in parallel, which would lower volume, but increase higher frequencies. This was the idea behind the Dimarzio Model 1 replacement pick-up.

Or, you wire it as you wish and just play. Just playing is usually better than thinking too much.

Best,

Joshua