MusicMan Bass “What’s that Jigglin’ around?”
My good friend Phil left his bass with me for a couple days to look into a mystery noise coming from his bass when you shake it. It sounded to me like there was something heavy like a 9v battery loose inside the body- which I thought at first might be likely as his bass has active electronics that require a battery.
Well I found the battery compartment snug and in great shape- so I started taking things apart and found that the secondary pickup (which is mounted underneath the first pickup) had come all undone, and broken a wire in the process.
To skip all the boring details- the pickup is re-glued, re-wired, and re-friggin-rockin!
My Gibson Gets Magic Acoustical Powers!!!
I set going recently on a big personal guitar project. I got a T-bridge, which is LR Baggs transducer bridge for Gibson style guitars. Of course the magic is only complete with a CTRL-X to accompany the pickup: giving the holder mystical powers to switch between or mix the electric and acoustic sounds.
I only had a few holes to drill in my 339: Two under the bridge for the new wires, and two near all the knobs for a couple new controls.
I took some time before installing on the phone with Bryan at LR Baggs, designing a new wiring setup that would give me the controls I want. The CTRL-X is designed to work in tandem with one master volume pot. That created 2 options for us Gibson players- give up independent pickup volume control, or - have no volume control pot when in acoustic mode. (YIKES)
Bryan's expertise with the CTRL-X was a huge help in creating a new setup that would add a master volume to the existing plan, and I get to keep my very important individual pickup volume controls.
To keep everything on the guitar looking as close to stock as possible, I modified some parts and made a bracket to mount the new additional volume pot in the F-hole, underneath the
pickguard, with a wheel rather than a knob: so it can be reached but not seen.
Thanks to my dad, who assisted with the install but importantly- photographed along the way. Here's Claire from start to finish:
