Regarding pickups and effects signal output.

Ahreeman

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Hi there,

For more than a year i am the proud owner of a lovely 90`s Starfire II bass. I use D'Addario half round strings and it literally sounds amazing... My second instrument of choice is a 00's Rickenbacker 4003. A totally (and tonally) different instrument, armed with Rotosound flats that helps me cover different audio landscapes.

Lately i moved away from my old and familiar (did i mention also tight-budget?) Zoom 708II multi-effects pedal and got into the good old stomp-boxes. A few days ago i was at a friends place messing around with his Warwick $$ Corvette (round wounds, active electronics). It came as a surprise to me how well a mutual pedal we shared (the EHX Micro Q-Tron), responded to all the 3 modes (low pass, band pass and high pass), when my Q tron only responded to low. When i got back home i tried the pedal with both my Starfire, Rick and an Orville Les Paul guitar... The guitar did well on all 3 modes, Rick did significantly worse on HP and BP and alas my Guild was ok on just LP. There is a ton of things that affect the output of the signal, true, (passive/active electronics, pickups, strings, frequencies and the instrument itself) but to such extend? And i really wouldn't go crazy about it had i not attended a live by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a band that uses exclusively semi hollow instruments through some very heavy fuzzes, distortions and other pedals associated with garage music...

My Guild sounds great. Period… but it sounds great when i plug it straight into the amp. When it goes through fuzzes, distortions, envelope filters, delays, flangers and two choruses (all true by pass pedals save from one chorus) it kinda sounds thin... and i am totally into effects :D !!!

The original thought was to change the pickups with another pair that might deliver more punch (feel free to make suggestions) but that made me realize that it would change the sound drastically and my problem does not stand with the clean signal per se, but with the one that goes through my pedal board. Maybe a signal booster coupled with some roundwounds will do the trick or maybe a compressor pedal - even though i am not a great fan of them (to be totally honest)... I really don't know... L

If you have a suggestion on how i can improve me effects signal, please do...
Thanks in advance,

A.
 
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Happy Face

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Be patient.... there are a copuple of guys here who use a lot of depals and effects.
 

fronobulax

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First the heresy is swapping out a Bisonic PU which is not what the factory put in your 90's bass so you will get more support than complaints if you do consider a swap.

I don't use effects but I listen to the complaints of those who do. Active vs. passive PU can be a difference and everything else being equal the effects are more consistent with active electronics. It is a long shot but if any of your effects are running on battery power and the battery is not at the top of its game then you might have a situation that explains the difference and is not the basses fault. It may also be that the effects are being driven by frequencies that are not prominent from your bass, even though it sounds nice.
 

mavuser

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you may need a mod similar to this:

philq.jpg
 

Ahreeman

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Hmmm, guess I will have to digress… you see my petite Starfire is way too valuable to be trusted upon hands of unspecialized luthiers and generic electricians with a flair for innovation… plus this whole Bass Golem meets bass Frankenstein thing ain’t exactly my cup of tea.

All jokes aside (since some things do get lost along the translation) changing the pickups is a bad or a good thing? I`ve heard the re-issued Dark Star pickups (on youtube truth be told) and I didn’t lose sleep over them.

If eventually changing the pickups is a good thing (at least for the 90`s models) what would you advise as a replacement? Maybe something with enough presence and power to cut through stomp boxes but not so match out of the whole Starfire concept. If on the other hand changing the pickups is ill advised then maybe a good buffer pedal, coupled with –maybe- a booster or some compression unit (that have a rep of working fine with Starfires) will do the trick?

Just asking… that’s all :D !!
 

fronobulax

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OK, to get serious again.

On changing the pickups, you could swap in an original Bisonic, a Dark Star or the reissue Bisonic that is in the current Newark Street models without seriously impacting that Starfire vibe and you would have a sound you could live with without effects. The issue would be finding one of those since the first two are now in the "rare" price category and it is not clear just how one obtains the latter. There are at least two other Bisonic replacements out there and in production, I just don't always remember that they are there. But they should be considered and would according to accounts, preserve the Starfire vibe.

As to driving effects I think the only thing that the PU will change that effect the effect is the signal level across the frequency spectrum. So if something sounds good with one bass but not another it is either the level or the frequency response. Levels can be changed and in theory inserting a preamp as a boost stage would eliminate that variable. Frequency response is a function of a lot of things but if the bass doesn't put out the frequencies that excite the effect then something is going to have to change.

If I wanted to dig deeper into this then I would see whether I could find another Starfire to try through the same effects chain. If, for example, things still were less than satisfactory with a Newark Street then you are going to have to make some changes in the effects to make a Starfire play nicely. If the NS does work then you can proceed with a PU swap and expect better results.
 

Zelja

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I wonder if some of your issues may be, in part, due to the "suck" switch - which seems to nobble the output regardless of which position it is:-

http://letstalkguild.com/ltg/showth...ard-Switch-quot&highlight=bass+switch+circuit
http://letstalkguild.com/ltg/showth...ss-Gurus-(Long)&highlight=bass+switch+circuit

If so, changing pickups won't help.

The other things is 'true bypass" on effects is not always a good thing. First of all, if all the effects are off you have a passive pickup going through lots of cables and switches and you end up losing a fair bit of highs. A small buffer maybe the ticket in this case. Some effects definitely prefer the guitar input into them rather than a buffered signal, especially fuzzes due to their (I thlnk) low input impedance. Others don't mind having the buffer - delays & reverbs especially. So you can set up you fuzz (& other effects which may be sensitive to the buffer) to be before any buffer & other effects after it. Maybe google "true bypass versus buffer" or something like that for more info.

Good to see BRMC get a mention on this board! Dig them. I like their noisy stuff but I also really love the"Howl" album which was bit of a departure for them.
 

Ahreeman

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or even something refined such as this....

99488.jpg


all these little holes drilled into that body, evoke a Marquis de Sade flair... quite charming if i might say so :D !!!
(a small mental note, who would have thought that there would be references to Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead & the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in the same post - btw i really love them BRMC and JA but i`m kinda meh with the GD (yes i understand the magnitude of the hubris that takes place at this moment)).

Anyways...
Thank you guys for all the info. It appears that i am more ignorant than i initially thought so :( I didn't even knew that there might be a transformer/choker beneath my pickups (in my case it is the neck pickup that has an insane presence while the bridge pickup sound very weak). I will check it out right after work. As for to find another Starfire Mr. Fronobulax (let alone be allowed to run it through my pedals) here in Athens (as in Greece, not Georgia US) would be quite a feat :D

Sadly i am not into them physics with regards to impedance, electrical currents, wave lengths etc. So most probably i will get a booster pedal and place it at the start of my pedal chain and then add a buffer right after all my dirty stomp boxes... only problem here is that my pedal board is getting crammed (and i still haven't bought a reverb and an octaver that i really really like). :( :(

Once again thanks guys, i will llet you know whether there is a
 

mavuser

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The 90s Starfire Bass does not have a "60s suck switch" or a "70s deep/hard switch" (and the body is 1/4 inch slimmer than 60s-70s)

thats really just just not the bass for effects, I'd get a different bass with a single coil, fender or guild. Or one of these "active" deals everyone else is talking about. Certainly the Guild Humbucker is not an effects pickup. Maybe if the 90s bass DID have the deep/hard switch of the 70s u could work with it (and even that probably would not sound right), but not the full range Guild bucker, for sure. Just get another bass...
 
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Ahreeman

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The 90s Starfire Bass does not have a "60s suck switch" or a "70s deep/hard switch" (and the body is 1/4 inch slimmer than 60s-70s)

- okz !!! good to know !!

thats really just just not the bass for effects, I'd get a different bass with a single coil, fender or guild. Or one of these "active" deals everyone else is talking about. Certainly the Guild Humbucker is not an effects pickup.

- yeah... i have a Ric 4003, a Fender with a treble booster (God knows why and how that was supposed to be handy) and an active Urge II (the cheap Stu Hamm model) but guess what, none comes close to my Starfire, well maybe the Ric does (and that is why i use it as my secondary bass) but the SF IS my main instrument (plus i am not a fan of active electronics as well). As i said i got into this because i know there is at least one band out there (BRMC) that relies on hollow body instruments (that seem unmodified) with some very heavy effects...

anyways guys i really really thank you, you have been quite helpful and most assured you pointed me towards the best course of action !!

Slainte !!
A.
 

grisezd

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Try boosting the clean signal before the qtron. A clean boost will get the level up to give the tron something to work with, and acts as a buffer as well. People have been pushing effects from every sort of pickup for a long time, you can get the sound you want but you'll have to experiment to get it.
 
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