mellowgerman
Senior Member
It's not as bad as you think! No worries, I'm not cutting up the squeaky clean 1970 Starfire, but here is a very useful, easy modification that I wish I would have thought to try sooner
As mentioned earlier this year, I had removed the tone-suck circuit from my 1970 SFB with favorable results; a bigger, more open tone from the Bisonic. After pulling the guts out of the old Starfire again recently to clean the pots a bit, I noticed another original resistor in the circuit, unrelated to the tone-suck, that I hypothesized could also be suppressing the signal of the pickup(?). In any case, I decided it was time to think about a replacement for the whole harness. Incidentally a trade-offer for a pickup I was selling on another forum, made a custom Kelling Sound Bass Varitone circuit materialize in my hands. It was a solderless passive harness originally intended for a P bass -- volume with treble bleed, 12-position rotary switch with various capacitors, resisors, and an inductor, and a tone knob that controls the bleed of whatever rotary setting is selected. It dropped right in and the rotary switch now lives where the tone-suck used to live. I'm super thrilled with the results and big variety of tones this has opened up in the old Starfire; including the first position of the switch which is a complete bypass of any tone capacitor. I plan to record a demo track within the next week or so and will be posting it here, but for now, here's some eye candy!
As mentioned earlier this year, I had removed the tone-suck circuit from my 1970 SFB with favorable results; a bigger, more open tone from the Bisonic. After pulling the guts out of the old Starfire again recently to clean the pots a bit, I noticed another original resistor in the circuit, unrelated to the tone-suck, that I hypothesized could also be suppressing the signal of the pickup(?). In any case, I decided it was time to think about a replacement for the whole harness. Incidentally a trade-offer for a pickup I was selling on another forum, made a custom Kelling Sound Bass Varitone circuit materialize in my hands. It was a solderless passive harness originally intended for a P bass -- volume with treble bleed, 12-position rotary switch with various capacitors, resisors, and an inductor, and a tone knob that controls the bleed of whatever rotary setting is selected. It dropped right in and the rotary switch now lives where the tone-suck used to live. I'm super thrilled with the results and big variety of tones this has opened up in the old Starfire; including the first position of the switch which is a complete bypass of any tone capacitor. I plan to record a demo track within the next week or so and will be posting it here, but for now, here's some eye candy!
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