For years my 68 Starfire II sounded terrible when both pickups were on all the way...no bottom end, nasal, anemic, butt tone. No big deal as I usually just used the front pickup anyway. If I rolled off the back pickup just a hair, the bottom end jumped back out and sounded like 90% neck/10% bridge - cool, but I never really got to really hear or use the back pickup with the front. Fred Hammon had told me that they were probably wired out of phase (like a jazz bass out of the shop), I guess so they would hum-cancel. I don't love the sound of both jazz bass pickups on all the way but this was about 100 times worse, I assume because the immense output of the Bi-Sonics canceling each other out made the sound that much worse when they were out of phase
Having no hum is useless to me if it's making the sound so terrible so a few months ago I finally got around to wiring them IN phase - I just reversed the wires on one of the pickups. And now I can hear what I was missing since I got the bass 9 years ago...there's a whole other sonic dimension to the bass now. All things being equal I think I still prefer the sound of the front pickup soloed but it's a much more versatile bass now (particularly for playing live) and with both pickups working I'm getting great new overdriven sounds...I also realized that Jack probably had his dialed in like this a lot of the time.
So my questions are - has anybody else had this experience with their two pickup Guilds, and did Guild intentionally wire the pickups out of phase? Or did someone just hook them up the wrong way at some point? Just curious.
Having no hum is useless to me if it's making the sound so terrible so a few months ago I finally got around to wiring them IN phase - I just reversed the wires on one of the pickups. And now I can hear what I was missing since I got the bass 9 years ago...there's a whole other sonic dimension to the bass now. All things being equal I think I still prefer the sound of the front pickup soloed but it's a much more versatile bass now (particularly for playing live) and with both pickups working I'm getting great new overdriven sounds...I also realized that Jack probably had his dialed in like this a lot of the time.
So my questions are - has anybody else had this experience with their two pickup Guilds, and did Guild intentionally wire the pickups out of phase? Or did someone just hook them up the wrong way at some point? Just curious.