Bass cut capacator on a Jazz Bass

[loverickbass]

Has anyone ever added a bass cut capacitor to the bridge pickup on their jazz bass?

Cole

[cassius987]

Yeah. I can't say I loved the results. That pickup's already incredibly nasal-sounding as it is. But on a toggle switch, it's another option if you want it.

Fender's Roscoe Beck basses accomplished the same thing in a better way for the Jazz by putting a switchable resistor in series with the neck pickup. So it unbalanced the two impedances and got that fuller "two pickups operating independently, heard together" effect you kind of get with the cap in-line (but you REALLY get with independent loads like when you do Ric-O-Sound). I was impressed with this feature and would recommend it over the bridge cap. However I don't know what value the resistor is supposed to be. I believe it may not even break 1 k-ohm.

[loverickbass]

Interesting. I'll look into that. I was hoping you'd say it has the same effect as the vintage switch in the RIC bases.

[jps]

Fender's Roscoe Beck basses accomplished the same thing in a better way for the Jazz by putting a switchable resistor in series with the neck pickup. So it unbalanced the two impedances and got that fuller "two pickups operating independently, heard together" effect you kind of get with the cap in-line (but you REALLY get with independent loads like when you do Ric-O-Sound). I was impressed with this feature and would recommend it over the bridge cap. However I don't know what value the resistor is supposed to be. I believe it may not even break 1 k-ohm.

IIRC, Fender did that to allow for "rolling down" the neck pickup relative to the bridge pickup as there is only the one master volume control on the RB bass.

[cassius987]

Fender's Roscoe Beck basses accomplished the same thing in a better way for the Jazz by putting a switchable resistor in series with the neck pickup. So it unbalanced the two impedances and got that fuller "two pickups operating independently, heard together" effect you kind of get with the cap in-line (but you REALLY get with independent loads like when you do Ric-O-Sound). I was impressed with this feature and would recommend it over the bridge cap. However I don't know what value the resistor is supposed to be. I believe it may not even break 1 k-ohm.

IIRC, Fender did that to allow for "rolling down" the neck pickup relative to the bridge pickup as there is only the one master volume control on the RB bass.

Exactly right, but the actual way it works is not like a volume control. The resistor is in series, not in parallel leading to ground like a potentiometer to control volume.

The effect is that you don't really lose any high end or other tonal features when you "roll off" the neck pickup with the switch. In a way I found it a lot more usable than the volume roll-off trick, but basically it's just different, not better or worse.