EASY 4004 V V T MOD

markbass99 · Post by **markbass99** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 4:37 am

here's before-

here's after-

Here's the back of the headstock, just because I like this pic-

jwr2 · Post by **jwr2** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 4:53 am

The 4004 is a better bass with 2 volume controls ...

Also I copied what you did with the pickups on this bass here ... http://www.3dentourage.com/425/fender-bird3.htm

edski · Post by **edski** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:15 am

OK, another question, Mark...

Did you replace the output jack with the one in the new harness?

markbass99 · Post by **markbass99** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:20 am

Ed- I took the old harness out in one piece and dropped the new one in without separating or modifying any of the components shown in the first picture of this thread. If I were to do it over, I would get longer wires going to the jack soldered in when ordering, it would have made it easier. I noticed RIC uses substantially longer wires on theirs. I reused the three star type lock washers that RIC uses to get the outer jam nut flush, the jacks looked to be identical in appearance between the two harnesses.

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 4:41 pm

Ed, for what its worth, concentric is nice because not only do you get individual volume for each pup, but individual tone for each also - a wider pallate of tones over the one tone pot of a VVT setup. With the one tone pot, both pups are bassy or trebly, or somewhere in between but they are both the same. Of course they vary tonally because of location, but you see what I mean.

edski · Post by **edski** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:56 am

I do understand. When I was playing my 4001 I used to mess slightly with the both volumes and tones a lot to get subtle tone differences.

A lot of my musical taste has become simplified over the years, and I treat the 4004 as a P bass type instrument - I often don't change tones much, and for some songs I'll just go to the neck PU. It's been great, but for $70 I can get a pre-made harness and drop it in with little effort?

Think I'm gonna do it. I can always change it back.

That's the one thing about the VVT that I really don't like is having to change the bass physically - I've read folks saying that you can go back, but it would require some cobb-jobbing.

markbass99 · Post by **markbass99** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:21 am

Ed- There's always going to be trepidation when you take wood working tools and alter a fine instrument like these. Since I have two 4004's with the VVT setup, I feel like there's no need to ever go back, this is they way they should have come from the factory(IMO). If you ever have to sell, include the original harness and the new owner can sort out if they want to go back, but I doubt if they would. When Chris Pappas sold me his Cii, a major selling point(to me) was that it already had the VVT mod done by Jeffrey Scott.

heinpete · Post by **heinpete** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:57 am

I felt my 4004 was much better sounding with the VVT, although I could not have the 1M pots used (some problem with the wiring diagram, no clue!?), so I used the original pots. The cavity was routed a bit so distance between the pots is equal. I sometimes but rarely use the neck-PU volume -10% approximately, to get more bite. Still my 4003 all pots full up 100% has more bite (better sound?) and punch???

markbass99 · Post by **markbass99** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:35 am

A 4003 is going to have more bite because of the nature of the single coil pickups, my Cii with toasters has a little more bite than the Laredo with the hb1's. There are things you can do to a 4004 to improve bite, string selection and amp EQ are to obvious ones, string to pickup height is another consideration. I've noticed that if you get the hb's near 2mm of the strings they really come alive.

I'm going to experiment on my next conversion with a toaster in the neck and an hb1 in the bridge position just to see if there could be a nice blend there. I'm sure J.R. has already tried it.

jwr2 · Post by **jwr2** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:14 am

my Laredo has a lot of Bite http://www.3dentourage.com/425/93-4004L-5.htm with the 1000k ohm pots wired vvt ...

heinpete · Post by **heinpete** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:18 am

Jeff, are you using logarithmic or linear 1M pots?
I forgot, sorry.

jwr2 · Post by **jwr2** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:25 am

Actually I don't remember which I put in ... but I got them from stewmac ...

heinpete · Post by **heinpete** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 9:35 pm

...he probably does not live in Germany? or have a subsidiary over here? Any www address?

markbass99 · Post by **markbass99** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 4:44 am

http://www.stewmac.com/

They also have a good tutorial on that website about electronics for guitars/basses, I found it very useful.

heinpete · Post by **heinpete** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:12 am

Thank you very much, Mark!