The Electra Forums

This bass guitar used to be my aunt's way back when, but she has passed it down to me. I don't know what model it is. I've tried to play it lots of times, but the problem was always the same: No matter what cord or amp I used, the electric bass sound would fuzz in and out, never a clear bass sound. So as a project, I opened up the guts of the guitar today to see what I could fix.

Picture 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

Yes, I am a guitar newbie, and know nothing. So please help! I do have a bit of spare wiring around as well as a soldering iron, and a dad that knows a bit of electronics to boot.

Pic 4
Pic 5
Pic 6


Is there any hope left for my bass?

Well, I can say that it is definatly salvagable, but it's been butchered pretty badly.. I think you'll need to pretty much start over with that one..

In the sense of- looks like the wirings been messed with, and yes, I'd unsolder it and start again. But that's no big problem, especially if you already know how to use a soldering iron.

It looks like standard P-bass wiring to me, which should be very simple. Here's a diagram:

http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/product/WDUPH1101

Note that the wire colors from your pickup may be different but will mean the same thing. The two pickups are connected in series and then the reamining two leads go to the pot and ground. (it's a little hard to see that in the diagram, makes it look like one pickup)


But the bass is great, a lovely X630! Don't lose the knobs, those are hard to come by.

Good luck with it. It looks from the first pic like it could use a fret dressing too.

Mmkay. Just fixed a lot of the wiring. Thanks for the diagram, X189player! Anyway, the sound still isn't coming in clearly (on an amp). My bass-playing neighbor reckons it needs a new jack - anyone know a good online supplier of bass jacks? Thanks for the help again, everyone.

shoot, for a decent 1/4" jack you can't [hardly] bead Rat Shack [radio shack]
$3.50 for 2. You want 1/4" mono panel mount jack

-m

Or try digikey.com for switchcraft

Yeah, what he said, and you can get them also at most guitar centers- a jack is the same for guitar & bass. Some of the Radio Shack parts are way flimsy and considering it's a small part you may want to go premium.

Output jacks are one of the worst as far as components that actually wear out. You can test the theory by touching the wires directly to a guitar plug- you should be able to get it to work just by holding the connections together.

X189 is right about it being woth the extra $ or 2 to get a good jack. To make this kind of test easy (if you are going to be working on wiring) you can replace one end of a patch cord with to aligator clips.