Hb-4s

[blinddrew]

I could have a look at my Club 50 if that would help?

[Simon Barden]

The kit control plate would be quite hard to modify as you’d need to find a suitable PCB mounting pot with the correct pin spacing. You nay be able to modify a standard pot by twisting and cutting the lugs, but finding and using one designed for PCB mount would be easier.

But the vintage style plate would be far easier to modify with standard guitar/bass components. You really need to decide if you want to keep the functionality as per the original, or whether to reduce it or change it completely. You could have the pickup selector switches, a master volume and master tone control. Or a volume and a pickup blend control and use the switches to bring in various preset tone cut options. You are only really limited by the size of the control cavity and having just two knobs and three switches. Those sliding switches aren’t the easiest type of switch to use quickly in a live situation.

[fender3x]

Now I understand the Pitbull diagram! Thanks!

Yeah, I am with Simon about modifying the circuit board. I don't think it makes sense to mod the switching, unless you pretty much replace everything.

The easiest thing to mod is the tone cap. It comes with a .033 uf cap which may actually be a decent value for the Bartos if you go with those. If that makes the tone too dark for your taste, you could go with a .022, or if not dark enough a .047. That said, if you do go with the Bartos I'd be inclined to try it "stock" before modding anything. If you don't like it, then you can think about a change depending on *what* you don't like.

If you want to preserve the look of the faceplate, changes don't look all that simple to me because of the way the switches are mounted. Without the circuit board, or a brass plate like the originals had under the plastic top, it's not clear to me how you'd mount those slide switches.

The Bartos were designed to replace Rickenbacker pups that used a 330k log pot for volume. The pots on your control plate will either be 250K or 500K so not too far off either way.

All in all, it may be just fine stock. The only thing I am sure I would replace is the jack, since the kit jacks are pretty flimsy.

[fender3x]

I could have a look at my Club 50 if that would help?

Very cool that you have one of these ;-) I have never seen one in person but from the pics I have always thought they were the coolest looking Hofners. I am guessing the tone circuit is the same. If you have it out, I'd love to see a pic, but I wouldn't ask you to take it out just to take a pic...

[c0ffinspire89]

I could have a look at my Club 50 if that would help?

Echoing fender3x, that is extremely cool that you have a Club 50! I also agree that, while a picture would be very interesting and helpful, please don't feel like you need to go out of your way unless it's already out.

Thank you all for the extremely helpful information! After getting a chance to get home and get a closer look at the control plate, I agree that it would be very difficult to modify. Switching the volume pot for a 500k pot for the bridge humbucker seems easy enough, but anything beyond that would be tricky. King Casey, I like your idea, I may play around with that idea on the Mustang switch, but that may be better saved for a future build. I see myself building another violin bass in the future, possibly for my sister who is also a viola player. There's still a lot to do on this kit, so I have lots of time to figure it out!

I'll be starting on the neck while I let the body sit for awhile. I bought some dowels to fill in the existing tuner holes, but I wasn't able to find the exact right size (the tuner hole is .55in where the dowels came in .5in or .625in). I'm thinking it will be better to go with the slightly larger size dowel and adjust the sizing as needed to fit the holes. I'll update as the build moves forward. Thanks again to everyone for all the help along the way!

[blinddrew]

It's only a couple of screws:





Sorry, my hand shook on this reversed one but you can still see the resistor colours I think:

[Simon Barden]

With smaller dowels you can fit them in a drill chuck and use sandpaper to sand them down to size, but 0.625" is a bit too large for a normal drill chuck.

Making the hole bigger to fit the dowel as you suggested would seem to be the best move unless you have access to a lathe.

[c0ffinspire89]

Thank you blinddrew, I appreciate you taking the time for that! And you are correct, the colors on the resistors is still easily visible.

That's really good advice Simon, thank you. Using a drill chuck hadn't occurred to me, but as you mentioned, I'm pretty sure my chuck isn't big enough for the larger dowel, and unfortunately I don't have a lathe available. I will proceed with enlarging the tuner holes first and then filling from there.

I'm lucky enough to get to work both of my jobs over the next few days, so it'll be this weekend before any updates can be made. I'll update more then, thanks again!

[fender3x]

It's only a couple of screws:

That is really cool. I don't think I have ever seen such a massive cap in a guitar/bass. It's got to be one of the more complex passive guitar circuits. Will take a little head scratching to figure out what all those filters are for in the different settings.

Other things that I had not seen before...it looks like it may have an actual carved spruce top?!

Sometime could you put up a pic of the body? Does it have the staple pups? I can remember reading interviews with Sir Paul that made me think these were relatively inexpensively built instruments. This looks like it is not just cool and light, but also really well crafted.

[blinddrew]

As requested, a couple of body shots:






It's pretty battered now, wasn't in great condition when I bought it nearly 30 years ago and it was my main gigging guitar for most of that time. It's largely retired now.