Help needed on DHB-5

[Virgil Workman]

I have a DBH-5 bass I need help setting up wood bridge and wiring also. Anyone help.

[JimC]

There's pretty much always help available, but you do need to be a lot more specific. It certainly looks like one of the more complex kits electrically, although I presume yours is largely prewired as per the catalogue entry. Do you have a soldering iron and experience with it? If not then, if it is prewired as per catalogue, it might be simplest to find a mate who can wield a soldering iron and bribe him to help with a couple of beers...
How far have you got?

[Simon Barden]

Hi and welcome.

The wiring diagram for it is going top be the same as for this bass. https://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-co...t3_bass_V3.pdf

The pickups are a different type but everything else should be pretty much the same.

The bridge is a pretty simple affair and is held in place by string tension, so it's about the last thing you fit on the bass. It's a 34" scale bass, so the bridge should be initially positioned 34" away from the nut. To intonate the bridge so the bass plays in tune at the 12th fret, you'll need to move the bridge back a bit (and then maybe forwards) and then adjust the tuners so the open sting is in tune and also the string when played at the 12th fret.

The bridge has an angled saddle, so the bridge may end up pretty much at right angles to the strings, though you may still need to angle the whole bridge slightly. I'd concentrate on getting the B and G strings (the two outer strings) intonated, and the three inner ones should then be pretty close. Without fitting a fully adjustable bridge, there will always be a slight compromise with this sort of bridge.

There is always the option of then marking the bridge position (I'd use masking tape to do it with the bridge on the bass) and then using double-sided tape to hold the bridge to the top so that you don't have to keep re-intonating it after every time you remove all (or most of) the strings and the bridge then moves.

Once you've settled on a string brand, type and gauge for the bass, then you could 'pin' the bridge, rather than tape it, but thats a long way ahead.

[Virgil Workman]

Man thanks you have been major help thanks again

[Virgil Workman]

Man thanks you have been major help thanks again oh one other thing how about ground to the bridge ???

[Simon Barden]

Being wood, you can't ground the bridge.

I did once suggest a quite convoluted method of running a ground wire between the rear string ferrules and back to the control cavity which relied on being able to drill holes between the ferrule holes and then from the nearest ferrule hole to the control cavity into the cavity itself. You'd then have to run some tinned wire through and be able to trap the wire against the wood by the ferrules.

IIRC, the maker thought it was too complicated and didn't do it, and the bass was built without grounded strings. I don't think any of these bases have been built with grounded strings and no-one's complained of excessive noise. It helps that they are fitted with humbuckers, not single coils.

[Virgil Workman]

Thanks again Simon I am going to try it with out the strings being grounded hope all,works out since we play with a wireless system thanks again. Virgil

[Simon Barden]

That should certainly help.

Just be aware that finding strings for the DHB isn't that easy as you need pretty long ones. The through-body stringing and the ferrule position some way back from the bridge adds a couple of extra inches to the fully-wound string length needed compared to a standard P-bass style bridge. So look for manufacturers' extra-long ones, especially those marketed for suiting 35" scale length basses.

[Virgil Workman]

Thanks again I am setting electric connections today the tone control is backwards from the link you sent me will it work this way. Sorry to be such a pain but this is not as simple as I thought thanks again

[Simon Barden]

It will work. You can have the variable resistor (potentiometer) first in series and then capacitor to ground, or the capacitor and then the variable resistor to ground. It works exactly the same.

The capacitor runs between the signal and ground and passes all but the low frequencies. The potentiometer is wired as a variable resistor which limits the amount of current that flows down to ground via the capacitor, and the more resistance there is in that circuit, the less high-end gets passed to ground. With the pot fully up, you should have 500k ohms of resistance, so almost nothing at all flows, so you get maximum brightness from the pickups. With the pot fully down, there is no extra resistance, so all the high end signal flows to ground, leaving just the bass. Somewhere in the middle, you have some of the highs flowing to ground, but not all of them. So in this instance it doesn't matter if the variable resistor is before or after the capacitor, it does the same job in both locations.

In some circuits the sequence of components is important, but here it's not.