Re-wiring an old P Bass Copy

[wazkelly]

My youngest son has a couple of cheap Korean made F style Magnum guitars that possibly date back to late 80's for the P Bass and mid 90's for the Strat.

Stock hardware on the Bass is OK whilst rubbish on the Strat where I have replaced and/or modified many things over the past 10 - 15 years or so.

Not much work done on the Bass other than new strings, intonation, and the pearloid pick guard several years ago. Recently discovered tone pot was frozen and also no signal so time to check things out.

With upgrading many parts on current PBG builds I have ended up with a few spare parts and decided to use Junior's axes to try some of them out.

For this Bass I had a choice of 2 x A500k pots and 3 x B500k pots and was surprised at the variance in resistance. Both A's read around 470k to 480k whilst the B's ranged from 508k up to 520k so I picked an A & B with the closest readings for the refurb. Also had a fresh jack hanging around which was stereo and a spare 0.047 Orange Drop Cap. Here are some shots before changes were made>

[wazkelly]

Not surprised why there was no signal as I found a wire broken between tone and volume pots which may have possibly been part of the grounding loop too.

Looked everywhere for basic P Bass wiring diagrams and there are S@#$loads of mods on the net but so hard to find the simple original and ended up using about 4 different ones pinching a bit from here and there and also referencing back to the parts being replaced in this guitar as that proved to be the best way to go after discovering an earthing problem on the volume knob after first attempt.

Corrosion was evident all over the old parts and the original wires were so thin I had to scrap them all except for wires coming from PUP's. Kept the Earth wire too as it was much thicker than the rest. First tricky bit was doing the stereo jack and after studying it for a couple of minutes eventually figured out which posts to use. Would have used Mono if I had a suitable spare but makes no difference in the end.

Here are some shots after completing and testing the circuit for a signal.

Plugged it in and sounds good for a budget end axe. Hard to recall what it sounded like before but at least it works now with no buzzing or earth shorting sounds. At least the tone knob now makes a difference whereas before it was permanently on 10.

[Swanny]

Interesting to see how much better you can make them, Waz. I have a Magnum Custom Series that I bought new around 1990, it's a strat copy with a Floyd Rose tremolo, locking nut and a wild paint job. It's always been a pleasure to play when ever I pull it out of the case - not that I could ever do it justice!

[wazkelly]

Cheers Swanny. My Son's Magnum Strat has one of the best neck setups I have ever done. So low and smooth and easily it's best feature. First upgrade was to install Schaller machine heads after an original one fell apart whilst tuning. Otherwise just lowered the action and corrected the intonation as it was already pretty damn good. Eventually played around with PUP's but surprisingly originals were nearly as good as the replacements until their bases fell apart near the mounting screw holes. I will put up a separate post on it as the PUP wiring/switching is a bit out there for a Strat.

Other than about 4 hours this mod only cost me $4 for the Orange Cap plus 2 x $6 for the Bourns mini's going into another axe.

[DrNomis_44]

@ wazkelly, I think there's a P-Bass wiring diagram in my Guitar Player Repair guide book, if you want I can take a pic of it and post it here for you, also, I noticed that Pitbull Guitars stock P-Bass pickups in the upgrades section.

[wazkelly]

@ wazkelly, I think there's a P-Bass wiring diagram in my Guitar Player Repair guide book, if you want I can take a pic of it and post it here for you, also, I noticed that Pitbull Guitars stock P-Bass pickups in the upgrades section.

Thanks Doc, job is already done. Happy with sound of the original PUP's and as my son is not a serious Bass player so no point spending more coin on upgrading them. Been there and done that when I was his age with upgraded diMarzio's that hardly made a noticeable difference other than emptying my bank account at the time.

[DrNomis_44]

Thanks Doc, job is already done. Happy with sound of the original PUP's and as my son is not a serious Bass player so no point spending more coin on upgrading them. Been there and done that when I was his age with upgraded diMarzio's that hardly made a noticeable difference other than emptying my bank account at the time.

No worries, this thread reminded me of a Squire P-Bass I scored for not much money, it needed some new tuners, replacement electronics, and a set of new strings to get it up and running, it turned out to be a good Bass Guitar.

[Swanny]

Here's a quick pic of my old Magnum... Go the 90's!

[DrNomis_44]

Here's a quick pic of my old Magnum... Go the 90's!

Cool paint job on that guitar Swanny, yeah the 90's was a good decade for guitars, I used to collect Guitarist and Guitar Player magazines during the 90's and they always had lots of pics of cool looking guitars in them.

[wazkelly]

Wild paint job with a floating trem too. Do you still have it Swanny?