PRS style PJ-Bass

[kuanjb]

Got a new kit a couple weeks ago. This will make six, all still waiting to built.

I'm not a bass player but I wanted to get one to just play around a bit. Looking at a few YouTube videos on the subject I decided that just simple passive pickups was what I wanted and that a PJ-Bass setup. That would give me classic P-Bass tones plus the plucky J-Bass tones, and combinations of the two.

Looking around for kits though...... well, PB only had one kit and I wasn't really wanting to place a custom order. So the one I found instead was from eBay. Seems to be somewhere between an Ibanez and PRS styling. Pretty cheap so I wasn't really expecting much.

It's not terrible, but PB kits are definitely better quality. Not sure what wood it is. Pretty light so probably basswood and it has some sort of veneer on the front and back which hides the joins in the body. Apart from the fact that it's got large bevels so the effect is kind of lost and instead the differing grain and colour between the veneer and body wood stand out. Might do a solid colour or burst with dark edges.

I'm going to try and change the shape of the body a bit. The top horn is way too long for my tastes and I'd like to try and offset the body slightly. I'm taking inspiration from the PRS Core Bass shape.

To that end I'll modify the shape of both horns, add a lower cutaway hand scoop and take off some of the end of the body to make the bevel smaller on the end and give it the slight offset I want. I've drawn a rough outline on the guitar for the outline and contours. I think it will work.

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[kuanjb]

Photos are not uploading.....

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[Sonic Mountain]

Pics are working now. Reshape looks cool.

[kuanjb]

Finally got these to upload. Just a pic of the neck and pic of the PRS Core Bass which I'm kind of going of for the shape.

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[fender3x]

Agree that the reshape is cool looking. You may want to do a dry fit first to see how it balances. The neck is a full two-three frets longer than a standard Fender. That my be why it has the extra long upper horn to compensate.

I agree about the pickup choice. Can't go wrong with a P. The J is a little trickier. All things being equal, a P pickup has more output than a J. To complicate things further a pup in the bridge position will have less output than the same pup in the mid position.

The combination makes it hard for a bridge J to keep up with a mid P. To compensate some people put a big humbucker or a "double jazz" in the bridge.

What I put in mine were a set of EMG Geezer Butler's. These are passive EMGs, and the J pup is both humbucking and has high output. Simple and they sound great...and they are not super expensive.

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[kuanjb]

Agree that the reshape is cool looking. You may want to do a dry fit first to see how it balances. The neck is a full two-three frets longer than a standard Fender. That my be why it has the extra long upper horn to compensate.

I agree about the pickup choice. Can't go wrong with a P. The J is a little trickier. All things being equal, a P pickup has more output than a J. To complicate things further a pup in the bridge position will have less output than the same pup in the mid position.

The combination makes it hard for a bridge J to keep up with a mid P. To compensate some people put a big humbucker or a "double jazz" in the bridge.

What I put in mine were a set of EMG Geezer Butler's. These are passive EMGs, and the J pup is both humbucking and has high output. Simple and they sound great...and they are not super expensive.

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Thanks for the feedback.

It is a 24 fret like the PRS but the fret board goes quite a way into the body hence why I wanted to add the PRS style scoop to give better access to those higher frets. Whether I'll use them or not is another question. The length of the two horns I'm also basing off the PRS with them lining up to about the same frets. With the lighter wood the balance may not work as you say though. A dry fit is probably a good idea.

As for the PJ pickups I see that there varying opinions. Some people love it and others don't. Fender themselves offer the setup and you can buy PJ sets from pickup manufacturers so.....

Anyway I found a Reddit thread about it and if the sound is as they suggest, a P Bass with the optional addition of the J Bass, then I'll be happy enough. Like I said, I'm not a Bass player so it's just to fiddle around with. If I end up playing it lots then I'll look at different pickup options in the future.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bass/commen...m_source=share

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[kuanjb]

Pics are working now. Reshape looks cool.

Thanks.

Might have had something to do with the Google outage today. Effected blob storage in Google cloud services.

Anyway I think the reshape does make it look better. Still wondering about making the bevel even larger in line with the PRS. And I'm wondering if the offset might need a bit more work to make it more in line with the angle of the horns.

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[kuanjb]

So I've ordered some new pickups for the build. Went with Warman Guitars:

P-Bass black stealth - https://www.warmanguitars.co.uk/prod...-4-79-henries/

Jazzbar Bass Humbucker - https://www.warmanguitars.co.uk/prod...ire-overwound/

The latter will require routing the J-Bass bridge pickup cavity out a bit more and I'll add a three way mini toggle switch to allow switching the humbucker between single coil, parallel and series.

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[kuanjb]

Been looking at finish options for this build. Due to the average wood I'm looking at doing a solid colour using spray cans. Some auto shops have paint matching systems which can produce an acrylic paint spray can to match any manufacturer's colour as long as they have the paint code.

So I'm looking at cars and what colours are available. I like dark coloured guitars so I'm probably going to go for a black pearl of some description. Black Gold Pearl, Black Copper Pearl or Amethyst Black Pearl are the colours I'm currently looking at. Basically a translucent black with different coloured metallic flake. Don't mind some of the metallic red and orange cars though.... Paint isn't exactly cheap. $70 for primer, base coat, and clear top coat.

[dave.king1]

The McLaren should be orange but that is simply stunning