Pickups wiring MOD to parallel/single coil

[Rainer Bastian]

Just read this thread the first time after adding my posts and would give myself a try as a bird with a human voice:

First, if I ever try to modify a highest level bass like my Smiths I have in mind that there is at least a 99% chance to make things worse than before. I've seen a lot of mods in the past with basses of any range and I will think more than twice in future to change a factory built bass again.

Second, a Smith will never sound like a Jazz Bass - and as far as I see, nobody mentioned here to try anything like that. I own a bunch of 7enders - zero demand for a mod of my Smiths. Roberto replaced the disliked serial option and it seems he got kind of a Jazz Bass feeling without searching for one. Fine.

Third, I also own a bunch of other highest end basses which have a coil tap switch to select parallel/outer coil wiring. But one of them had a (factory installed) custom config - it has added the INNER coil option. On this bass I use 98% of the time the custom wiring, because it matches my personal taste and environment and it sounds GREAT on THIS bass, with MY hands ! I asked the manufacturer why not adding this as a standard option - would be VERY cheap, adds more flexibility and has no risk to ruin something. The answer was: 'No, we found that our standards are the best for us and everything else is not necessary. period.' I made the same change to 2 other basses of this brand and - the same result. Of course - any similarity to Smith basses is not intended. It only showed me that my taste is not necessarily the same as that of the manufacturer.

As mentioned before - I don't miss anything on my Smith basses. Roberto tried a custom config with a very minor change to the bass and is happy with it. I added an option to do the same change without losing the serial option. That's it. It's all about options - not philosophy or technology.

By the way: Personally I am not enthusiastic about lot of options and knobs. At least on Smiths I don't touch them during the show - if I use them at all.

Sorry for renewing this old thread. No response expected