S/P switches

[Scott Reed]

Hiya. I just picked up my new (2nd) Smith on Monday... BSR5MSG... and it has the S/P switches. The salesman did a good job of explaining how they work but to be honest... I wasn't listening very closely (I was wondering how I was going to explain the new bass to my wife).

I'm interested in a more "application oriented" explanation of the system. Specifically, how the system works and when/how a player might want to employ the various settings. For example, one of the guys in the store said " By doing this <turned some knobs and flipped some switches>, you can get a good P-Bass sound and by doing this....".

I basically look for 3 tones in a night... A thicker slap tone, a vintage finger tone, and a clear solo tone.

On my BSR4J, I typically just run everything flat which is perfect for my solo tone. For the slap tone, I just boost the low end a little (very little) and for the vintage tone, I just roll a little to the neck pickup.

I have a gig tonight and want to experiment with some of the tone variations but would like to have a little idea of what to expect before I start flipping switches in the middle of a set hehe.

Thanks in advance for any input or advice.

[Bob Faulkner]

honestly, the best way to figure it out is to set everything flat, fade to a single pickup and play some notes and flip the switch for that pickup.. you'll hear the difference.. take that effect and just keep it in mind while blending the pickups and setting your eq...

in a nutshell, series gives you a more full and boomy tone from that pickup position while parallel gives you a more even response..

I tend to run the neck pickup in parallel to get the even tone from that position and the bridge in series to help balance the natural high end response from that position. And I run with the fader favoring the bridge pickup just a bit.

I'm sure someone else will chime in with a better description.