Audere Preamp installed. Jazz Bass upgraded.Music 

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Pako

Pako

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For those interested in spicing up your jazz bass, might I suggest the Audere Audio JZ3 preamp system. In about 20 minutes I turned my Passive Jazz bass that had Volume/Volume/Tone knobs to a Z-Switch, Balance/Mid Freq Stack, Low Freq/High Freq Stack setup! The change is really nice, the electronics are smooth, the pots feel smooth yet stiff and solid. I find the EQ to be musical yet transparent unless you really run extremes. I can get some really nice tones and have the output to keep up with the rest of my Active basses. At only $150 with no modifications needed, it was a steel. Here's some shots:

Full body with upgrade installed:


Close up of the controls:


The old plate and controls:


Back side of old pots:


Comparative shot of the new install with the old jack installed.


I did have to sand down the pick guard just a bit, but besides that...it was plug and play all the way and no solder. :)

Will post clips soon!
 
I have lots of recordings with this bass but I didn't do a scientific method to a pre and post recording so the user can A/B and hear the differences between the two. For me, I basically had two usable tones, bright for slap, and the highs rolled off for standard finger playing. Any midrange or otherwise EQ adjustments were done at the amp. Now I have EQ control at the bass, being able to leave the amp relatively flat for most cases with the occasional adjustment for room problems.
 
Every bass has it's own voicing. Generally, I like to run my eq flat on the amp and adjust accordingly on each bass. I get a more consistent sound and I tend to have a better idea what to expect when I play my different basses.

A lot of it is preference I suppose, but when you're playing with a front of house mix, they will often times take your signal pre-amplifier. So all that good EQ'ing you do on the AMP can only be heard by you. EQ on the bass, and it will effect everything, FOH, stage, and your sound. It gives you control of YOUR sound without relying on the sound guy to eq your bass the way you want to. As a result, I've grown accustom to EQ from the bass, and doing as little EQ as possible at the amp.

I recorded some cheezy clips this morning real quick, I'll get them uploaded soon.
 
:lol: I used to do some RHCP back in the day....then we went almost exclusively blues. Very little slap funk in the mix, but I sneak it in..... ;)
 
Well...still looking for the full potential of this bass, I decided to upgrade the pickups to some split coil jazz pickups from Nordstrand, NJ4SV.

What can I say....so far so good. They are a bit hotter than my stock pickups. At 50/50 blend they sound really close to each other. They're individual voicing really comes out on the neck or the bridge solo'ed.



Fender Stock Pickups at 50/50, Audere Flat. 3.25MB, Wav file.
Nordstrand NJ4SV Pickups at 50/50, Audere Flat. 3.12MB, Wav file.
 
Looks like your Hohner is configured as such according to Hohner's site:

Active Preamp w/ Dual Vol, Stacked Bass/Treble cut/boost, active/passive switch

So the first knob closest to the neck controls the volume of the neck pickup. The next knob controls the volume of the bridge pickup. Depending on where they are set, you can get a different tonal ranges to taste. The last knob on your Hohner is a bass/treble stacked knob. The bottom ring is probably the bass + or - 12db boost/cut and the top part of the knob the treble + or -12db boost/cut. The Bass boost/cut is probably fixed at 80hz and the treble boost/cut is probably fixed at 3k. The last toggle switch is to bypass the active electronics and just run it passive. This is handy if the battery goes dead on you or if you want that passive tone. Switch it back and your now using the active portion of the electronics, namely the bass/treble boost/cut eq on the stacked knob.

Hope that helps.
 
Yes it does, a lot, but what do you mean by it is set at so&so? and if you can, how could I set it to give me a very upright-sounding electric bass, and, whats the worse set up I could do on here?
 
Keichi Tsuchiya
Yes it does, a lot, but what do you mean by it is set at so&so? and if you can, how could I set it to give me a very upright-sounding electric bass, and, whats the worse set up I could do on here?
Click to expand...

In stead of different volume knobs like you, I have a single blend knob that controls how much of each pickup makes up the sound. For example, when in the middle position, it's utilizing 50% neck pickup, and 50% bridge pickup. If I roll it all the way to the front, then it's 100% neck pickup and 0% bridge.

You have two separate vol knobs so it works a bit different but the principle is the same. Try rolling off the front pickup and just run the back bridge pickup. it's hard to say without hearing your bass and amp....etc.
 
OHhhhhhh....... Sorry... Fixed at the frequency of 80 hertz and 3,000 hertz. Boosting or Cutting that 'fixed frequency'. Think of it like one of the slider EQ's in Media Player.
 

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