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OK gang, I'm making a fretless 5 string bass.

there will be two pickups. one regular magnetic humbucker, one piezo in the bridge.

I have a pair of preamps, one for each pup.

now we all know that a Les Paul has two pups, two volumes, two tones and a selector switch.

a Jazz bass has two pups, two volumes, a master tone AND NO SWITCH.......

I have wired a strat with three volumes and no switch......

So, anyone give me a good reason to get a switch?

I WILL have two volumes and two tones. but I'm undecided on the switch.

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If you install the switch, what will it do?

Pickup selector switches are rare on basses because bass players have traditionally used the dual-volume control on a jazz bass as a pickup selector. Each volume controls an individual pickup, so you can blend the pickups to nearly infinite levels. A switch limits your options to On/Off, rather than (for example) 15% neck + 75% bridge (or whatever other combination you like). So it seems to me that having dual volume controls on a bass eliminates the need for the selector switch.

Myself, I prefer Master Volume, Pickup Blend, and Master Tone controls on a passive bass. That way, I can dial in a tone I want with the blend and tone controls, and I have volume control without changing the tone. Of course, similar results could be had with Volume/Volume/Tone + Volume Pedal.

I am personally a big fan of strapping lots of controls onto a bass. I like lots of switches and knobs. You could put a series/parallel switch as a push-pull pot on the tone control. Or a killswitch...or many other things.

I think switches are good for when playing you can change tone quickly.
Something a bass doesn't need to do as much as a guitar.
Then again,
everybody wants something different there.

Bhttp://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electr ... -0032.html

You have to wire them different;
So the neck pickup doesn't roll-down when adjusting the bridge.

If you look at the Lespaul diagram, it shows an alternate method, (middle leg of pots)?

Being a (mostly) Jazz-bass player, I've been wiring my guitars like this.

Was going to wire a switch on the last one, but was not confident in the switch quality, so left it out.

JM

The blend pot allows you to vary the proportions of bridge to neck pickup and achieve quite a varirty of tones. Since you have two volumes you can do essentially the same thing, it will just take more time to manipulate the switch and two volumes to exactly what you want.

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thanks folks, I've decided to go without the pup switch, but I might put in a preamp bypass switch to avoid dead battery issues.

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That's a good idea. A lot of guys also prefer passive settings for recording whilst using the active preamp playing out.

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Old growth, shmold growth!