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Greasebucket circuit removal mod for Fender American Special Jazz Bass

What is a Fender Greasebucket circuit and what does it do?

The Fender Greasebucket Tone Circuit was introduced in 2005. It’s called Greasebucket because it is based on the shape of the oil-filled capacitor.

Where Fender bass guitars are concerned, this tone circuit appears specifically in American Special Fender bass models which, according to Fender, “rolls off highs while maintaining low-end definition.”

Is the Greasebucket circuit still in the American Special Jazz and Precision bass models? As of this writing, yes it is.

Good? Great? Bad? Awful?

Some players like the Greasebucket circuit while others don’t really care for it – enough to want to remove that tone circuit entirely.

It is possible to remove the tone circuit, but it must be done in a way where you don’t accidentally reverse the direction of the tone knob.

This video below shows what happens when you remove the tone circuit and the tone knob direction is reversed:

If you have an American Special Jazz Bass, want the Greasebucket circuit out and don’t want to reverse the direction of the tone knob, the solution is (using the above video as the example) is to move the two white wires from lug 1 to lug 2, then wire the capacitor to lug 3.

By wiring it up that way, the direction of the knob won’t be reversed.

Also, for those interested, the replacement capacitor used in the video was a .047uf (microfarad) polyester-film capacitor.

5 thoughts on “Greasebucket circuit removal mod for Fender American Special Jazz Bass”

  1. The grease bucket sounds so much better. I love it on my American Special P Bass. I see no advantage in removing it. Thanks for showing us this comparison.

    Reply

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