{"id":10005,"date":"2016-11-01T11:04:38","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T16:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=10005"},"modified":"2016-11-01T11:20:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T16:20:34","slug":"what-does-a-perfect-jazz-bass-preamp-installation-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/repair\/what-does-a-perfect-jazz-bass-preamp-installation-look-like.html","title":{"rendered":"What does a “perfect” Jazz Bass preamp installation look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What you see above is a photo of Tom Ambrose, owner of what looks like an ordinary Jazz Bass from a quick glance. But it’s anything but ordinary.<\/p>\n

Now before we get into the instrument you see above, there are a lot of Jazz Bass owners who love the idea of stuffing a preamp into a Jazz Bass, only to try it and ultimately give up for one reason. Lack of space.<\/p>\n

The standard route on a Jazz Bass leaves you very little room to work where preamps are concerned. One of the few preamps that can be installed with no modifications is the John East J Retro<\/a> (with this one in particular<\/a> fitting a standard J Bass).<\/p>\n

What would you have to do if you decided to use something other than the J Retro?<\/p>\n

You’d have to use what’s known as a combination route:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4962\"<\/p>\n

This is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to a “perfect” preamp installation in a Jazz Bass.<\/p>\n

The J-Bass seen above is a custom build Sadowsky<\/a> with absolute ridiculous attention to detail (note: the little bubbles you see in the wood are from protective plastic film and not the wood itself).<\/p>\n

A combination route is where both the front and<\/em> the rear have spaces made to fit whatever is needed. And where this route is concerned, this one is incredible. The black area is not<\/em> a plastic nor metal insert, but rather carefully applied coats of shielding paint. The cover is secured with inlaid brass machine screw bushings, the output jack has a transparent boot for extra grounding protection, the battery has a route-within-a-route so the power source is kept as “clean” as possible, and there is even “star” grounding (seen top right) where all ground leads meet at a single point. <\/p>\n

Do you<\/em> have to craft something as good as this to get a preamp in your Jazz Bass?<\/h3>\n

No. The point in showing this is that unless you’re using a preamp specifically designed for the tiny amount of space of a standard J-Bass such as the J Retro, it is almost a requirement to make space in the back of the body to fit in all the new hardware. Note that we said it is almost<\/em> a requirement. It’s still possible to stuff a preamp in a standard J-Bass body, but it will be a very tight fit and very difficult to install it “clean”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What you see above is a photo of Tom Ambrose, owner of what looks like an ordinary Jazz Bass from a quick glance. But it’s anything but ordinary. Now before we get into the instrument you see above, there are a lot of Jazz Bass owners who love the idea of stuffing a preamp into … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}