help wiring an olp bass with nordstrand 5.3

[Adam Medlock]

Hi,

I am hoping that you guys can be of some assistance, I play an olp mm5 which I have had for years and turned slowly but surely into a frankenbass, new tuner, de- fret, respray etc. and I love the bass. I recently bought a nordstrand mm5.3 pickup to upgrade from the stock and have since found the error of my ways, in that I should have bought a 5.2 or .4 for a much simpler conversion. I have been told that I would need to have the same ernie ball preamp for this pickup to work correctly with it being a triple humbucker. I have managed to wire it so that I can get both the front and back poles to work independently with noc hum cancelling, however when both on together I am completely out of phase. Emailing nordstrand I have been told that I would need the ernie ball pre/ 3 way blade to get the pickup to work. I am not the best when it comes to wiing/ electronics so I am asking if anyone could help me with how to wire the pickup, or what I would need to purchase to get my bass to work.

In an ideal world I would love to have a volume, tone and 3 way pickup selector, in place of the stock V/V/T, so any advice on how to wire or sort would be greatly appreciated.

I am also aware that I will probably also get the reply "I should just buy a music man" but firstly I haven't the funds, and secondly, I defretted that bass with my dad after he came out of chemotherapy, so there is no way I'm getting rid.

Thank you in advance for any help you guys can give.

 

[Golem]

`


MusicMan electronics are not sold seperately from complete MM instruments.
You will need to find some other EQ-pre that offers the switching options for
a 3-coil humbugger [splittable humber plus dumbie].

Tho I'm no electrical engineer, I do think that the key is in the switching
and that the EQ-pre need not have any special features. IOW, the switching
needs to choose either the "normal" pair of humbugging coils, plus have an
option to play half of that same pair along with the dumbie.

You can't have BOTH halves of the "normal" humbugging pair availalble for
single-coil tone IF you want humbugging with your SC tone. The "normal"
pair of coils are built oppositely [sorta mirror of each other] to create the
usually dual coil humbugger and OBVIOUSLY the dumbie CANNOT be built
to be an opposite ["mirror"] of BOTH of your "normal" pair of coils.

Anywho, so you get play the normal humbugging pair, and ONE half of
that pair can also be played as a single coil WITH the dumbie engaged for
humbugging duty. Meanstwhilst, the switch that tends to all this will just
pass the resultant mono signal along to the EQ-pre and there seems to
be no reason why that can't be just about any old ordinary EQ-pre. The
only way I can imagine requiring a very specific EQ-pre would be some
situation where both the PU and the EQ were intentionally very far "off
balance" contour-wise and, as a necessarily mated pair, had been built
with opposite but complimentary tone contours such that when the two
opposing contours interact the end result is a balanced tone.

MM PUs are not weidly contoured, as evidenced that they can be played
in passive mode [no EQ-pre] and still serve as perficklee good bass PUs.
Ergo presto, MM EQ-pre's must also NOT be weirdly contoured, therefore:
It seems that acquiring a specific MM EQ-pre for your Nordy PU would
NOT be necessary. IOW, you use ANY normal EQ-pre suitable for bass.

Maybe I'm wrong. That COULD happen .... someday

BTW, I had an OLP MM5. It had dual humbuggers, and was a 30" bari,
IOW it was a copy of a MM Silhouette [but I restrung it as a bass-6.] I
get the impression yours has a single PU ? Mine was passive, VVT.


`

 

[Adam Medlock]

thank you for your input, i'd be more than happy if i had just back pickup single with cancel and humbuckin togethe, will look into it,