Intro - Had simliar experience as Oli - weak Sabre PUPs

[dsteinschneider]

So, some time back I acquired another Sabre: Beautiful transparent red body with poly finished maple neck. A combination I've always wanted. However, while the natural unamplified sound of this bass is really nice, the electric output does not meet my expectations. The level is much lower than any of my other MM/EBMMs, and even when levelled to the same loudness this bass sounds noticably thinner and lifeless.

Hi Oli,

I have almost the same bass (mine has Sabre bridge - yours seems to have a modern Stringray bridge) and it too had the low output problem. I took the bass on trade for a Peavey 1810 cab and Mark IV amp back in the early 90's. I assumed it was because it had those smaller "guitar pickups" instead of the usual pole piece exposed Stingray pickups. As it was before the internet I didn't have a chance to learn that perhaps the pickups could have been re-magnetized. I just assumed the Sabre pickups weren't that great and for that reason everyone played Stingrays instead.

Despite the low output I really liked the bass anyway and ended up having Lane Poor install his MMHB (humbucking) in the bridge position and his MM4DW (Dual coil wide aperture) in the neck position. He put in his preamp and re-used the 5 way switch to give me just the bridge, both pickups or just the neck. I had no plans to ever sell the bass so I had Lane Poor route the pickup openings to fit his standard size MM pickups.

I gave the stock pickups and preamp to Lane, perhaps Henry Patenaude at Lane Poor Legacy still has them laying around.

It's an amazing looking and sounding bass now. It sounds like a Stingray on the bridge pickup. The neck pickup has a very full sound somewhat like a Precision but with a deeper tone. The bass is very versatile, I bet EBMM will do well with the reissue.