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OK so a good friend of mine has moved overseas and left me with his spare bass and amp. I don't know a huge about about these things, other than bass players tend to have more time on their hands than us guitarsit, since they've got two less strings.
Anyway I've cleaned re-strung and intonated the thing, plugged it to have a bit of a play only to find its got 4 bad lots. Yes, you heard me. All four pots seem to be bad.
The axe its self is an Ashton AB1100, which is from way back when Ashton actual put some care and effort into their instruments. Its a neck through, made of mahogony and either rose wood or wenge I'm guessing. Either way the construction is pretty good.
I opened up the back cover to find some arsehole has messed about with the wiring, using duct tape in places to join wires. From what the owner tells me, this was done by a rather well known Wellington guitar shop, whom I also won't be having dealings with any more, due their ham fisted wiring on an instrument of mine years ago.
So to cut a long story short, does anyone have any ideas on how I can figure out how to re-wire this thing? It's all active components, they look like standard 25k active pots. Problem being they're soldered into a circuit board. I'm thinking it might be easier to replace the lot with EMG's or SD's.

You got any pictures? I'm Welly based so might be able to help you out

You can see the amazing tape wiring system here. How easy is it to remove pots from circuit boards and solder in new ones?

are the pickups active? Probably easier to just rip everything out, test the pickups are good and dump a whole new wiring harness in

druz15 wrote:are the pickups active? Probably easier to just rip everything out, test the pickups are good and dump a whole new wiring harness in

Correct, active pups indeed. It's not volume, tone, volume, tone though. It's volume, blend, tone, volume. I think, but because it's not working properly, I can't tell.

IS it possible the tape is just there to stop the soldered joints shorting, it's pretty common, although heat shrink is more common... But it doesn't look terrible.

Have you tried a new battery?

Polar Bear wrote:IS it possible the tape is just there to stop the soldered joints shorting, it's pretty common, although heat shrink is more common... But it doesn't look terrible.

Have you tried a new battery?

It doesn't sound like a battery issue to me as the with most active circuitry you still get a small level of output. Where as with this you get almost zero output when faded to the bridge pickup and full output from the neck. AS I said above I can't even tell what a couple of the controls are meant to be as the don't appear to work at all.

You say the Battery is ok and by what you describe the Neck pick up is working.

Try:

Neck pick up volume pot may or may not work: Can you try to adjust the volume of the Neck pick up please?

Question: does the neck volume pot work?

now try the Tone pot on the neck pick up. Both pick ups will interact with the tone pot as it is a Master Tone.

Question: Does the Tone pot work with the neck pick up?

if the Neck pick up works with Volume and Tone then you know for sure the battery is ok.


The issue could be the blend pot.
The issue could be the Bridge Pick up.

Will try some trouble shooting on it tonight. Reports to follow.

Came across an ashton bass once, fretboard felt like they'd gone to the trouble of sharpening the edges of it, and the frets were similarly finished.

OK, so the thing seems to have a master volume, blend, low EQ, and a high EQ. The EQ section seems to work fine, the blend is a little crackly and the circuit completely dies on rare occasions. The volume is where all the fun is, you can barely even look at it and the whole instrument goes dead. At present it seems to operate like an on off switch. Full volume or nothing at all, and getting it to full volume requires a gentle touch, cause the slightest bump and you've got nothing.
I see Realtone sell 25k pots, the same as you'd find on most active guitar circuits. I assume active bass circuits use the same.

you might be better off re soldering the pot back onto the board and checking the connections to each pot.
the pot might be ok, you might have a loose connection.
if you can solder, breath in and check each connection.

I'm thinking at the least. I'll have to remove the masking tape and re-set any existing solder joints that look dodgey.