UXBASS

Years later, I can tell anyone thinking of upgrading a T-Bird Pro to get a Darkglass Tone Capsule. Running just a blend, no volume, the three EQs allow for incredible tone-shaping. The original two-band EQ is useless garbage by comparison!

I’m so thankful for this post, 11 years after it began. Recently I bought a thunderbird pro V and had this very problem. I cannot believe the red wire was soldered to ground in the factory! Why didn’t the designers utilise the series/parallel system? So I’m looking to go Volume, Volume, Darkglass Tone Capsule to replace the shoddy factory preamp. To accolade the three band EQ I will drill out the third traditional pot cavity, use reflector knobs for the top three pots and keep the lower two as black metal. This was the lower two are camouflaged! I’ve also changed the tuners for lightweight ones to reduce the neck dive.

I had this exact problem, and solved it by desoldering the red wires from the back of the volume pots and adding heat shrink to them. First I tried replacing the preamp with 500k volume pots and a 250k tone pot and 0.047 cap. That did nothing. Then I started shielding everything! That includes the back of the scratch plate, pot cavity, and pickup cavities; all connected to ground. It didn’t work. Finally, I disconnected the red wires and as of by magic the bass was perfect. I feel stupid for not reading the whole thread first! Oh well. One day I may put the preamp back in, but for now I’m good. I had bought this bass for nearly nothing, so I presume the seller was lowballing the price due to the buzzing. I’m glad I could fix it with just a soldering iron. I’m shocked the factory let the basses out in this condition