XB 500 wiring help with blend pot.

[thebassbuilder]

I am trying to help a friend get this XB 500 running that he just bought and I had the bridge pup working but now I cannot get anything to work on it.  Attached is a pic of the blend pot and I added the pup wires back to it but I need to know if this is correct and how to hook wires up to run from the blend pot to the main circuit board.  I hope someone can help even if it is just pictures of everything.  I can then see how the wire run.  Hope someone can help as he needs this bass for church this Sunday.

[Tony Raven]

Since the resources at VintageWashburn.com evaporated, I don't believe the diagrammes exist anywhere on the Internet.

If the bass is really so vital, for the moment choose one pickup or the other, bypass the blend pot entirely with tack-soldered jumpers (easy to remove later, when you've got moretime to work on it).
 
And you should advise your friend to avoid

• buying a used instrument
• of dubious condition
• with active or unique circuitry
• just before a serious gig
• without having another ready-to-go instrument at hand

I greatly enjoy my main basses -- three Bantams, Ibanez EDA-905, Cort Curbow4 -- but there's good reason I keep a Precision standing by. 

[thebassbuilder]

Last night I just wired in a volume and blend pot to a new jack.  This got it working and sounding great really.  I used the back to vertical aligned knobs for the blend and volume and left all the original electronics and jack in the cavity and just tucked them to the battery side of the electronics that it came with.  I also noticed when I was able to get the bridge pup to work with the electronics that I had to keep the bass and treble knobs all the way up and if they were not it sounded muddy and quite.  Does this sund normal for these factory electronics? It also seems as if the bass and treble are boost only.

[psp742]

original wiring.. not sure how it goes.. just took pictures of my XB500.  Hope it helps.

[thebassbuilder]

Thank you so much!  I was way off where I thought the wires from the blend circuit board to the main  board.

[Tony Raven]

Bass & treble should both be boost/cut, with the center detent as 0 dB (no change). Doing an A/B with the Precision makes both controls very apparent.

Truth to tell, I play my Bantams with both tone knobs cranked to 10, because it's just so nicely rich, then adjust at the amp. And I rely on the neck (well, middle) pickup because otherwise I'd stomp all over the guitars. The bridge pickup, with Tone high & Bass low, made me curious about restringing it to play a little like Stanley Clarke's piccolo bass solos, but really not a tone I could see for general use. If I lost the bridge pickup, I wouldn't miss it much.