Hi all,

I recently acquired a Status Energy 4-string and while it is a nice to play instrument, the looks were a bit worn out. So I decided to re-finish it. I see Aarts has quite similar project, seems the original finish isn't the most durable one.

Start condition (wow, that's a small pic):


Hardware removed, you can see the original color under the bridge. The bass has turned yellow :


I sanded it until all that yellow hue was gone:


First coat of oil applied. Now this starts to look the way walnut should :)


I'll give it 1 or 2 more coats of oil, then it's time to re-assemble. This one came with vol-vol-tone passive electronics, but the original preamp was included. Still have to try out both and choose which one to use. I do have a EMG bass-treble control laying around, so might try that one as well...

Looking good.

If the original preamp is the same as mine it'll have a pronounced bass boost with a treble control.

Should be a great sounding bass whatever preamp you put in!

Thanks Fat Rich.

I put her back together last night, sings nicely with fresh set of strings. I'm more than happy :)

I do have some difficulties figuring out how to connect the preamp. This seems different from the preamps listed at status website. Pickups connect to the balance pot and output jack trough tone pot (seems this one has fixed bass+treble boost and the highs can then be dialled out via the tone control). But where is the preamp input? Where should the wire go from balance pot?



edit: ah, it must be those 2 loose wires... I'll try that out.

I've not seen one of those before, I'm guessing:

Pickups to blend pot
Blend pot to volume
volume to preamp in
preamp out to jack plug

Is the preamp already connected to the tip pin on the output jack? That'll be the preamp out if it is. If not it'll be one of the loose wires.

The preamp in will probably be one of the loose wires unless it's already connected to a pin on the volume pot. If the output is already connected to the jack and the input is connected to the volume pot, maybe the loose wires are grounds?

Good luck trying to figure that one out!

> Is the preamp already connected to the tip pin on the output jack?

The potentiometer on right is connected to tip. It has a cap connected to gnd from one leg, just like a passive tone control. But there's no connection from pre-amp to either jack or this tone pot.

It may as well be that someone has messed with the wirings already...

One potentiometer is directly soldered on wiring board, I thought it to be master volume (could be treble as well?). Both loose wires may actually be grounds, since they are black. I may need to draw the schematic open to figure this one out.

A-ha, I'll see if this matches. The lone "tone pot" seems fishy, none of the original pre's use 250k potentiometers. And it misses the "status" stamp, which is visible in the 2 others.

Ok, figured out the connections, here's the schematic as well.
I'm not too good with analog electronics and can't really work out how the frequency boost works...

Lost me already!

Good luck getting it connected up.

One side of the blend pot doesn't work, need to find a new one. Got it working however by soldering both pickups straight to pre. It sounded quite ok'is, but I only tried it shortly and went back to passive. It seems to me that this pre is just a buffer, there's no eq if you discount the tone pot.

In passive mode I noticed that it is louder with only neck pickup on. Both pickups fully on drops the output a bit and bridge pickup alone is quite weak. i wonder if it's due to the pickup placement or if there's something weird with my wiring or maybe the pots?

Before,


And some after pics.

Didn't he do well. Fantastic job, well done.

Great job, that has to be most satisfying.

Well done....