I am seeking help for a recently aquired Warwick Nobby-Meidel 1983 with original Alembic PJ actuators and electronics.

The Alembic PUs sound fantastic, but the PJ balance poti works reversed (balance back => P ;  front => J), and on the P output has far too much power.
Further, when turning the balance to the J, the P remains active (it doesn't go fully silent).

Thank you for your help, Ulrich

Hi Ulrich, welcome to the Club!


It should be fairly easy to switch the P and J connections on the pan pot. There should be two brown connectors attached to the pan pot- carefully remove them (there's a lip thingy keeping the plug down) and plug them in again in the correct order. Not much room for manoeuvering in there, so you may be better off taking it all out of the instrument. You might want to wait a little because...


The pickup balance issue is well known, and there's a Pan Preamp available from the webstore that actually adds a second preamp, so you can set the gain for each pickup independently. Though on a pan pot, I don't think you can completely silence one pickup.


I would also recommend shielding the electronics cavity all around, to where the brass backplate touches the wood, and where the pots and jack pass through the wood. You might then be able to take out the earth wires.

Hi Adriaan,

Many thanks for your reply!

I switched the cables P/J at the 1st pot (volume) and I realised that the 2nd is not a balance, but it ALSO is a volume pot.
Switched the cables back and adjusted the PU height. It really is about mixing the 2 volume pots.
After all the P PU is just very, very powerful as compared to the J PU.

May have to fiddle a bit with the trim pot at the tone pot to get the output right.

Thanks again, Ulrich

Ah, good to know there are different configurations out there. Have fun!

Yes, I believe the older ones are Volume Volume Filter - I have a PJ set that I bought used with that configuration (which I prefer anyway)

Remember that this is an active system so having the volume all the way up isn't necessarily "zero" - I set the volume on mine to match my passive basses, so usually I have the volume on my P pickup at maybe 50-60%? Then mix in the Jazz to taste (I never us the Jazz pickup by itself)