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Let the designer design, I say!

Haha, I had a very similar thought. My original request to Martin was a simple small footprint 100W valve head with 3 band EQ. That was it. Was content to let the finer aspects be left to the man designing and building. I do like some of the ideas floating around here and very much appreciate Martin’s input and ideas here. I’m confident we’ll end up with a pretty fine little amp but there will be a fair few people saying either “I wanted this” or “I wouldn’t have done that”. We can’t please everyone.

These monsters were collected over the weekend from a lovely chap near Southport. Barely used, I now have an SVT CL, 410HE and 115E! Really, I've bought it all for the studio but always kinda fancied an Ampeg rig and is something of a contrast to my usual Trace Elliot setup(s!). Initial impressions are very good both in terms of build quality (these are chinese examples) and performance - the biggest surprise is that EQ being very powerful and flexible - I had no issue dialling my usual noise. Whilst I've not yet used it at 'stun' or 'kill' volumes, power certainly doesn't feel like it's going to be an issue! 😀

I'm looking for the same thing that @Merton asked for in the initial talks, a small footprint simple amp with a 3 band eq, if it can have a di then that's great but for me the simpler the amp the better. @Stonehamknows what he is doing so I'm very happy to leave the finer points to his expertise. Matt

Have 4 speakon combo jack two per tap. Draw a big box around two and write “min 4 ohm total load” - big box around the other two “min 8 ohm load” - then make sure you don’t ask the singer to set your rig up.

So far I'm going with a 3 band EQ, but will be capable of boost or cut and will be flat with dials at 12 o'clock. It should have the option of some pre-amp drive so a gain switch could offer that. Yes sliders add a lot of complexity to a small production run, plus pots are so much easier to service or replace long term. Speaker outputs - jack and speakon, 8 ohm and 4 ohm outputs. I don't like impedance switches due to the high currents, it's a weak link. Transformer driven D.I output. Do you guys bother with send/return jacks? Or a pre-amp output

That clip reminds me of the best thing I've read about the Who (nicked from David Hepworth): "Lots of bands have a lead singer and a lead guitarist, but the Who had a lead singer, a lead guitarist, a lead bassist and a lead drummer..." 😁

To be fair to Bass Direct, building an ecommmerce site with stock management and all the other stuff they need will cost tens of thousand of pounds, and it’s a lot of money to drop when inflation is biting. So they’re not as slick as Thomson or Amazon, but the cash is going to bass players not bald weird billionaires.

I weighed this, it’s just over 8lbs, and my intentions were to put it up for sale. But I just can’t! Look at it! And it plays nicer than anything else too. So I thought I’d stick a picture of it on here. Anyone else got any “modern” Tokai? I’ve owned loads of the basses and guitars over the years, regret selling a few, but this one is awesome. Plus look at that burst, now I know why I stared at the pictures of it online for ages before I got it a few years back.

Hi All, Wanted to share my second bass build with you fine folk (first build here). Overall I am pretty pleased with it. It sounds great if I may say so - reminds me of a punchier P-Bass. I suspect that's down to the pickups more than my craftsmanship or choice of woods, so I'd happily use those EMGs again (if I can ever get my hands on some). I did make a few mistakes and won’t highlight them all here for fear of being too self-critical, but the main things I’d change design-wise are the headstock as the break angles for the strings aren’t great (would also match the headstock topwood a bit better to the body), and the neck profile ended up a little thin for my liking. But this is all a learning process. The next build that I've just started will go back to basics - a variation of a P/J bass, so I can focus on getting the finish perfect and not worry about cutting funky wood shapes, exotic top woods etc. Will also post that here when it’s ready! Main specs as follows: 32 inch scale Chambered mahogany body Walnut and flame maple top Walnut neck Rosewood fretboard EMG CSX pickups EMG BQS preamp ABM bridge system

As the title suggests... I've moved country and needed a bass to keep me company while the others are back waiting for me overseas. The Tokai came up for a good deal on gumtree, I went to check it out and couldn't leave without it. This thing is mad. It's hot, bling, garish and built like an anvil. Sounds ballsy and plays superbly too. It's like if Arnold Schwarzenegger were a drag queen, but it's a bass. Anyway, here's pics.

Then he could eat his hat!

This thread is becoming a text book example of design by committee.

For years I had my action higher than Fender standard settings as I was rather heavy handed, which was what I needed at the time, however I`ve found that having the action a fair bit lower than Fender standard makes me play with a more measured approach, so horses for courses, have the action that suits your current style of playing.

Let's not forget Danny's mastery of the 'bass face' - check the end if his solo at 4:10...

This always stays with me as utterly beautiful. Wistful vocals and Danny Thompson as super DB support. And if you don't like it, each to their own!

On the basis of them being potentially unreliable and difficult to get hold of, I’d say not..

I'm always impressed by this kind of playing, and this crew are as tight as a gnats chuff, but I can't listen to more than a minute at a time, which is better than Jazz, which gets around 15 seconds... Excellent work. Also, as posting 2 now has a precedent, Mr. Karn, one of the most innovative bass players around, still holds up 35 years later, no-one sounds like Japan.

From a separate thread where the OP stated that he bought this amplifier second-hand I get the impression it may be as much as 10 years old. I'm not saying that the previous owner knew of a problem but failure after only two gigs is quite "unlucky". Any Markbass LM sized head (LM2,3, 250, Tube, etc) will slot into this combo. The OP might find a newish second-hand one for less than a repair. I'm also not so sure the authorised repair shop will supply this assembly without performing the repair itself.

When an amp is not designed to be repaired at the component level, you generally get the benefit of a more inexpensive purchase price but then suffer the consequences of needing to replace assemblies rather than component level repair. This is not a big deal where the designs have a history of long, reliable life, but can be very costly (for both the manufacturer and end user) if the failure rate is high and the failures affect amps less than say 10-15 years. At this point, doing the "true cost of ownership" calculations shows that the cheaper amp built this way may in fact be more expensive than the more expensive amp that has a longer, more trouble-free life. As a society, we have become more accepting of "disposable" consumer goods, and there are companies within our industry that specialize in this model. Ultimately, when these products are manufactured "off shore", not only is there the loss due to the cost of a product that is considered disposable, but there is also the loss of income to those within your region who would have built the product "in region" or "in country" that affect the local health of the economy. This is something that we began studying in engineering economics back when I was in university (a very long time ago, I assure you), I assume that it has taken on added importance in recent years.

There are a couple of things going on here that the marketing departments jumped on like rabid dogs... First, there is the obvious limitation of the high frequency driver which is no more than about 35-40 watts RMS above 800hz. There is dynamic mechanical power handling above this, but in practice, due to the sensitivity difference between the HF and LF sections, this doesn't even come into play. Typically the HF section is at least 10dB more sensitive than the LF section on a cabinet like this. So, even if the amp is nominally capable of delivering "1000 watts" (or whatever number), the internal processing limits this back to no more than 100 watts for "survive-ability" reasons. Second, looking at the LF section, the driver is not going to be capable of more than 400 watts RMS at low frequencies, therefore in the processing, the limiting and HPF algorithms are often dynamic and increase the amount of limiting as level gets higher and frequency gets lower. This too improves "survive-ability". Since this is a biamped speaker, the easiest and most common solution is to use the same power amp design for both channels, and use the driver's impedance plus processing to manage the real world power levels delivered to the speaker. For example, the amp might be rated at 1000 watts RMS at 4 ohms, but if the drivers are 8 ohms (or even 16 ohms in the case of the HF driver), the unprocessed power available would be 500 watts RMS to the LF and 250 - 500 watts to the HF. There's nothing wrong (and a LOT right) with managing power this way but IMO the real issue is with the way the numbers are manipulated by the marketing folks in a way that appears deceptive even if that's not the intent. Incidentally, this is a major conflict at many companies, between the design/engineering departments and marketing departments.

Some basses don’t come setup very well which can make them hard work to play, if your confident doing a few tweaks yourself then I’d say go for it, if your not it’s not overly expensive to have it done for you, it’s nice to get it to the point that you’re happy with and then you can just get on with playing it , your in the best place for advice, there’s some very helpful people here 👍

That’d be a good starting point. Then you can measure the results and use them on other basses.

A Small Stone has joined the team. Only got it yesterday but first impressions are good - I have had a few phasers (grape, phase 100/90 most recently) and they’ve all had their good points. Sadly all of them distort with the super high output of my SB1 but this one doesn’t. What it does do is go from chorus kind of swelling to crazy lazer sounds at fairly random points around the dial, and the ‘colour’ switch doesn’t add anything good for bass - but I think at a slow setting it sounds fab. Now I need a big muff to complete the set.

That recommended setting has had me ruching off to measure mine and, wouldn't you know it, 2.5mm at the 12th. You'd think I'd know my set up, but I measure at the 17th fret for reasons that pass understanding, or are lost in the mists of time.

That was part of the design intent of the pedal. You can either run the parallel or 1/4" out to your amp and send the XLR output to the mixer.

Nice These are the sets we'll be playing on Saturday night, after a shorter one at the Cider, Rum & Reggae festival at Trowbridge in the afternoon.

Fender standard is 2.5mm at 12th fret (give or take - they have more info here: https://support.fender.com/en-us/knowledgebase/article/KA-01903). It may well not come that way! I agree with ezbass. Personally I like the Fender standard settings. I think setting the action without ensuring the neck relief is correct first is asking for a cascade of niggling issues. When getting a new bass I'd hope to get a free setup from the shop, if second hand I'd want to do or buy in a setup.

Wherever I lay my hate. Pino and others

Chris Squire: With a nod to Enwistle as well, and Leigh Gorman of Bow Wow Wow: There are loads of others of course, and I’ll always have a soft spot for this bloke 😉:

You just daisy chain 1 cab off another. Very few cabs have no parallel option.

I’ve seen plenty of basses where the grub screws move over time. None of them had low tension flats. Used to happen with my old P Bass.

I play quite a bit of reggae and hence need a lot of bottom end at fairly high volumes. And I have found that to get the least noise/distortion and risk of farting out from my rig (rack), I put the power amp (class D) on full or virtually full and set my bass to about 3/4 full volume then start to increase the gain on my preamp till I get to the volume I need for the gig. That way I get a clean sound, lots of clean headroom and less chance of farting at low volume from my cab. If I do it the other way and set the pre-amp high and then use the power amp to set the stage volume i tend to get more hiss from the preamp and more chance of the cab farting out at low or high volumes. It i'm using a standard type of bass head, the ones i have tried are too hissy if i turn the master volume to full and then bring up the pre-amp gain. That said my Mesa boogie Walkabout has never made my cabs fart out but can start to be edgy if it's up to loud and it is quite hissy if up loud. The worst for causing farting out I have found are those heads with a sub/octave button, i turn those off.

I've been gigging for 20 years and only ever bought one bass and one amp with me to gigs. Never broken a string. If my amp does let go, I have a Radial DI on standby. I have a TC Unitune in case the Polytune goes. Simple load in, easy to set-up and go.

I could bring 3 Js so there would be a few with the right number of pickups.

Yeah, naming conventions of footprints and symbols is a biggie. Several times I've had to start from scratch as I've forgotten what I've called things

I am not following this line of insurance BS. Do they decline to insure your house because Boy George might come over for a BBQ and trip on your front step?

Nobody seems to like brokers anymore but I run businesses and we always use them. If you chat with someone who actually takes the time to listen to you and understand your position you can get insurance at a reasonable price. You will almost always be ripped off by reductive algorithms. As an example, I was quoted £1600 for liability insurance online. After calling a brokers (in this case, Gallaghers) I was quoted (and agreed) £475. You won’t pay unless you take out the policy, and you won’t damage your credit rating either. Speak to a commercial insurer and you’ll hopefully get a better deal.

This is one of the clearest and most concise summaries I've seen. I suspect I might be quoting this for a while. Interestingly the Bugera has been a subject of much debate and as a result has been repeatedly measured at around 720W depending upon the distortion levels you want to measure it at. That's entirely consistent with the figure of 705W RMS calculated above. There's a genuine dilemma for amp designers and manufacturers. You can design an amp to score well in the standard tests at 1/8 ratings or beef up the power supply, heat sinking and a few components and deliver a more rugged amp that will deliver in a wider range of conditions. In my book that makes it a better amp and likely to prove more reliable to boot but it is then marketed against amps that look better on paper. On the upside such manufacturers should build a better reputation long term. For me I'd prefer a regulated market where only standardised figures are allowed to be quoted in advertisements and penalties are imposed upon companies who deliberately mislead. Even this 'simple' explanation @agedhorsehas offered is not easy for a non technical musician to follow. I'd like us as a society to encourage the good guys and discourage sharp practice. Think VW and emissions.