Leaderboard

Bog off Amazon! Take your siren song elsewhere please!

The Backstory Once or twice a month during the long winter several friends and acquaintances gather in the bar of a village pub to enjoy a jam and general sing-along. With ages ranging between late 60s and 70s the music is very broad and covers, 60s/70s pop, Delta Blues, traditional Blues, soft rock, Celtic folk and of course always end with Sir Tom’s Delilah. Simple rules No amps No Mics just acoustic guitars & instruments, generally there’s 3 or 4 guitars, mandolin, Bodhrán and vocals. My Fender Kingman is a great bass with 34 ins scale Jazz neck and huge body which resonates quite well, BUT just gets lost amongst the other instruments. So, I have been pondering for a while for some form of non-intrusive sound reinforcement, something small that could be tucked away under a table and linked wirelessly to the Kingman. The Concept I have followed with interest the posts on the Warwick Gnome, Trace Elf and @Phil Starr House Jam Micro cab, and decided to build a micro combo. I purchased the TC BAM200 as the internal DFM (design for manufacture) really appealed to me with no cable harnesses and an elegant single PCB layout. BTW it was also the cheapest at the time!! I chose a Faital RS140 speaker mainly as it had a 200w rating and the specs suggested that it had a reasonable low end. To create a combo from Phil’s cab design I could have added a simple slot above the cab but being so physically small access to the controls would have been inconvenient. So I decided to clone the popular combo approach by adding a recess to the back of the cab and having the controls pointing upwards. There was a bit of head scratching to shuffle around each of the elements changing Phil’s square cubbish cab to a taller bi-dimensional cab layout. The Build Following Phil’s tried and tested method I used 12mm Ply and 12 x 15mm battens but used my pneumatic nail gun with 15mm & 30mm brads. There was a fair amount of extra routering to form the access to the amps controls. Because of bi-dimensional rear there seemed little need for additional bracing but I did add a brace between the back and the baffle. Tuff Cab rules, several coats with brush and roller, and the cab was lined with the fibre wadding. The amp was held in with 10mm x 2 mm aluminium bar lined with speaker mounting rubber tape. The amp fixing bar is held with 2 x 5mm Allen bolts so is easily removed if I need to use the amp as a backup for my other rigs. I added slots in the cab walls on the RHS to provide some ventilation and also had to drill a few holes in the Aluminium bar to avoid covering some of the vent holes on the amps side. The Faital RS140 is a fine piece of engineering with RMS rating of 200w, even though the BAM200 only outputs around a 100w at 8 ohms I wanted sufficient speaker head room just in case I added an extra 8 ohm cab in the future. I hit a few tuning issues but with the help of @Phil Starr I replaced the 70mm port with a single 38mm port. In the end I added a second 38mm port to reduce the "chuffing" and improve the low end performance. ( Can anyone spot the deliberate mistake!!) I had some Fender style speaker cloth and a Fender logo in the basement so used both to finish the job. Fender Micro CHAMP , CHIMP IMP Combo The amp recess at the rear turned out well and with the aid of @Chienmortbb superb speaker cable the combo looks reasonably presentable. I still may do some further faffing around with ports and cab tuning but with my Lekato 5.2Ghz wireless system I can hide the combo under a table in the bar and no one will ever know I'm breaking the acoustic only rules!!! I plan for the Micro combo to live in the lounge tucked away by the side of the TV so with a bass plugged into my Zoom B1 Four sat on the sofa and out with the Lekato to the combo I don't have any leads trailing across the lounge floor and I can play-along with YouTube and DVDs at a sensible level. Happy Days!!

Having got somewhat fed up with the jacks pulling out of my Backbeat I set about making a clamp system to hold them in. At the same time I followed Higgie's idea of two short cable which live with the Backbeat and strap. I thought about all sorts of ways to do it and the simplest way seemed to be using the nuts on the jack socket to anchor the clamp to the case. I found Neutrik jacks were too large and difficult to anchor however these Amphenol jacks have a convenient shoulder to clamp against. No problems so far.

I think we're on the final furlong. The machine screw inserts are fitted for the fretless neck: And that just leaves the finish on the plain maple neck and headstock back/sides for the fretless (tru-oil slurry and buffed - a relatively quick job) and fitting the string retaining bars on both. Those will be in this kind of position for both necks. The original string tree screw holes will be filled as well as possible with dye-coloured filler but will not be able to be made invisible:

All body and neck sculpting done, needs final sanding and finishing and then hardware, really happy with how this is turning out.

These both arrived today. My dream amp and cab. Now I just need gigs to resume.

I rarely suffer from GAS these days but sometimes I feel it for a bass I know I don't need, I know I will not use but still I feel I want one. This time it's for a bass I thought I'd never want to get but I was visiting a great Belgian bass player the other day and he had a MM Stingray 5 with the older ceramic pickup and it felt and sounded absolutely killer. The weird thing is I don't really like the sound of a Stingray (except when fretless), I'm not a big fan of their playability (because I'm used to Jazz Basses) and I have no band where it could get used. But still. I want one. Help me. What's your GAS you know you shouldn't have?

Def out….. it arrived today 😃

I've joined the Sandberg club. VM4 blueburst, ebony fingerboard. Happy.

So, this'll be the last picture for a bit. Got the bridge pickup back from Josi a couple of days ago. Concerning the wiring, at present* it's just wired it through a three-way switch into the output jack; no volume control (yet). There's no grounding issues, it's silent. For the record, the knobs are just dummies on old pots; I have some of the same knobs on order, but in chrome which will set things off nicely. I need a truss rod cover. Dunlop Straploks fitted. To be honest, it sounds quite lovely as it is; I'd argue I always play with everything open, so the wiring apes this. I needed to do a bit of up and down adjustment to balance the pickups, action is borderline rattly. I suspect that if I left the holes open in the body, I'd be aching to put an East in, but right now as it's all closed up I'm happy with it visually, I'm okay with it. Of the Warman pickups, honestly if you need a decent affordable P/J set, check him out. [Edit v. 2.0] I woke up quite early and figured that as the pots I used for the dummy knobs were EMG push/fit connector types, it should be easy to put a volume control into the circuit at least. Took about ten minutes at lunchtime. So this is parked for now...

What you'll end up with is a blown 4 ohm resistor. If you must use a second cab make it identical to what you have now. If your amp won't handle a 2 ohm load you'll need a break out box to series wire them.

A few of my pet peeves: Lack of volume controls (especially on envelope filters); Lack of dry blend (again on filters); Lack of dry kill switch on octave pedals; Internal trimpots/dip switches - if the controls are there, for God’s sake put them in an easily accessible place on top. (This is much of the reason I haven’t experimented much with the Wombtone MKII’s potential - the dip switches are on the back so pretty inaccessible when mounted on a board.) Half-cocked MIDI implementation - this was the disappointment on the Dr. Scientist Dusk: it had preset capabilities but not all parameters were stored so it negated the usefulness of the feature; Another vote for non-standard naming of parameters (like “decay” on the MXR BEF actually being the cutoff frequency). It’s so much easier to get one’s head around controls if they actually say exactly what they control.

All the above and: King Crimson - Red.

If I get sent a 7 minute YouTube video of a song to learn, I’m generally bored 3 minutes in. Whoops, Freudian slip there, I meant to say I’ve got the hang of the song by then

Not about any effects in particular, but this came up in conversation with a guitarist friend the other day. We were talking about how annoyances with effects 20 years ago are exactly the same as the ones today, including things like: 1. Batteries - the first thing I ever do with effects is remove the battery and plug into to power. I always wonder whether effects could be made more compact and cheaper by just using DC power, and skipping the whole battery compartment/wiring entirely. 2. Different power requirements - I can understand the reasons, but always find it frustrating when a pedal uses some input other than 9V DC centre negative, and needs me to allocate yet another plug slot for it. 3. Non-descriptive button/switch/knob names - especially for effects I don't use often, I hate trying to remember what controls labelled things like "burn", "probe", "stab", "tweak", etc. actually do. 4. Non-standard sizes - sometimes feels like tetris trying to figure out how to layout everything. Sometimes wish there was something like EuroRack for effects pedals, with 1U, 2U pedals etc. that all fit together nicely. 5. Non-standard input/output placement - similar to the above, having a mix of inputs/outputs/power on side/top gets annoying. 6. Availability - it always seems like some of the best pedals that people use or recommend are always the ones that are no longer produced, or are incredibly rare. E.g. Boss OC-2, lots of the 3Leaf Audio stuff. But I can't see much of this changing, and still love using effects Is it just me, or has anyone else got a similar/different set of effects-related frustrations?

Note that wiring non-identical cabinets in series will often result is unexpected performance issues because each cabinet's non-identical electrical parameters will interact when wired in series. I do not recommend this.

It was a different sort of brand - both Aria & Ibanez were (are, I suppose) premium brands owned by big Japanese companies with an international reach. Kimbara was a domestic UK brand belonging to the distributor FCN Music, alongside their lower-tier marques Columbus & Satellite. Kimbara was broadly their top-quality brand & was sourced from several manufacturers, including Matsumoku, who made most Arias. @Maude's Ripper will be the same bass as the set-neck Aria LB650 - apart from the name.

I absolutely HATE punk 😂

Gosh. I had one of those, it was totally awesome. But not £1500 awesome.

FWIW I think black single ply would be totally spot on. I had a near cousin of one of these for a while, the G3. Lovely thing. That was of no relevence whatsoever but I thought I'd say it anyway

There's too much autocorrong in there for me to bother editing. Bug the hello out of me? HELLO!! 😄

Fellas, we're sending out a newsletter on this tomorrow!

Well done John, this is what self build should be about. I love it when someone takes a design and with a bit of initiative pushes it a little further. The original House Jam speaker was built just for this use and started life using a guitar practice amp to drive the speaker. All I wanted was something with just enough power to match an acoustic guitar for those 'acoustic only' occasions. It was only when I tried the cab only version with my proper bass amp that I realised it could be pushed a lot further than that. So now I'm going to have to do some work building my own combo. I bought a Warwick Gnome (I wanted the BAM but it wasn't available at the time) to do just that but haven't pulled my finger out yet. I hope you get many hours of pleasure from your design, I hope the acoustic world is ready for you

I take my comment in the mini bass thread back. What a mess...

Thomann are big enough - no problems with them. But never overestimate the talent of the UK couriers at this end!

Hi folks, my replacement pedal arrived today. It's a doozy! Volume, drive, and tone, and a three way selector switch. The switch changes the type of distortion which makes this an extremely versatile little stomp. Dirties the bass from just a little all the way up to full on destruction. Quite a substantial volume boost is available if that's your thing, or its excellent as an always on , just roughing up the edges of the bass. Highly recommended.

Just Like Paradise - David Lee Roth

It’s been OK until now, the rules have recently changed though. From 1st January everything coming over is subject to more checks. There were queues thirty kilometres long on the approach to the channel ports yesterday. I’m guessing this will impact most imports. Brexit, the gift that keeps on giving.

-

Really, most DAW's will run on most computers, they themselves don't need a great deal of juice. Once you start building larger music projects in your DAW though, be it lots of midi or lots of audio....or both, that's where you need to consider the performance of your computer. If you want to record one bass/guitar track along to a backing track, a lower spec will be fine. If you're looking to actively learn about music production and envisage building larger and larger sessions as you get better, then aim for a better spec off the bat, budget permitting. Personally I'm a Mac/Logic user, but if I were going PC, my minimum spec would be i7, 16gb (with room to increase), 1TB SSD. So you're largely there, the i5 will be fine I think, and you might be able to plop an upgrade in at some point if you run out of juice (motherboard permitting). You will also want an audio interface of some description if you're looking to record bass/guitar. Most newer MIDI devices connect over USB, so: A) You won't necessarily need an audio interface with MIDI Din connectors. B) As has been mentioned, ensure that you have plenty of USB sockets on your motherboard choice. If you have to add a USB Hub to your setup, not all are created equal, research what works well for music production. For a PC DAW, I'd go Reaper or Cubase. Pro Tools on PC isn't great in my experience. Ableton Live & FL Studio are typically more for electronic/clip/sample based music generally. Logic is Mac only. Good luck Si // Focusrite

When I saw them the crowd were ok. My wife and I went to a pub near to the venue before the gig and it was full of people also waiting for the same gig. The whole place had a fun vibe and there was a great Macc Lads singalong. My wife got serenaded with Julie The Schoolie (despite being 26) every time she went to the bar or the bog, which she though was hilarious. The walk from the pub to the venue was both surreal and menacing, but had nothing to do with the Macc Lads crowd. What I didn’t like was all the snot. We stood right at the back because the air, for three feet above the audience, was solid with spit. It was one of the most horrific things I have ever seen! One particularly large loogy landed on Muttley’s t-shirt and one of the guitarists (I can’t remember who) sucked it off… I nearly threw up! It was then that I understood the reference to Muttley looking like a Christmas tree on the Live At Leeds (The Who?) album.

FWIW, I had a HB Jazz bass a while back & was also going to swap the pickups for something 'better' but I actually thought the Roswells were pretty good, so left them in. 🙂

It was (I believe) 1989 that the bass seen there was stolen. Jeff had played it whilst on tour in the UK with John McLaughlin through late 1988. By 1990 he had the first Palaedium. As for the Rithimic and Palaedium, I'm lucky enough to own both. Both are absolutely stunning instruments. Amazing tone, playability and balance from both. The Rithimic in particular is also a total featherweight. Jeff can make them do things that I can't but they have both taken my playing 40% higher.

Replacement of essential broken gear is OK. Hope the new one arrives quickly!

-

Early Chicago, while Terry Kath was alive. I played a lot of Pete Cetera basslines in a rock/horn band I was in. (Sorry Pete, it's true)

My fave gig from that era. North London Poly, March 1981.

gutting news. Burke was a family friend when I was a kid but I hadnt crossed paths with him since the 90s when I left Wales. I never actually saw Budgie (and wasnt a huge fan despite being a metalhead) but still probably saw Burke play live more times than any other bass player he was a genuinely down to earth and nice guy who was hilariously funny (he made a hysterical singing nun). he was also a very talented bass player with a far broader range than you may imagine. he was a huge influence on my bass playing - not so much in style as in encouragement and definitely in terms of playing the thing bloody loud - he ran a Marshall Major flat out into a pair of Vox Foundation 18s for pub gigs for gods sake anyway, somewhere it'll always be a sunday afternoon in the royal oak soundtracked by beautiful lies chin chin old chap

To be fair, in a 7 minute CCW vid, the first 2 minutes are sub-Clannad "wooooowooo" and the last 2 minutes are a repeated tag with someone giving it their max on the vocal front. Not the max, but their max. During lockdown we had a bunch of these in our online services which were a run of videos at the begining. We usually managed 30 seconds before moving on to the next video. I often wonder what people are hearing that I am missing.

Orange 4Stroke Preamp. I used factory schematics to create the pcb.

With the maple plug cut flush and the neck lined up, time to drill for the last insert. With the 3 machine screws nice and tight and a final check for line up, I use a 5mm brad point fed through the ferrule to make a centre point and then use that as my reference drilling with a 6mm brad point on the drill-press ready to fit the final insert. And all four done. Just got to agree with @Happy Jack where to fit the string retaining bar and that's the fretted neck pretty much done. Inserts for the fretless neck next

Truly jaw-dropping? Only this really - the first time I heard what could be done other than root-fifth on a bass guitar.

Got this out today, as I had the time to play properly for a couple of hours. Sorry, its filthy now 🙄 Think I've finally got to grips with the EQ- use it to accentuate/de-emphasize the harmonic content using the 3 position switch (? +12dB / flat / -12dB) to get the sound to sit where you want it in the mix. Use the volume control to compensate for any gain/loss in the output, and if there's any shortfall in the low-end, use the AMP EQ to reinforce it a bit. Live (hopefully) the man behind the desk will do the same.. It's only taken 2 decades!