LukeFRC

[quote name='OldGit' post='782280' date='Mar 22 2010, 12:00 AM']Sure. When you are up to your bum in alligators ....


So now, having done a few gigs consolidate and review and refine.
Spend one rehearsal in 4 (minimum) actually rehearsing the performance rather than learning the tunes or practicing your sounds and amp settings.

I'm a strong believer in planning different types of time in the rehearsal room eg:
- learning or writing tunes and arrangements (can happen acoustically in a house or whatever)
- section rehearsals eg horns, rhythm section, vocals, where everyone else helps the section rehearse without moaning or insisting on rehearsing their guitar lines at the same time as the vox or pacingteh room shouting "can't we just rawwwwk now???"
- loud run throughs of tunes
- effects and settings rehearsals where people get time to work out their settings, try a couple and talk to each other to avoid clashes
- performance rehearsals where you go through the whole set non stop including the talkie bits, in real time and dealing with tuning, hitches etc[/quote]

good ideas. The band i used to be in we used to run through the whole set in a practice before the gig. We would have a 20-40 min slot (not massive but we were a paid originals band so thats what we were offered) And we would fill that time with music as out jokes were awful.
Practice would be the laptop/drum machine set up, and we would finish one song and go onto the next in the time it took the laptop to start playing a file already open in another window. Through the whole set. twice. Then a fag break for everyone but me and the synth player and back to run though it twice more.
We once were involved in this music video project thing, playing one track. You do not know how many times you can play one 3.20s song in a 2 hour practice. We hated that tune by the end, untill we played it live next and it sounded amazing!

[quote name='deathpanda' post='782275' date='Mar 21 2010, 11:53 PM']Maybe, but I'm still lost as to why all these so called guitarists are constantly going out of tune. If a guitarist is insecure about his guitar being perfectly in tune, shouldn't that give him the incentive to splash out on having his guitar setup perfectly and maybe have better tuners installed? Baffles me, my friend has a relatively cheap MIA strat with a professional setup and it just refuses to go out of tune.[/quote]

To carry on the sterotypes, bass players are a more social and less competitive bunch. Places like basschat prove this, and we swap ideas and experiences. Maybe guitarists dinnae do this? multiply that over a few generations!!!

This whole thing of guitarists being ego-centric members of the band, being protective and with something to prove. do you think it is down to insecurity that to be perfectly in tune and have each sound perfect?

I think next time I will be putting them one effect per box! Way way too many different leads. I don't really mind too much about the mess.

The volume drop in the chorus confuses me, I had stuck a different larger resistor on the out op amp to compensate, stuck it in and its very quiet. Upped it again (destroyed the contacts on the PCB in the process ) and its still too quiet. Im loosing signal somewhere, I may check it over to try find the problem. My guess would be a loose connection.

Soldering is a funny one. I was using maplins Lead free silver solder for most of this. I ran out and the local electronics shop sold me some 60/40 tin lead alloy stuff- totally different melting point, so therefore tottaly different technique. Going from the trumpet to the french horn maybe

ta-dah!

It's not perfect. the sustain knob is backwards for the muff part, the chorus has a massive volume drop and i blew 2 LEDs...but it works!



and yes its a mess inside, and yes my soldering iron did have an argument with one of the jack sockets!

[quote name='woolz' post='781913' date='Mar 21 2010, 06:38 PM']ok cheers, will give all these a try. action is definatley not too low, i cant take it any higher![/quote]


how high is it? If you've got it to the max on the bridge then I would think there is something wrong with the set up of your bass!

or the other option is do what I do and just raise the action untill it stops doing it. My guess would be its the way you attact the strings with your fingers.
Another option which I have also done is use a string guage up. They will be more tense so harder for you to make hit frets/pups

eventually! turned out that the resistors were wrong and there was a loose connection in the sustain pot.
It works. not exactly amazing, i think i may have wired some pots backwards but its good enough, i only need one one or two sounds from it.

[quote name='s1ater' post='781179' date='Mar 20 2010, 09:24 PM']Get yourself a Jap fender precision, My first bass and still loving it to this day [/quote]

+1

However nice that ibanez may be I liked the look of it untill I saw the strat style input. Argh it looks horrid.

I had a wee thing for danelectro basses till I got to play one. The EB0 looks nice too.
The thing tht really gets me interested though is the random japanese stuff that crops up, although up here i reacon that bassassain gets it all!

success! It worked momenterally! something to do with the pots..... the curcuit seems fine now phase two of problem solving!


Edit 1: ah i have two lin and one audio pots rather than the other way around, that probably makes a difference

do it!
i'll be sticking pic's of mine up soon as soon as this flipping big muff works!

I like the octavia. how do you fasten the board insidde the enclosure?

I am so tired of this big muff... it works up to the 3.9nF cap in the tone curcuit and also the whole signal seems a wee bit clean!

[quote name='Daquifsta' post='779926' date='Mar 19 2010, 03:55 PM']Tell me more about this clone - your own interpretation of the design or a DIY kit or something?

I really like the sounds from the various youtube clips for this pedal, and I enjoy waggling a soldering iron about :-)[/quote]


Well I wanted an ampeg style OD sound, and was going to make a 'flipster' project... following links took me to look at other alternatives and the SFT really stood out as as something doing the same thing really well. Anyway the freestompboxes.org forum has a load of folk who have backwards engineered one of them [url="http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7368&hilit=sft"]http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=...8&hilit=sft[/url] there's a number of different PCB layouts (the one on the last page looks like the best) and a vero-board layout (page 4 ?) which I made. Dead easy build, it was my first attempt at making something. There are different pictures of the insides if you want to guess at cap types.
My one isn't housed yet but my initial response would be
1 ) really really good SVT type drive sounds - better than the SVT model on the bass pod i had before
2 ) brilliant touch sensitivity. Other 'overdrive' pedals I have had/used actually seem more like some kinda warm fuzz pedels- your tone is just covered with this sound. This is better, if you set it up so, when you dig in it overdrives, when you don't it doesn't. Again comparing this to the bass pod model both did this yet the SFT is way more responsive to technique in your right hand, and sounds more natural as a response.
3) the Eq is amazing. Parametric Eq's have their place, as do graphic sliders. My amp has 4 different bands of parrallel Eq, the church amp has 7 knobs of series Eq.... this has two.... and sounds so so... musical. If victor wooton double thumbing are your thing, or funk slap, this may not work out for you, but for fingerstyle....... heaven..

I'm pretty happy as you can see!

i built my own SFT clone- its amazing. I've no idea what the others are but a +1 for a SFT (or approximation of one)

Have you ever looked inside a 1950's or '60 radio or stereo? Compare that to a modern (not high end) one.
The old one will tend to look over engineered, use big old components (valves and old style resistors and caps) and be made using old techniques like point to point wiring.

New stuff will have modern components mounted on a PCB by a machine. Probably in china. Hardwear can be a wee bit flimsier, using cheaper metals. Or conversely better metals for the job.
Now there is a whole argument as to which is better technically. But the old one has more romance.

Point being production techniques have changed. The availability of different types of wood and the way these woods care dried, the finishing on a guitar and so on.
So I don't understand the whole 'they're the same' arguement. Bar finding a massive bargin I would never really want to dive into the vintage fender market personally but I can understand folk who do.

i had the body of one. wieghes a tonne and is some superhard plywood.

C= 0.21
B= 6.43
E = 5.33

which looks wrong to me!

EDIT 2: arrggh I give up. starting again with another layout that makes more sense and is a wee bit different but at least i know someone else has got it working!


EDIT 3: one day later and half a dismantled effect..... ahh the transistor to ground resistor being 390,000 ohms not 390 ohms may have something to do with that!

ok those voltages may be useless, ill try get better ones for each pin relative to input...

umm help... made a big muff pi, everything looks like it should be working but it's not....

l[url="http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/Gila_Crisis/Big_Muff/BMP.gif.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1"]ayout: [/url]

possible problem with the transistors? using an audio probe nothing seems to get through the first transistor! any help would be great!

Transistor....BC239C

battery 8.25v
c - b = 6.12v
b - e = 0.47v
c - e = 5.86v

[quote name='Dubs' post='775367' date='Mar 15 2010, 04:16 PM']I'd say the best value 2nd bass you could get would have been about 12 months ago when you could pick up a Warwick Streamer Stage I in good condition for between £600 - £650 off of here and eBay. A bass that retails at almost £2k for silly money.[/quote]

+1..... or my 1991 natural one for £400...... The best thing about it being it's a cracking bass and i would have bought this particular one at 3 times the price, not that I have 3 times the price but you get what I mean.
I've seen some quite nice stingrays sold on here for low prices too

[quote name='escholl' post='773501' date='Mar 13 2010, 11:21 AM']Try changing the 1uF cap going out of the first gain stage into the effect part of the circuit to something smaller, 0.22uF or 0.33uF perhaps. This won't give you more treble, but it will put less bass through the effect circuitry, and might clean up the sound a bit. Try the 0.33uF to start, if you feel up to it.

I've also just had a thought -- check the connections around the IC1a, make sure those components are all right on the board and there's no loose connections. Most people seem to complain the pedal has too much of a bass roll-off, as you've not found that to be the case but instead have found not enough treble, if may be that the pre-emphasis filtering network is not working correctly for some reason. This is just speculation though.

What I usually do in situations like this is, find all the mods you can, and try the ones you like the sound of. Then try some new ones, and just play about a bit -- it helps here if you know what you're doing though [/quote]

It did have too much bass roll off. The 0.1 cap at the start sorted that though. If I get a chance to go to the shop on monday I may stick a 0.33uF. To be honest it sounds good so I'm not too bothered.



As another note, If anyone is using the breadboard big muff plan that was posted up here a few pages back it has some interesting differences (mistakes?) in the bottom right section. Look up a schematic and swap around two sets of resistors and caps.


EDIT: tried it all again, and yes will try that 0.33uF cap....or maybe reduce the 0.1 cap at the start to 0.066 or something.
EDIT 2: Put the 0.033 back in. Not as bassy but sounds fine. I think I may just leave it! Want to get these all finished!

1) should be in 'for sale section'
2) it's an amp not a bass so should be in amp section
3) hello, looks nice amp!

I think nickzinner of the yeah yeah yeah's has a pretty cool looking rig with the guitar signal being split between a fender twin de-vile and a ampeg bass amp. massive sounding.

If i wanted the 'guitar amp' sound I would split my signal and feed it into a bass pod or something. then from that into some poweramp and a small cab. If you manage to blow up a POD it would be cheaper than a valve guitar amp

so stuck a 100k resistor in the output op-amp and the volumes seem to match.
I'm really not sure what I've made here, the 0.1 cap on the input makes a massive massive difference.
It doesn't seem to have a massive amount of the top end shimmeryness that chorus seems to have, it's a lot deeper. Close to sounding like one of those lesley rotating speaker, yet with more stuff going on. I'm going to play with it and see what I think.

[url="http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=67908.0"]This thread is somone one else with the same problem making it work for bass and addressing it differently...[/url]


EDIT: wee play again. I do like it. As it has more bottom end it comes accross as more subtle. It doesn't 'shimmer' much and doesn't sound great on a guitar but it sounds good. Live and in the mix I'm think it possibly is a good sound.
I wonder... heres an idea.... is the chorus bit of the circuit very good with low end? If I put in a cap smaller that the 1uF in the feed from the op amp to the chorus bit of the circuit would it let give me a more trebly wet sound with the better bottom end i already have? Prob wont do it mind just interested.

Radansey: that A/B box is older than me!


EDIT No. 2: here's some mod's on a small clone [url="http://moosapotamus.net/THINGS/wavy.htm"]http://moosapotamus.net/THINGS/wavy.htm[/url]