Si600

It's my dad's workhop not mine, but I do use it occasionaly. It's a water pump for his Simplex, he can't get the injectors to work and the eccentric pump is worn out. He's actually stopped making locomotives and got into clocks at the moment.

I got this Aria Pro II Magna Series 5er from eBay maybe seven or eight years ago. It's got a made in Korea sticker on the neck heel and I think it plays nicely. Over the years however things have started getting a bit flaky.

So...

Take one perfectly usable bass and put it on a bench...


Whip the machine heads off to replace with tasty "new" Schaller M4's with Made in W Germany stamped on them


Replace the bridge with a real new Schaller 3D5


Things got interesting at the pointy end. On offering up the Schallers we found that the collar is 12mm, while the originals are 14mm. To really make a mess, the holes on the head that the tuners go through are 15mm, no wonder the B tuner was broken. We made some sleeves with an appropriate ID and OD


I don't have a picture of the sleeves in situ because I forgot and it means de-stringing and taking the tuner out so you'll have to trust me they're in there

Once the metalwork is sorted, take the pups out, empty the control cavity and add the new controls


Put the new pups in. Why is nothing simple? EMG don't supply springs and the originals were chocked up with a bit of high density foam. Plus the new pups are smaller than the old by enough to mean drilling new screw holes, fingers crossed I don't go through the back... Mr Maplin saves the day with a box of 150 springs for £2.99. I only want 8 springs, but springs and P&P from the 'net is over a fiver...


Control cavity wired up, and I bet that you are all laughing at me now..


The poxy battery didn't fit!!!! Re jigged to get it all in.


Cleaned and restrung, the finished article


As a bit of a teaser, here is the old plywood body from my P Copy. A new eBay body and the neck are in the garage awaiting new paint, plus there's a pedal board in the offing, so watch this space as they say.

My guitar.
I got the neck from a friend at school, he bought it as a working guitar, pale blue metallic Strat copy with twin humbuckers and a coil tap. Somewhere along the line it lost its body and I got the neck.

The body came from a parts ad in the back of Guitarist and then got abused. The frount routed body got capped with a thin layer of wood where necessary and the control cavity was drilled through to allow access from the back. The floating bridge had the bit under the string clamps milled out to allow for pull up bends and after muchos filling and sanding it was treated to a couple of rattle cans of metallic green, I think it's a Vauxhall colour, but I can't remember.

I'm fairly sure that the pups are Kent Armstrong but quite honestly, it's been so long that I've forgotten. It may be a collection of bits, but it was me wot done it, it's mine and I love it

Not personally, but I once followed someone through a village who drove into the back of a parked car whilst fiddling with the stereo. The boot of the parked car was loaded with a drum kit waiting to go to a gig...

DragonForce @ Rock City 2nd/3rd October, one or the other, which ever one they're there for

Anthrax/Motorhead @ DeMontfort in Leicester, 11th November.

I'll probably give myself GAS with this, but...

What do you guys use to record practice or general muck-about sessions? At it's simplest I'm thinking of a mic attached to a huge hard disk, which sounds like I've answered my own question - a laptop with a mic attached, but is that really the best answer?

Shep,

You've cracked it! Swapped everything around so the comp follows the NG and they both follow the pedals and no funny whistle.

Thanks very much for your help and sharing your expertise

[quote name='pantherairsoft' timestamp='1340964519' post='1712052']
Ah - I have only just realised!!! You are using the noise gate BEFORE the noisy pedal!!! Ha. Yes.... put it after otherwise it will do NOTHING! I assume you were using the ins and outs of the separate inputs on the back to isolate the pedal?

Wish I'd noticed that 1st! lol.

Id suggest just putting the nova dynamics inline so only one input and one output is in use and use engine A as a NG and engine B as a compressor.

[/quote]

I am using it after the ODB-3, it goes through the EQ - COMP - ODB-3 - NG. The port allocations are: EQ to Input A, Output A to ODB-3, ODB-3 to Input B then Output B to the amp. I'll try using it inline with the engines the other way around as you suggest though and see what happens.

Thanks again for sparing the time to assit

Thanks for all the info, it's clearly me not actually understanding what I'm trying to achieve rather than a problem with anything I've got.

Especial thanks for clarifying the TC instructions, and you think the signal chain should look something like: BASS - GE7B - ODB-3 - COMP - NG - AMP?

It's worth a try, I know very little about effects beyond what it says on the box!


[quote name='pantherairsoft' timestamp='1340957751' post='1711912']
Hope some of that helps and I'm not just teaching you to suck eggs...
[/quote]

I can't imagine that anyone on here can teach me to suck eggs, especially once you get beyond a 25w practice amp and a GE7-B

Morning all,

I need a little help with my noise gate. I've got a TC Nova Dynamics, which I'm using the first half as a compressor and the second as a noise gate.

The signal chain is BASS - GE7-B - COMP - ODB-3 - NG - AMP

Either I have misunderstood what a noise gate actually does (most likely) or I'm going it wrong but...

With the ODB-3 on there is quite a lot of hiss, a bit like wind through a gap if that makes sense. I can dial it out using the threshold control so that whilst doing nothing it's not there. All hunky dory, then once I start playing as the note decays the noise comes back for a bit. It's OK with a run of notes just at the fade/decay part of the sustain you notice it. Any ideas? I realise it's little difficult troubleshooting a sound issue on the internet but thought I'd ask

Another thing I noticed with the ODB-3 on is that held notes just disappear into a fuzzy mush, but that's a user fault

I've got three 9v and a 12v set-up, but the Harley Denton box looks mahoosive, which is a shame as it's a darn sight cheaper than the Gig-Rig stuff. Still, I've not built my pedal board yet, so it's all a bit academic at the moment

Alternatively, does anyone know whether a TC Nova Dynamics will run on 9v without ill effect?

Another slighty random question with a multitude of answers I suspect, but can a particular amp manufacturers "sound" be defined, ie, all Ashdown's are very middle biased, all Trace's are tinny and thin and all GK's are are bass heavy and turn your gizzards to mush?

Just curious, and I realise that the playing sound depends upon the player, the bass, the cabs and the room acoustics, but if you took a range of amps and set everything to flat what differences between them would you hear?


You can tell I'm not really sure what I'm talking about in my posts... I know the sound I like, quite middley with a bit of top end to bring out the G and a non muddy B/E, I can get it most of the time with my EQ pedal, but if I have to start looking at a bigger than 15w combo where would I begin? The Bass shop in Warwick after reading a lot of these gear posts!

Excuse my ignorance, but what does "blendable distortion mean"?

I know that this is opening myself up to all sorts of answers, the most likely being "whatever you prefer" but..

What distortion, fuzz or OD pedals would anyone recommend? I want something that is middle of the road, not an OTT thrash metal sound, not that there's anything wrong with that, nor a light overdriven cab sound if that makes sense?

TBH I was put off using dirt by a chap in a shop in Northampton who said something along the lines of "We don't call it distortion. I normally throw people out of the shop who say that, and you don't use it on a bass anyway." when I was an impressionable teenager...

I've had a look at Bright Onion and it looks pretty cool Thanks very much. I'm going to hang fire though for a minute and play about with the volumes and inputs to see if I can make it work without, but still leave a gap on the pedal board just in case

Thanks Dannybouy and xgsjx. I suppose that what you are saying is that unless I have separate input gain controls or a channel switcher with level controls I should stop over complicating things and accept what I've got.

I'm using an active and a passive bass and I'm looking for a switch so that I can use the same array of pedals but into the active and passive inputs on my amp, see the attached diagram.

Does anyone know of anything like this existing? I looked at the Boss LS2, but didn't quite understand it, but there must be something simpler to just switch from one output to another?

[attachment=109195:Bass pedals.png]

Morning all, thought I'd register rather than lurk

I've got an old Marlin 15w practice amp, an Aria Pro2 5 string and a Precision copy.

I made a bass at school in around 89/89 I think and recently found it again, how terrible is it! I've pinched most of the hardware from it, which turn out to all preunification Schaller kit, so I'm going to upgrade the 5 and four strings with additions
from eBay!

I've also got a g****r, made from a neck i was given and more bits purchased that runs through a Marshall DFX50, but we won't talk about that

I am a bit of a metalhead, but old school punk, ska punk and more or less everything else is also on my radar.

I really want a proper 1st iteration Trace Elliot 7band but can't justify either the price or a high watt amp at home!

I do have a question as well to go with saying hello, do you want it here, or in the gear/effects section?