BB2000

#140355087516 Interesting finish on this if it's original.

[quote name='Tinman' post='639371' date='Oct 28 2009, 07:39 PM']Beautiful tone there Sean. [/quote] +1 Loved all these tracks.

[quote name='GreeneKing' post='638333' date='Oct 27 2009, 07:03 PM']It'd be interesting to compare an 09 P with my 09 AV P complete with bent tin bridge. I'm not tampering with it in any way because it's the dogs in terms of tone Here's something I don't understand. People talk about increased string tension with through body stringing. If you take a string the tone is set by tension between fixed points, the bridge saddle and the nut. The 'stretchiness' of an individual string is set by how springy it is in terms of how much it elongates when a force is applied. i.e. if there were no stretch in a string and it was rigidly mounted it would be bar taut. Given that the longer the string is between it's fixed points then the more it stretches for the same amount of force applied, which makes through body stringing lead to floppier strings. Well that's my logic anyway.[/quote] You're right. Through body stringing has no affect on string tension - that's purely determined by the distance between the nut and saddle and the mass/length of the string. But the longer the distance between the fixed points (machine head and back of bridge) the floppier a string will feel. You'll notice this if you string a fender upside down.

There's Dave Holland, and then there's everyone else. Of the others I've always enjoyed Dave Markee's playing.

Your BB1200 will be built to a higher standard than any Fender I've ever seen. Ditto your Wal. You'll miss 'em when they're gone..

HMV have some of the early Stranglers albums (No More Heroes, Black and White and The Raven) at £2.99 each at the moment. Worth a punt for those of a certain age...

Gotoh have a tuner that looks quite similar that fits without drilling any new holes.

Midnight Train to Georgia (Babbitt)

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='627622' date='Oct 16 2009, 10:21 AM']The pickguard seems a bit 'light'.. but then it's a very variable material. You might be right OG, but mine's in similar nick and it's hauled around everywhere! [/quote] Love the tan lines on that bass.

Just bought a cracker of a jazz from Chris (Clarky's old one). As usual he was a pleasure to deal with!

"WoT & The Caffreys" Shades of Diana Ross and the Supremes there! You'll be going solo next and requesting cases of warm Newcastle brown as part of the diva demands

[quote name='Spoombung' post='619708' date='Oct 7 2009, 04:24 PM']I'm not sure that's the case. That guy has been working on it for ages now and still hasn't even got a working model. There's a lot of mouth but not much trouser going on in that Talkbass thread. The thing to remember is the Wal pickup works in a perfect symbiotic relationship with it's preamp. Both are ingenious and devilishly complicated to reverse engineer because of their complexity.[/quote] The Wal preamp isn't really that complicated. I reversed engineered the one on my wall one evening and built copies as spares. The pups are certainly unique though, and using the Wal preamp with a jazz or P style pickup sounds nothing like a Wal.

Are these pyramid golds as floppy as TI flats? I've basses with TI's (jazz), chromes (Bob Glaub), and 760FL (Precision) strings at the moment so if anyone could compare them to one of those (in terms of feel rather than tone) that would be useful.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='617746' date='Oct 5 2009, 06:14 PM']Well I meant that you can't measure the power of an amp (for which you have to measure the increasing THD with voltage and thus specify the power delivered at the maximum voltage where the amp meets your required maximum THD) without disabling the limiter because on some amps the limiter kicks in a lot sooner than you'd expect. For instance according to Genz the limiter on the Shuttles starts acting at ~2dB below max power, which equates to ~380W into 4 ohms.[/quote] Well, it depends what you're trying to do. If you're measuring the THD of a power amp in a bass head, obviously you would bypass the preamp stage and feed your input directly to the power amp, this would give correct THD measurement whether the power amp stage incorporated a limiter or not. If you wanted the THD of the complete head you'd input your test signal to the preamp, and if it had a fixed limiter (like many of the new amps do), you would still have correct THD measurements. [quote]What clouds the issue even further is that if two amps are producing the same power output the one with higher THD will sound louder...[/quote] That's a bit of a generalization - it does depend on the nature of the signal distortion rather that on THD (which by itself doesn't tell much about how the signal is distorted).

[quote]A brief explanation of THD, AP etc for myself would help here guys[/quote] AP is Audio Precision, a company who pretty much have captured the market in audio amplifier test equipment. [quote post='617148' date='Oct 5 2009, 09:59 AM']I was just puzzled that you referred to reaching 40% on the master volume causing THD to rapidly increase, and then your 240W figure suggests you took the position of this control and multiplied it by the claimed 600W rating to state the amp produces 240W. Or did you measure the amp into a 4 ohm load and find that THD increased rapidly once the RMS output voltage reached 31V?[/quote] I meant 40% of rated power. Given that all harmonic content of the amplifier output is measured in a THD test the output power is therefore also known (assuming the test load is known). [quote]Many bass amps use 1% or even 5% THD.[/quote] I'd say 10% plus is more realistic. The largest difference is that most modern instrument amps can only deliver their rated power for only a short period of time, their continuous output rating is normally a lot less that their rated power (for example the shuttle 6 can only deliver about 70W continuous into 4 ohm). Pro amps will have sufficient cooling so that it's normally safe to load them for extended periods. It's only in the last 20 years that this music programme rating nonsense crept in. [quote]P.P.S. However you can't measure the output power of an amp accurately unless you can defeat any limiter circuitry.[/quote] I guess you mean you wouldn't normally measure the THD of an amplifier without disabling any limiter circuitry.

The AP analysers pretty much automate this time of measurement. For example you can set it to do a THD measurement vs power out (for a specified load) at a specified spot frequency, start the measurement and it'll stimulate the amplifier, measure it's output, and spit out a table of THD values. Tests done by me would have been at 1KHz into a nominally purely resistive load. I'll just restate that I'm not knocking Genz, they actually produce some of the better amps out there. Measurements I've made on some other 'boutique' bass amps have been truly shocking. [quote name='alexclaber' post='616588' date='Oct 4 2009, 04:39 PM']Did you measure the output voltage at the same time? Alex[/quote]

[quote name='alexclaber' post='616453' date='Oct 4 2009, 01:01 PM']And without knowing the THD at those power ratings the 450W amp could actually have more power than the 600W amp and thus more headroom. (And that's not a hypothetical 'might occasionally happen' suggestion, that's one of the common factors that makes some amps sound loud for their wattage and some sound quiet). Alex[/quote] Spot on. I bought one of the first production units of the Genz Benz Shuttle 6.0. It sounded a bit rough and unpleasant on my ears at full volume, so bypassed the compressor and attempted to measure the THD on an audio precision analyser. I can't remember the figures, but it quickly shot up above about 40% volume to above 50% THD. Personally I'd class it as a 240W amplifier. I'm not knocking Genz though, I think they have to do this because their competition play the same numbers game.

Peter, you've posted a few times now over a period of few months about your guitarist. Given your professional background and your self acknowledged gentle approach to dealing with people I can't help wondering that to some extent you find yourself in this situation because you are not being blunt enough with your guitarist. If your fellow band members also feel that the guitarist is holding the band back I would strongly suggest you simply give him an ultimatum. Give him a list of the things you (as a band) are not prepared to accept, and if he continues to do any of these things at the next practice ask him to leave. It really is as simple as that. Finding a new guitarist is likely to be less of a problem that you finding a new band. Take this approach even if the rest of the band don't have such a low opinion of the guitarist as you do, but do realise that he is holding the band back. If there isn't really a band leader at the moment I would then suggest you take on that role. If the rest of the band would prefer to stick with the guitarist, I really think you would be as well leaving and looking for pastures new. There's no point in flogging a dead horse. Didn't you have a Norwegian lass express some interest in singing in a band a few weeks back? Why not call her and see if the pair of you could form the nucleus of a new outfit. All JIMHO.