JapanAxe

I'm looking to buy a particular kind of guitar stand but it's not available in the UK (or EC for that matter). There are several available from Chinese sellers on eBay but none are in eBay's Global Shipping Programme. The stand costs £54 and I'm concerned I'll get hit for import duties - would that be likely to happen?

Have you had the tech spec and parking details etc yet? Those are the things that tend to worry me, rather than playing the material.

I can sight read quite well on bass but not so well on guitar - for guitar I can work out what the dots mean, but not in real time as it were. It’s something that needs regular practice to maintain at a working level.

Got to grips with this today: (1) Fettled the input jack so that it shunts to earth when no jack is inserted. (2) Replaced the master volume pot. The sudden loud buzz at full volume is gone - let's hope it stays that way! (3) Replaced the tone stack with an enhanced version of a James tone stack (see pic below). The enhancement takes the form of a pot replacing the fixed resistor between the treble and bass pot wipers. At its centre setting it is equal to the Ampeg value, and adjusting the pot either way shifts the frequency centres of the controls. I may never use this, but the alternative would be a blanking plug! The amp seems to be working great now. I will have a living room session with it through my Super Twin tomorrow. For now, time to print some panel labels...

That Ampeg/BF combination is a winner. You’ll struggle to match that sound with anything more compact.

I would be wary of fitting a 12AU7 in place of a 12AX7 as the former ñ draw a lot more current, which can fry your anode resistor.

I prioritise the quality gigs and fill some of the remaining slots with, er, not-so-quality gigs. At a recent pub gig in one of the less desirable areas of Bristol, a rat appeared stage left and ran the length of the bar before disappearing into a cupboard. Will I play there again? Of course I will!

Well done! It would be terrible if a band’s efforts to fix up their banner resulted in accidental damage to the venue’s wallpaper, fixtures or fittings. Of course no band I’ve been in has ever done this. Much.

I tend not to tolerate anything that I can rectify with hand tools or a soldering iron.

A big vote of thanks from me Tom. I have done a shedload of bass and guitar transcriptions myself, but your site is a lifesaver when I have a dep gig at short notice and need dots on the hurry-up!

I’m usually recording covers of intros or solos as a way to demonstrate my playing ability. My DAW of choice is Reaper. I usually start with some form of drum track filched from the Internet. If it’s a MIDI track then I will often edit it to introduce some dynamics! I create a tempo map and align the drum track with it. I create the guitar and bass sounds outside the box using mainly analog kit - I rarely use amp sim or fx plug-ins. Then I record the parts. For reverb I either record a separate wet track from one of my three outboard spring reverbs, or create a send and return. Any tricky keys parts are obtained from MIDI files, otherwise I play them myself. I have no mastering software, I just do a mix that I think sounds ok and render it to a 192kbps mp3 for uploading to SoundCloud. I don’t recommend you follow this procedure btw, it just works for me!

I would be inclined to learn right-handed. You may have to move your left hand further and more often than if you were using your little finger, but that’s no bad thing - if you try to play in fixed left-hand positions (in the way that scales are often presented) you can end up stretching your left hand too much and causing discomfort and/or damage to it.

If I’m gigging on skinny-string guitar then I almost always have my (combo) amp up on a stand. But if I’m gigging on bass I never have my cab on a stand. Most often my cab is a BF Super Twin which has excellent dispersion so no problem.

Yep, the Baxandall is very close to the James.

I do like what I’m hearing from the ToneStyler. As a chap who builds his own amps I think I’ll have a go at making my own though - I’m pretty sure I’ve got all the parts in my stash already!

Welcome BahHumbug, I'm probably not too far from you - I live in the teeming metropolis that is Swin Vegas.

I’ve been giving the tone stack some thought. I really like the James tone circuit on the B15 and I’m now toying with the idea of fitting one here, with the addition of a shift control. It would be quite fiddly as there are a lot of components to mount to the pots and I don’t have space for a dedicated tone stack board. Watch this space!

No numbers on it at present so I'd have to say no! I've just had a blast with it in my living room. I think I've found the settings where it sounds best (from L to R in pic: Master, Bass, Mid-shift, Treble, Gain) but I may well re-work that tone stack. Unfortunately the oscillation at full volume is back, or it could be the pot wiper coming off the track when full clockwise. Sounds best with my Fender Precisions, doesn't seem to like my Dingwall so much!

Nice!

It lives! I shouldn't be so surprised, this isn't my first rodeo... I ran through all my checks this morning. It turns out B+ barely gets above 500V in standby so maybe I could have got away with the single 100uF/500V cap. The two 100uF/450V are safer though and there is no lack of smoothing in the power supply. When I first brought the power up with valves in, I got a sudden squealing when the mains (via my Variac) hit about 120V, so I swapped the OT primaries over and that went away. Bias was a bit hotter than I wanted even at minimum setting, so I swapped out a resistor and that brought it into range. Plate dissipation on each KT66 is now about 56% of maximum which is perfect for a grid-biased amp. I initially had loud oscillation when the Master volume was up at maximum (Gain at zero) but that turned out to be caused by the meter probe clipped to the earth bus! I plugged in a bass, and even through a One 10 this is loud, much louder than the B15 clone that I built. There is also a fair amount of overdrive available from the Gain control. There are a couple of outstanding issues: (1) The input socket isn't shunting to earth properly when there is no plug in it. It's a recycled Switchcraft from my parts stash - hopefully some judicios bending will fettle it. (2) The response of the tone controls is weird. I know the FMV tone stack can be pretty interactive, but this is all over the shop. I'm going to go back to the schematic, the original layout, and probably Chapter 11 of Merlin Blencowe to bottom this one out! I'm going to fit the bottom plate and cover now and try it through my BF Super Twin...

PM’d!

Yes I thought there would be people who had gone down the active route. I’ve owned and enjoyed active basses but passive is where I live.

You’re dead right about the limited travel of the treble roll-off side. I’m used to riding the tone pot from song to song on my other Precisions but the ToneFusion is (at best) half as easy to use as a regular passive tone pot. One thing I do like about it is the no-load setting at the detent position. I’ve had a quick look into the ToneStyler and the #10 position on the B-10 unit does this. You can also get no-load tone pots though.

Completed the 6.3V AC wiring for the heaters and the pilot lamp, and continuity is good. I've also installed the bulb and fuses and fitted the knobs - as the circuit is based on a JTM45 I went for a 'stealth Marshall' look. I've made myself a check-list ready to commission the amp tomorrow morning!