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Passinwind

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Everything posted by Passinwind

  1. Simple, I'd ask to see the ten gigs within the next 90 days paying me 250 each, sign the contract, then take out a loan from them to buy the bass.
  2. Heh, "I told you so" comes to mind about now!" 😎 That circuit was designed for use with high quality tweeters not turned down and an active bass that handles the high midrange, and doesn't do much at all in either boost or cut until you get to 4KHz. Turned up it's essentially a classic constant directivity horn EQ, all about getting high frequency content out to the walls. I used to do DIY onboard preamps like that too (the the ampp needs to do high mods), and still have one like that in one fretless that's set up for slide bass duty. For me that gives more or less zero hiss even with full boost , and I do tend to boost treble a bit on almost everything as all my instruments use humbuckers. When I started doing onboard electronics for actual paying customers I worked out a different tradeoff set for them, which is what we'll be trying here, but the vast majority of what I've sold just uses a more conventional treble circuit and live with a little hiss at extreme boost settings. Anyhow, things are looking good John. Looking forward to seeing how the bigger amp comes out with the new case too.
  3. My Dead Head band in Seattle ca. 1985 used to cover Call Any Vegetable, I love the early stuff. My favorite band was probably the Live at the Fillmore East one (so '71), I saw a show on that tour just a few months out from the recorded one.
  4. I discovered FZ around 1969, and yes, that was pretty much my reaction. My entire life was a fairly low bar at that time though, I was 16 years old! At some point you might want to check out his son Dweezil's band Zappa Plays Zappa too; it features both some of Frank's longtime band members and some amazing younger players. I'd rate it as the best cover band I've ever heard live, probably. The show I saw had Napoleon Murphy Brock, Terry Bozzio, and Steve Vai onboard. Here's a cut from the Portland show I attended:
  5. Yep, some of us have been using them since at least the mid-70s or so.
  6. Just in, some two band Bass/Mid preamp boards from a new US small run circuit board prototype vendor, DK Red. The DK = DigiKey, one of our biggest parts suppliers. Quality looks good and the pricing is just slightly better than OSHpark's basic service, but with far fewer options and a four board minimum as opposed to OSHpark's three. Many of us are hoping that DigiKey will go the next step and integrate parts supply, modeling data, PCB footprints, bill of materials management, and assembly into a one stop shopping experience. I'm nearly certain that they are shooting for that, and sooner than later.
  7. Nice! When I was doing my first rack mount tube preamp I was able to take home several 6SL7 variants from the local repair joint my friend owns to try in the built up preamp and just buy the ones I really liked. All of them were good and it came down to what I thought the guy I was building it for would like best. Lots of different looks here: I ended up picking the second RCA from the left for that build and the brown base Sylvania as a spare for my own earlier build. Used as the front end in my circuit the RCA was/is a little warmer and "tubier" for lows and low mids and the Sylvanias are subjectively a bit more "etched" or lively in the upper mids and treble. Best of all for my taste was these other Sylvanias though, which have a very tight feel and no microphonics issues at all, unlike a whole lot of old 6SL7s I've tried: And of course in a B-15 circuit or some other application I might very easily prefer something else.
  8. I've done many builds using repurposed parts like that, especially for guitar. But over the last few years I've really come to enjoy doing my own circuit board layouts with my own design tweaks, and getting CNC work done in general has become pretty easy and highly addictive!
  9. Cool, I considered the Trip Top route myself but I already had a lot of parts stockpiled for my new build so my recent outlay wasn't as stiff as it might have been. I'm using an NOS commercial tube power amp board that came with a stout power transformer, and a set of leftover preamp boards from a rare commission build I did for a friend back in 2013. The case is semi-custom work and the maker only charged me $20 for a subtantial amount of CNC machining. A luthier friend laser etched half a dozen different fascia panels for the front, the one in the pic was just the first of those. For starters the tube complement will be one 12SL7GT (these are much cheaper and more plentiful than NOS 6SL7GT over here), two 12AU7s, and four TAD EL34Bs, with a Partridge/Hiwatt DR103 output transformer clone from Heyboer. I was able to borrow back one of my old rack preamp builds from the current owner and while I was doing a set of mods for him I had plenty of opportunity to hear how that dovetailed with the new power amp section. I have had really good results with old JAN Sylvania 6SLs, which tend to go for ~$30-50 a pop these days from my usual sources. For less than thirty bucks I got all this and more by going with 12SL7s and a couple of 12SN7s:
  10. Salut, and best of luck. I've been taking a break before finishing up the 100 watt one I started last year but it's very close to finished and now that the weather's nice I can finally finish up the last of the metal and woodwork. Here's the general idea:
  11. I have a few older version Q-Tuner (BL-4) clips on my Soundcloud with my Crescent Moon fretless, here's one: Some people on TB mentioned hearing it as piezo-like, but IME piezos and their associated electronics can sound as varied as mag pickups anyway really. And I should mention that the Q-Tuner designer would probably shoot me for using an onboard preamp (maybe especially a homemade one), but my game my rules.😎
  12. I owned a fretless Travis Bean for 40 years, I bought it new in 1977.
  13. I managed to catch a date on the Shadows And Light tour, a week or two before the video was shot IIRC. The perspective is likely to be a bit different here, but from my viewpoint Pat Metheny had just been voted Guitarist of the Year in numerous US publications including Guitar Player, and I found his playing to be a bit overly restrained if anything. I admired that a lot at the time though and I still think it's pretty cool. For a concert in a big old hockey barn it was about as good as it gets in any case.
  14. So build your own. By the time you've paid for all the parts and actually have it working you'll have it out of your system permanently. 😎
  15. These guys have been selling them for quite a few years now: https://audereaudio.com/classic-led-battery-meter.html But they apparently don't ship internationally. In any case best of luck @Jerry C.
  16. Beats smelling like that, which 'Merkin fast food consumers are all too familiar with.
  17. Of course, and that's how microphone phantom power on a balanced feed has been done for ages. But I haven't actually needed a bipolar supply or a voltage much above 9V for that particular bass and the preamps I've built for it so far, especially with the new-ish moderate current opamps the last couple have used. Another tack I've been contemplating is using one conductor for remote control of my amp. I'm old and lazy and don't use pedals partly because bending over to adjust them is too much work, so if I can facilitate further slacking all the better!
  18. That bass was a "gift" from my friend Marco Cortes, more like work barter really. He gave it to me with no electronics installed at all beyond the custom sidewinder pickups. My current plan is one normal mixed output to my normal SS rig and then a second buffered one for the bridge pickup that will go to my new DIY tube amp, which I would mostly use for my goofy slide bass schtick. So kind of Ric-O like, with no need to switch anything for the normal mixed mode. I've been planning on throwing a rechargeable 13.2V (or more) supply in the outboard box eventually, and who knows what preamp format, but right now I just have a standard 9V battery and one of my DIY three banders in the usual B/M/T format.
  19. I know a guy...😎 But seriously, I'm hardly ever using through-hole opamps these days in my DIY builds, and the rest of your build needn't be all SMT if you don't fancy that. Or you can put the SMDs on DIP adapters and plug them into old school boards as usual, which I've also done quite a few times. As far as outboard powering, technically it's only "phantom" if something else is also on the same cable conductor as the power supply. I used +/- 15V via 3 pin XLR in one bass for many years, and right now I'm working through what format to use to take advantage of this 4 pin XLR arrangement: Great build thread, I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all pans out!
  20. It the fabulous Mothman, of course. It's passed hands through a few Talkbass guys over the last decade or so, I think one or two may still be alive.
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