Passinwind

7 hours ago, itu said:

East suggests copper shielding, but the carbon paint is a functional alternative. If it is there already, I see no need to change it.

https://www.mouser.co.uk/

Find "Bourns" and "conductive plastic". Those blue pots cost quite some more than carbon Alphas, but the quality is far higher. You may not notice any change in the sound, but conductive plastic does not create noise, like carbon, and the lifetime is longer.

I use Bourns CP pots quite a bit, the actual measured resistance tolerances tend to be better as well. Many people seem to dislike the low rotation torque though, and I rarely put them in other people's  basses for that reason.

43 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

I was thinking a Hoffner violin bass or Danelectro longhorn 

Nothing says Teh Brutalz like a Hello Kitty paint job.

1 hour ago, SteveXFR said:

Is it normal for other band members to tell you what bass you need to buy? 

How would you react to being told to buy a £2500 bass?

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.

14 hours ago, TJ1 said:

I realize that not everyone has a shared interest for MOR rock.

I know I am right.

Indeed.

1 hour ago, Chienmortbb said:

I ma amazed that it is almost 5 months since I posted and since then I have been playing through the amp every day. I have a few observations on tge amp and some mods that I will be doing. After some discussion with @Passinwind who designed the pre-amp, I will be modifying the treble control. Although I rarely boost treble and can cut it on the Tone pot of the bass, it seems odd to have a control that seems to do nothing.

 

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.

"May not post to the US."

I'm crushed, crushed I say.

1 hour ago, Dad3353 said:

For me, it started when 'Freak Out' was released. It started, but never stopped. Great Stuff. 

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.

9 hours ago, stewblack said:

I just listened to an album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers. 

First time I've ever done so and do you know what? I don't know if I ever want to listen to anything other than Frank Zappa and The Mothers for the rest of time. 

Have you ever discovered the perfect band that had been right there, unsuspected, in front of you your entire life? 

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:

49 minutes ago, Jus Lukin said:

It's just EQ, and has been around for yonks. I know I yapped on about them here a few years ago, which went down a lot better than the compression I was also rabbiting on about at the time! 😃

Yep, some of us have been using them since at least the mid-70s or so.

On 24/04/2021 at 04:46, stewblack said:

Wikipedia tells us that in 1948 DeArmond released the Trem-Trol, the first commercially available stand-alone effects unit.

My question is, what is the most recent effect, the newest thing in the world of stomp boxes? 

 

Impulse loaders.

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.

19 hours ago, JapanAxe said:

All valves now acquired:

2x Sylvania 6SL7GT, JAN standard

2xShuguang 6L6GC, current production - test as well-matched on my Orange valve tester

1x JJ GZ34

Some other parts also delivered today!

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.

14 hours ago, JapanAxe said:

That's the way to do it!

My last build was a tweed Champ/Princeton in the carcass of a dead Line 6 Spider, so the cab and chassis were already sorted.

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!

3 hours ago, JapanAxe said:

That looks pretty monstrous @Passinwind!

I've just finished ordering nearly all the parts for my build. There may well be a few more bits of hardware to get later (e.g. bolts for the rubber feet) but I'm pretty much there. I've taken the opportunity to buy in spares along the way, including replenishing my stocks of 600V hookup wire. Even allowing for that, my expenditure has already exceeded what I paid for my PF-50T brand new (admittedly on an end-of-line blowout) but much less than a Trinity TripTop kit would have cost - let alone what you would pay for an actual B15!

I've gone for some tested NOS Sylvania 6SL7GT valves in the preamp, and a pair of Shuguang coke bottle 6L6GC for the power amp. I already have a JJ GZ34 rectifier.

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:

On 17/04/2021 at 03:34, JapanAxe said:

Over the last few years I have had reasonable success building a handful of small valve amps. I do miss the Ampeg PF-50T that I sold on to purchase an EBS, so the time is right to start possibly my most ambitious scratch build yet. I previously enquired in this thread as to what version of B15 to go for, and I have settled on something close to a single-channel version of the Heritage model (i.e. switchable between 25W cathode bias and 30W grid bias), working from the Ceriatone 'Aunt Peg' layout.

Most of my previous builds have leant heavily on recycling old parts, but this time I am going for quality new parts. I have neither skills nor tools to tackle woodwork, so I am going for a Hammond 'birdcage' style housing. When assembled it is about 12in wide x 10in deep x 7in tall. The transformers (on order from Primary Windings) and valves will all stand up within the mesh cage (proportions not the same as shown here):

Wish me luck!

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:

On 13/04/2021 at 09:35, chyc said:

Agreed, an amp does go a long way, but my amps are about as good as I can get it and they still aren't good enough in my opinion. If I played a short passage on my bass and uploaded a clip, I'd be genuinely interested in how close people could get to an acoustic sound on EQ alone. Maybe I don't need to do anything more than twiddle knobs, but I've been twiddling a while now with no joy.

I've never heard of them, thanks! The words on their website talk a good game, but the clips they post aren't exactly helpful to me in making a decision. I'm not one for playing an entire piece using just harmonics, nor distortion.

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.😎

I owned a fretless Travis Bean for 40 years, I bought it new in 1977.

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.

On 04/04/2021 at 23:34, uk_lefty said:

Obviously the answer is No. However, boredom, lockdown and being in here daily is making me want a tube amp or some kind of hybrid tube/ solid state. 

 

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. 😎

17 hours ago, bloke_zero said:

+1 - there is someone else selling these isn't there?

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.

2 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Oh, and to our American counterparts - yes, we do eat food that looks like that it has been consumed previously.

Beats smelling like that, which 'Merkin fast food consumers are all too familiar with.

Just now, EBS_freak said:

I'm offended by this picture. It's Pound sterling on these shores.

How much is that in Canadian Tire Money?

49 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Well, theres always going to be those that hate on Fender.

6 hours ago, itu said:

So how about if you put the signal on top of the supply and to the same wire? Ground is the same after all.

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! 

21 minutes ago, mhoss32 said:

@Passinwind thats an awesome looking thing! at present im working on +24v, GND and L and R channels in a 4 pin micro XLR for this one, with an option for either stereo or mono from the other side of the pedal.

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.