Passinwind

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. 😎

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.

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

How much is that in Canadian Tire Money?

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!

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.

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!

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.

I had a friend who was Tech Director for the Allman Brothers Band in the late 70s and early 80s. I decided to drop in unannounced for a tour date in the next state (I had an open invitation), and walked into the venue mid-afternoon with my bass in hand, as I was on my way to visit with my brother another state away after the show. There were no security people or roadies in sight so I just walked right in and up onto the stage, which was already fully set up. Not a soul in sight anywhere in this whole arena, which seemed quite odd actually. I figured someone would come along soon enough, and after a while I was confronted by someone with a heavy Brit accent who asked: "Hey mate, what's in the case? Mind if I have a look?" I look up and it's Jack Bruce. Turned out that he and Billy Cobham were in the opening act, which wasn't even advertised ahead of the show anywhere I looked. We had a very nice chat and Jack tried my Travis Bean fretless and was very encouraging to this rookie bassist who had only played a handful of gigs to that point. Eventually my friend showed up and he arranged to have me sit at the monitor board onstage during Jack's set, which was pretty sweet. Not so unexpected to see a bass player pop up, but that bass player was certainly unexpected! 😎

Cool. I've messed around a bit with retuning for Jazz Basses. IME it's not the most straightforward circuit to tweak that way, so using an LTspice model helped me a lot in that regard. Here's one of my versions, which uses more "uptown modern" components that I typically have stashes of in my parts bins:

What physical format did you use, breadboard, PCB, or ??? The ubiquitous "Uncle Fluffy" MM2B clone board got me back into this stuff years ago after a long hiatus and that guy was a huge help in getting me going on doing my own board layouts. It's a great sounding preamp in any case!

The Tillman FET booster/buffer is pretty simple, ditto the Stingray 2-band preamp. Another cool approach a little further on might be a simple tube preamp, something like the Alembic F2-B. I started with tube ones because it kind of removed the compulsion to keep going smaller and smaller. I'm also planning on releasing another open source board soon, just a simple single opamp gain stage with a trim pot: You could port that design to through-hole parts and learn a lot about KiCad just by looking at how I did some things, I reckon. My other open source one is on Talkbass, but it's fairly convoluted: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-passinwind-open-source-preamp.1259692/ I'm always happy to help out fellow DIY'ers when I can, but most of my experience is with amps and onboard stuff more than effects per se.

Yep, surface mount, 4 layer boards, flexible boards, etc. They ship worldwide for free as well, although I've heard things can move slowly outside of the US. Where I am, maybe 80 miles from OSH, I usually get boards in hand in around 12 days from the order date.

Thanks, purple is actually the default color from the most popular prototype board vendor in the US, OSHpark. They do a black one with clear solder mask now too though, which also looks pretty cool. And yeah, I mostly design my own circuits using LTspice and very rarely do clone stuff. But of course rolling your own and doing something truly unique are two very different things and there's so much to learn by analyzing existing popular circuits.

I've been using KiCAD for several years now, it's really come a long way in the last few revisions. Here's a prototype three band preamp I built yesterday: It's meant mainly to be an onboard one, hence the form factor.

Yep, In the US there are very specific exclusions on insuring vintage instruments with our major shipping companies as well, and it's completely on the customer to determine if they need third party coverage.

It means they needed actual NAMM members to pay actual US Dollars to promote NAMM stuff this year. It's a code word for "job security", mostly.

Here's one with a roasted ash neck that I worked on the electronics for a couple of years ago: :

Great to see more progress John. The EQ test plots you sent me look really good, and pretty much just as expected.

In many cases these days you wouldn't necessarily go back to the cab from the DI. One speaker level output to the DI, one to the cab. Attenuating the signal passively is trivially easy, it just requires two low wattage resistors.

Yep, I use mine for both time based effects and clean/dirty noise toy blending. I have the send level nominally set up in between instrument and line level and it works fine with both pedal and rack effect units. The return is optimized as an Aux In and comes before my variable high pass filter, making it quite useful for preamp pedals if and when I want a doubling setup.

I had already pretty much retired from gigging two years before the pandemic hit, but I was still getting out of the house jamming at least once a week until March. At this point I haven't touched a bass in over a month, which usually means it's time to go into a guitar cycle for a year or two. So I reckon I'll take a stab at writing enough new material to eventually gig with, and I'll just hire someone else to play bass if and when that happens. I'd say May of 2022 might be a reasonable expectation where I am, FWIW.

So how do you do the switch then? Here's what it would look like for me on a doubling gig, I just grab whichever bass I want to play and put the other one back in its stand, same as I would with any two basses.

I'm a huge fan of "whatever works." When I started playing a real bass again it led me to a few setup changes with my BSX to make it a bit better as a trainer, but it will always be its own thing anyway. Before I bought it I was a longtime fan of a few EUB players and I never expected it to be a full substitute for an acoustic one. And the big band that was my last steady gig preferred fretless BG to either, go figure.