Passinwind

Ah, not at all what I was expecting. I would most definitely want a full featured preamp for that scenario, going straight to a basic power amp with limited protection scheme could be very problematic.

Many commercial pedals won't be able to fully drive the modules, or will only be able to do so at settings you may or may not actually like. My DIY amps all have an Aux In formatted to work with more pedals, or even with an active bass plugged straight in, but IME it almost never sounds as good as just going in to the front end of the built in preamp. And in any case, a great many commercial amps already give you ways to bypass the front end, so they already are "ICE amps" but with the useful insurance factor of working on their own if your pedals fail.

True, and plenty of others have as well. It's important to accept that to do it well it's generally much more expensive than just buying something commercial, resale value is often less than nil (and also illegal here in the US at least), and it's just a huge time suck. But yes, one can buy an ICEpower module and throw it in a box with a preamp with sufficient output capacity, and if all goes well it'll make noise.😉

Back to EQ pedals lately, as I wrap up my Github open source respository. Very old battery powered NAMM build repurposed: Another old one brought up to current 4 knob specs: 4 knobs but with fixed frequency HPF embedded: And then my first battery powered six knob job, using OPA205 and OPA2205 low current opamps: I've also been revisiting my older through-hole compact ones, which fit in a smaller 125 enclosure and are a much quicker build since everything is on one board:

I took on beta testing on a lark when they were soliciting on the PPCB forum, but now I'm all-in on actually building some pedals with them. It actually sounds better than some old mid level rack delays I've owned, maybe even all of them. Just for example, with a little effort you can wire in one of those uber cheap signal generator boards on eBay or Amazon as an LFO, and a dead simple mixer circuit or two, and voila...a very good sounding chorus pedal. Same for expression pedals as controllers, etc. In my case I already have many small DIY mixer and EQ modules on hand, so instead of breadboarding I just hardwired those in various test configurations.

On my workbench today, the production version of this new "digital BBD": https://cabintechglobal.com/ct3680 I've been beta testing a prototype version for the last month or two and am quite impressed, especially with the excellent noise floor. The production one is a lot smaller and has some new features for stereo applications, which has been my primary focus for testing and development. No commercial interest on my part, at least yet.

Heathens! Any version but the Black Crowes' would be my strong preference though.

Yes, pedals (delays, EQ, overdrive, etc.) and also rack effects, preamps, amps, and speaker cabinets. Reasonably satisfied with most of those, certainly enough to gig with them regularly when I was still gigging, but just as with all commercial equipment I always end up feeling they could be a lot better.

Here in the US Pacific Northwet, most of my UV prints cost me $6 plus one extra shipping fee since I have enclosures drop shipped directly from the vendor to the UV print shop. I typically buy two or three at a time, often different designs, since that's the most economical play as far as mitigating shipping cost. And then paying the same guy to do most of the drilling greatly speeds up building time on my end, so I usually go for that as well. But the print guy has become very busy lately and I'm sure his prices are bound to go up a bit. For reference, here are a few of his jobs he's done for me:

Everyone who does bass covers or play alongs on YouTube?

This one's not meant for bass, it's for my banjo/dobro hybrid instrument. But I have a spinoff version in mind for a fretless that I 've been threatening to add a piezo pickup to ever since it was built. The purple knob is key, it blends in the resonator mounted piezo element and adds a reverb/chorus sort of vibe to the proceedings. Top row handles the magnetic pickup EQ, bottom row is mix section plus resonant LPF for the piezo pickup, which amounts mostly to "anti-quack."

A couple of new open source resonant LPF pedals, I think this design is just about ready to go public now: These fit in a standard pre-drilled Tayda 125B enclosure and I'll be sharing the artwork in a variety of colors to accommodate the many Tayda box colors. All parts are through-hole format on this one as well.

This is based on Pedal PCB's knockoff of one of the British Pedal Company's so-called Dumble amp in a box pedals. It's a very basic circuit, but does sound surprisingly good IMO. It's going to a friend who plays mandolin, which I think it will excel for.

Ruh roh! Don't like frets, painted finishes, anything plastic, top routed control plates, screw on necks, glossy maple fingerboards, ashtrays. And FSOs of any ilk definitely need not apply.

Yep, much better than Reaper in my book. I am also a longtime N-Track user and am just about the upgrade my version for the first time in a decade or so. Even at this late date, it's only about $40 to jump into the latest version, but I;ll have to give the new one a go before I decide if I want to bother, since the v7 actually still works great for me.

Just realized I hadn't posted a pic of my mutant Goldtone Dojo here: A new upright bass player came into our long running Bluegrass/Americana jam and I decided to give her the bass chair to bump up her learning curve and try something new myself. The dojo is lot more wife friendly than an actual banjo as I learn the ropes, and I am expecting to get a banjo sooner than later too, but I soon sussed that the dojo works much better in Open E tuning for my current playing situation, so I reckon I'll just hold off for at least another six months or so and just concentrate on one new thing at a time. There's a piezo pickup on the resonator as well as the magnetic pickup, both of which port out on a single stereo jack. I've built a couple of different breakout boxes and am currently working on a full blown all in one blend/EQ box, which will look something like so: So there are two filter sections a la Alembic/Wal, one for each pickup. And then Bass/switched Mids, High Pass Filter for the magnetic one. All of this has been vetted using other DIY bits and it works very well, going through my Audiokinesis Thunderchild 112 and a variety of commercial and DIY amps. I'll probably just cop a Spark 40 amp for this application though, as the Thunderchild cab is serious overkill for jamming with a few electric-acoustic instruments and no drums.

I do it quite a bit with larger pitch SMDs and generally find it a little easier than through hole parts in a double sided board with plate-through pads. SMD desoldering tweezers or a hot air soldering/desoldering rig would often be the preferred tool, some ambidextrous people improvise with two soldering irons, and I just use a regular soldering iron with various tips to make things easier. For example, a 4mm screwdriver tip covers one side of an SO-8 opamp chip pretty much perfectly and for me well over half the parts are reusable.

I retired from gigging five years ago and have less than zero desire to ever start again, at least on bass. But I still enjoy playing a weekly local jam, sometimes on bass, sometimes on other instruments. Frankly, I miss mixing live shows more than playing out, as I typically made better money and worked with much better bands on that side of the room.

My DIY onboard preamps tend to be the actual secret sauce, but if a pedal is called for this would typically get the first call:

An old Shure SM87. Less proximity effect than the SM58 or Beta 58, and just a better match for my scary vocal delivery style in general.

Then just call it what it is: distortion. 😉

There are at least a few other options but finding them on OSH is a real challenge. Someone on Talkbass already did a nice looking SMT layout that I'm pretty sure he shared, I'll see if I can find it. Several years ago I did a through-hole one meant for modern parts, which was maybe my very first attempt at doing PCB layouts. Came out fine in any case. And then I have a fairly standard Baxandall based two band board about to go on share in the next few days, as part of this project: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-passinwind-open-source-preamp.1259692/#post-19535550 . The two band module works great as a standalone thing, and can be configured for Bass/Treble or Bass/Mids as needed. To be clear, I don't sell any hardware, and my stuff is targeted for relatively self sufficient DIY'ers.

Inexpensive bare PCBs for MM2B clones and/or near clones are quite readily available from other sources, FWIW.

You can play it that way, "underhand" with a slide, with banjo picks, a flat pick, or plain old fingerpicking: There's a piezo pickup on the resonator, broken out to a stereo jack with the humbucker on the other hot contact. Has a bit of a 12 string guitar vibe when playing chords, and can be surprisingly mellow and quiet when that's the player's intention. I play a weekly house jam that has way too many bass players, and many tunes I've been playing for decades, so this has been a great diversion so far.

Primarily meant for my banjo-dobro hybrid, but still works well for bass too: