Passinwind

Not strictly a lap steel, although I do plan to use it that way quite a bit:

There's a contact pickup on the resonator as well, with a stereo output jack to allow outboard blending or a two amp setup. It sounds closer to a dobro than a banjo, but definitely has its own thing going on.

On 10/07/2023 at 11:08, nilorius said:

Do You feel any different mellowship between playing fretted or fretless bass! If yes....why? Which one do You preffer ?

Fretted bass is the Debbil's Work, let him play it if he so chooses.

27 minutes ago, ricksterphil said:

 

Thanks. The cabs were close to the drums so that probably didn't help

Sometimes re-tuning the kick and/or the floor tom a little can help as well, in my experience.

43 minutes ago, ricksterphil said:

 

Not sure if a parametric or graphic EQ would be best....I need to research how a parametric EQ works and how to adjust it effectively 

Short answer: put it in medium to wide  bandwidth mode with some boost, sweep frequency until is makes things worse, narrow the bandwidth as needed, go to cut mode rather than boost and fine tune the frequency. An experienced user can do all that in a couple of seconds. A really experienced user just dials in the primary problem frequency that they already recognize and cuts it.

Another possibility is playing with cab placement, for instance getting it out of a corner or closer to or further from a wall or the floor. It may also be worthwhile to make sure it's not related to unwanted bass getting into the microphones and/or exciting the drum kit and creating ringing that way.

On 09/06/2023 at 01:03, DaleASmith said:

Has anyone built a frequency split pedal here? Either fixed or variable. Single input, high and low output. 

Yes indeed. I used a DSP board from MiniDSP that included programmable EQ capabilities as well.

Zero, for coming up on 6 years now, and I'm fine with that. When I was gigging the answer was almost always one, and that's all I even owned for couple of decades. In about 40 years of gigging I only used a fretted bass all of twice, IIRC.

3 hours ago, funkle said:

I’ve had gastroenteritis for a week and it’s been a rough ride. I can just about eat one meal a day in the last day or two, which is progress.

Ouch! Heal up fast. And this kind of work takes however long it takes. 😉

And a different color shifting enclosure from Cusack/Stompbox Parts for this one:

That enclosure came via a group buy, but the vendor says they may make it a regular option since it sold so well.

FWIW, I finally got around to installing a second DIY filter in my 5 string Marco Bass, so it's now one  per pickup rather than one inline with standard bass and mid controls. I tuned the neck pickup filter considerably differently than the bridge one, after doing a new bridge pickup tuning as well. My simple mixing scheme works really well and this whole thing is now back on track to be part of my open source project series. I'll post details on Github soon, but I have two hybrid filter pedal designs to wrap up first. My goal is to have a loose builder network built up worldwide for those who don't want to or can't roll their own, but keeping it primarily DIY is my strong preference. Great to see all these new takes popping up.

I'll post a few clips when I can con one of my pro player friends into helping out, no one wants to listen to me playing a fretted bass! 😎

And the new econo one, using through-hole parts all sourced from Tayda, and a very inexpensive Tayda case in a pre-drilled standard format they do for various Pedal PCB effects, which they also printed for me:

.........................................

Compared to the one pictured directly above, this would take a hobby DIY builder maybe 1/4 of the build time. Once it's well tested all the details will be available here: https://github.com/Passinwind/PW3B-LPF

Just yet another hybrid filter preamp build:

16 hours ago, luthifer said:

So I'm pretty sure C24 and C25 are supposed to be 10n.  Even with the gain of the inverting "attack" amp all the way up (2x), you would barely hear the boost at frequencies below 7 or 8 kHz. 10n caps there would bring the cutoff frequency down around 500 Hz, which gives you lots of boost around the 1-2k "pick" frequencies and above. Maybe I'm missing something; what happens with the OUTB signal before it hits the final mixing amp is very confusing without a clearer picture.

 

I haven't done up a Spice model of this yet, as I have a lot of customer work going on at the moment. Thanks for the heads-up!

15 hours ago, luthifer said:

It is very clean. The variable Q filter uses a circuit that is much quieter at full Q (and has very linear Q control - 1/2 way is 1/2 way - and base gain is dead on), but has the downside of clipping at roughly the level of 350mV with 7V supply (and max Q). With a fresh battery, gain trimmers only used to balance pickups, and normal output pickups, it won't clip. But high output pups may need more than 9V.

 

The sample is with the variable Q filter (The switched Q filter has a lot more headroom). I think it may be clipping a bit (hard to tell) but it doesn't sound harsh. Sounds pretty good, actually!  The gain trimmers are applied before the filter, so if you wanted some distortion intentionally, you could crank them up and get it for sure. The high gain is available so you can use the preamp by itself as a booster, but it can definitely overdrive the variable filter, which has internal gain above the gain coming out.

Nice to see you on here! And all of that sounds pretty familiar...😎

29 minutes ago, funkle said:

Can you repost it back up please? I actually tried doing some stuff in a photo editor but then it wouldn't save, for no obvious reason...

I can take a stab at doing a better one later, but at least it's mostly readable now.

6 hours ago, funkle said:

Ok guys, this is the best quality scan I can get of the paper copy sent to me of the Wal Custom preamp. It's not ideal as it was printed out lightly to start off with. 

Putting it in a photo editor and inverting black and white via an edge detection algorithm made it quite a bit easier to read, FWIW.

49 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

I think fretless slide lead bass could be a first in sludge/doom metal. Add in a wah and some heavy overdrive and I'm sure it'll work. 

FWIW, I did this cut with my Travis Bean fretless  as a bit of a goof several years ago:

8 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

Last night I received an email from our guitarist with an mp3 looping an absolutely disgusting, sludgy, doomy guitar riff. It sounds great but because he's gone so low with it, he's pretty much playing a bass part on baritone guitar (tuned to A#). This means the space left for me is pretty much a lead part which is something I have zero experience writing. Are there any good guides or rules or tips for writing a lead part? Or is it just a case of put it on loop, pour a whisky and jam until something happens?

I seem to end up in two bassist situations fairly often. By now my default choice for lead bass stuff is to use a slide. Much easier on fretless, I reckon, but since I so rarely play a fretted one I wouldn't really know!

12 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

Who would spend £3k on a Stingray?

Someone who makes 500 a gig? 

19 hours ago, Kiwi said:

 

 

How's that passive circuit we discussed coming along?

I got a headache looking at it and quickly gave up trying to make sense out of it, in all honesty. Have you managed to sort it out though?

On 08/03/2023 at 15:37, Lowend soldier said:

The youtube interview with jules is mindblowing. 

Inside these things look like Frankensteins lab.

But every chaotic piece is placed where it is for a specific result.

Guys like the rainman of tube circuits.

I spent a long lunch break at NAMM with Jule in 2020, it was a complete blast.

21 hours ago, slowburnaz said:

Maybe, maybe not.  I know of a service that will place surface mounted parts for you, as well as make your PCB boards, for a pretty darn reasonable price.

Yep, pick and place machines for SMT parts at vendors like JLCPCB have made that a quick, easy, and often very cheap alternative by now.

On 02/04/2023 at 06:22, Kiwi said:

Using a printed circuit board?  Hobbyists don't do that.

Au contraire, I do it all the time and have been for over a decade. There's excellent free circuit design and PCB layout software available these days and I can start a design from scratch today and have a finished build by the end of next week very economically, no problem.

11 hours ago, Oomo said:

I've wondered that about Dingwalls, I've never tried one but heard nothing but praise for them.

 

From what I understand, they're made in China, then shipped back over to Canada for quality control / setup, then on to wherever.

 

Not sure if that counts as mass produced, but they seem to sell for around £2400 which seems huge for a non custom instrument.

Some are made in China, but the higher end ones are made in Canada and sometimes go for Alembic/Wal sort of money, with delivery waits to match.

On 29/03/2023 at 16:00, tauzero said:

 

You could put one together yourself. A second-order passive filter would give you -6dB/octave. https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/filter/filter_3.html

2nd order is 12dB/oct, as stated in that link. 

On 28/03/2023 at 11:32, Old Ozzie Guy said:

Ok, thanks for everyone's insight., On my behalf, I could have been more detailed in my explanation of the whole thing .One point I found interesting,, I asked similar question on here and a site in US, I got quite different responses. Again, thanks for everyone's variety of input.. 

What did the Talkbass crew have to say?

If you want a passive solution I'd suggest looking at how G&L and/or Peavey have done it in their basses. Outboard implementations in pedals or amps tend to be used quite differently and passive solutions tend to be lossy and therefore work pretty poorly in most of those cases, IME. And once you add makeup gain it's not really passive anymore, IMO.

15 minutes ago, Matt P said:

as this pre uses a single gang pot for the blend in theory it's possible to swap the 2 pots for one stacked pot, they might need to be on wires rather than soldered direct to the board but that's not difficult for a competent tech.

 

Is there a value on the volume pot? the balance seems to be 50K. the link that @Passinwindgave above has a couple of options for stacked pots but only 2 that give a 50K option (50k/500k or 50k/50k, whether they have a centre detent on either pot is not stated.

 

the other thing i would check is that the spacing on the other 2 pots (the tone controls) matches the control plate you are wanting to use, I'm not that clued up on Musicman but there might be spacing differences between the 3 and 4 hole plates.

 

Matt

The Noll 50K/50K pots are definitely detented, as are his standalone balance pots, which are 220K IIRC. There are some custom options available too, but you'd have to ask Klaus Noll directly for the specifics. The last time I heard from him he was still dealing with supply issues, as so many of us have been for the last few years. Prices have gone up radically for the less common formats as well.

I'm not familiar with the Bongo electronics package at all, I'll see if I can get a little smarter about that. In many similar situations I've suggested that the customer just go to stacked Vol/Vol and do away with the blend, which I personally rarely like all that much in the first place. But I find all stacked pots to be evil, really. 🙉