Passinwind

[quote name='Merton' timestamp='1484806701' post='3218549'] Interesting. The Elf could be a good little backup head. I wonder what power amp module it uses... [/quote] Peavey have pretty much always made their own. I'll ask if I have time to get up to their suite.

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1481007948' post='3188846']The one in the middle is my latest design, a three band format with a "filter" style treble control section. I expect to post it eventually as an open source project including circuit board fabrication files.[/quote] I have now followed through on this: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-passinwind-open-source-preamp.1259692/. The final spec won't be released for another week or two, just want to gather up NAMM feedback before I do that. Here are the stomp box versions that I just sent off: And at least one will be in a friend's bass at the show as well.

[quote name='markstuk' timestamp='1484588821' post='3216575'] Sure.. SMPS - sort of synonymous with Class D, but you're right :-) [/quote] Just depends on your perspective I guess. Ive been using Class A/B and Class H QSC amps with SMPS for ages now, and had an iAmp with a nonlinear analog supply for a few years as well. Just another aspect like MOSFET or Solid State that also both do apply to Class D amps. In any case, this new Aguilar looks to be right in the sweet spot of the current actual buyers' market, IMO. Looking forward to checking it out at NAMM in a few days.

[quote name='markstuk' timestamp='1484585302' post='3216524'] only 4.9 lbs vs 18 lbs for the AG500.. I suspect Class D.. [/quote] The AG500 amps are also Class D, but using an older school power supply arrangement.

[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1484299684' post='3214398'] Class D isn't new any more - I got my first one about 13 years ago. IME, the novelty seems to be wearing off for a growing number of people. [/quote] True, they have been around since the 1980s and are clearly the standard now. Not a novelty, just the goods for the vast majority of people in the market. I know you don't feel that way, but IME you are in a very small minority. OTOH, I've never heard any amp that couldn't be a lot better, so bring on the next class! I would absolutely be on to in-ears if I were still gigging in situations that required monitors.

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1484229478' post='3213748'] Does anyone know if the Genz Shuttle 3.0 AND 6.0 have h.p. filtering, and if so, at what slope? Cheers, MBA [/quote] They have quite a bit (more than I like TBH) but I've never measured the exact response, which probably changes quite a bit depending on settings, as many amps do.

3 basses, about to go down to two I think. I think I've I've owned all of 8 over 45 years, rarely more than two at any given time. The last time I bought one was 13 years ago. Cabs: a single 112 which handles all my gigs these days. I simply wouldn't take a booking that requires anything more. For practice at home I have a pair of homemade 115 cabs and a variety of top boxes with various mid drivers and tweeters. Amps: two DIY solid state heads, five or six different preamps (also mostly DIY jobs), and three power amps. I'd happily sell off most of that stuff at this point, as I really am only looking for at most two or three specific tones anyway. I've always been more keen on the amplification side and relatively indifferent to collecting basses. Same for guitar as well.

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1481925934' post='3196420'] Designing speaker cabinets is what I call squeezing a balloon. You squeeze out something you don't want and something else squeezes out somewhere else. Charlie (passinwind) has designed an HPF and we have had many happy hours emailing back and forth about it. [/quote] Indeed, and I've now done several alternative versions. But for me the utility is more in tone control and feedback suppression than speaker protection.The cabs I use work just fine with my tube preamp that measures flat to 20Hz or so. The generalizations about "typical" spectral content of bass signals are maybe open to further discussion. There are a ton of variables and I found little commonality as I measured more and more basses. The long thread on Talkbass quickly devolved in a very contentious affair. My current take: measure it yourself, draw your own conclusions, and don't assume.

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1481900888' post='3196140'] It's much more complicated than you think! [/quote] Yep. And as usual, there's no free lunch.

Nope: "[i]Buy something once, why buy it again?[/i]"

[quote name='Phil-osopher10' timestamp='1481812543' post='3195366'] Is the only way to prevent damage a [b]low pass[/b] filter of some description? [/quote] That would cut highs, and therefore be more relevant to the tweeter.

Let no good deed go unpunished. Thanks for taking the time to do all of that so thoroughly.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1481788893' post='3195088'] Right, so little difference to my experience then. Thanks. [/quote] Just within 5-6 miles of me there are at least eight venues that have house systems, not counting summer festivals, which nearly always have PA support.. This, for a population of right around 10,000 people between three towns.When I lived on the east coast it was a lot closer to what Bill describes though. So as usual, I'd say it just depends.

[quote name='julesb' timestamp='1481726188' post='3194592'] [url="http://www.scottsbasslessons.com/podcast/in-conversation-with-kai-eckhardt"]http://www.scottsbas...th-kai-eckhardt[/url] [/quote] He's a great guy, I really enjoyed talking with him at length in between sets at a hippie wedding gig I was mixing and he was playing with Garaj Mahal quite a few years ago.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1481725228' post='3194578'] Not using a regularly checked email address defeats the object when it comes to reminders for things I am interest in like items on my watch list that I haven't decided whether or not to bid on. I think that the only real solution is to use two different browsers for looking at stuff on eBay. One where I'm not logged in for random browsing and checking out links in this forum, and then another where I am logged in for stuff that I am considering buying or bidding on. I was hoping that there was a more convenient solution. [/quote] Maybe just use porn mode (private browsing) when you're tire kicking?

[quote name='Bassbadger' timestamp='1481277165' post='3191105'] The pots can be hard to locate. I have them made to my specs in Korea for the Stinger. [/quote] Cool. A 500K "lefty" pot works fine in a pinch too and I actually prefer the way that works when using the MM 2-band preamp with some non-MM pickups. CTS makes a decent one that's not all that hard to find.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1481617010' post='3193664'] I should have said was if the speaker was making 25% of the allowable excursion with the tone control flat then it would probably be doing 100% of the allowable excursion with the sort of bass boost he was applying. Tone controls are tricky things, there are a lot of different circuits used to control tone. Passinwind will vouch for that. A lot of tone controls are still based on the traditional Baxendall design. The trouble is this circuit will boost sound most the further you get away from it's first frequency of action, extreme bass is boosted more than upper bass. [url="http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/Amplifiers/amplifiers42.php"]http://www.learnabou...mplifiers42.php[/url] This means that when you boost bass to get a bit more warmth the subsonics are boosted even more than the bit you are interested in. Turning the bass control to 3 o'clock as the OP did is hardly extreme, but he may well have ended pumping four times as much power as he thought into his speakers. I want to help him get good results and to understand what may have happened but most of all I want to be able to offer the best possible advice to people who build these speakers. It's hard to explain situations where there are many variables in simple ways to the non-techy reader. Let's hope that when it gets back it is working as Blue Aran say it is. [/quote] Agreed to every bit of that. I could say much more, but I'll save that for some more overtly tech oriented thread.

[quote name='M@23' timestamp='1481618743' post='3193681'] Confirmed, it is ICEpower. [/quote] Cool, the 700ASC is a great sounding and feeling piece.

[quote name='Dan Dare' timestamp='1481536786' post='3192946'] Yep. Gotta be an Icepower 700ASC. Everyone - MESA, Genzler, Aguilar, etc - uses ICE modules. Bloody Bang & Olufsen won't sell them to end users, only to OEM manufacturers. A piece of p*ss to build into an amp - make 8 connections and mount the module in a hobby/project case (£40 on eBay), add a decent pre-amp and bingo. But no, us punters have to pay £700 plus to one of the afore-mentioned for the privilege. Hi-fi world is even worse. Plenty of manufacturers put B&O modules in a pretty case, add a few connectors and a pretty blue LED and sell them for thousands. It's rip off city. [/quote] It's just sound business practice IMHO. Providing tech support to one off builders is a potential nightmare, and the liability and regulatory issues are far from trivial. I'd suggest that you vote with your wallet and just buy from Hypex, who have always supported DIY'ers. Or figure out how to write up a sufficiently real looking business prospectus, which worked for me.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1481446201' post='3192267'] As the idiot who did most of the design I worked on the assumption that the fundamental makes up only about 25% of the signal from the bass. I used the only information I had to hand which was from some testing TKS were generous enough to share. It's impossible for any designer to have control over how their design will be used but if 6dB of bass boost (much less than doubling the amount of bass subjectively) was used then that 25% assumption means 100% and I'd have to assume the speaker was working right up against its limits for considerable amounts of time. [/quote] There was a long and sometimes contentious thread on Talkbass several years ago where many bases were tested with an eye toward spectral distributions. It's archived in the Amps Forum FAQ: [url="https://www.talkbass.com/threads/bass-frequency-waterfall-plots-what-they-mean-to-rigs.510749/"]https://www.talkbass...to-rigs.510749/[/url] I provided some of the first few analysis examples, which from my perspective basically worked out to [i]let no good deed go unpunished[/i], which seems like something you might relate to right about now. It's not all that hard to do your own testing and draw your own conclusions, which I would highly recommend. My personal takeaway was and is that as usual, it just depends. Room EQ Wizard is one bit of free software that does an excellent job analyzing bass recordings. In any case, boosting the fundamental in the way you mention most likely won't take that hypothetical 25% number to 100%, because the overtones still all have energy and therefore have to take up part of that 100% ceiling, and depending on what note you are looking at the bass control may well be boosting the first overtone or two just as or nearly as much as the fundamental. I'll be happy to illustrate this with an actual measured example or two when you start your new thread if you like. I don't do DIY speaker cabs any more myself, but I still enjoy doing the math. I reckon that the adjustable HPF I build into my amps would add right around $100 at retail, given the standard markup typically needed to make a successful go of commercial production. But that also just depends, and as you say, most amps already have at least a rudimentary low order filter response built in. IMO, in many cases that is plenty, and may represent the best balance of tradeoffs for many users.

[quote name='LukeFRC' timestamp='1481377455' post='3191852'] why don't they put a HPF as standard on bass amps? [/quote] There are substantial tradeoffs at play and the vast majority of players either "don't need" one or don't realize that they do. Note that I do include one as a standard feature on most of my DIY builds these days though...

[quote name='blablas' timestamp='1481376130' post='3191840'] Replaced the pickguard om my StingRay 5 with something a bit more modest that only covers the control cavity, it's a crime to hide such a nice piece of wood underneath a big white plastic sheet! [/quote] Well played. I've never been a fan of big plastic pickguards at all.

[quote name='lowregisterhead' timestamp='1481327158' post='3191623'] I'm looking for a bit of general guidance on whether a different preamp will really be able to change the sonic character of a bass, in this case a Status S2 5-string thru-neck. The bass is lovely to play, sits really nicely, and I like the look and general ergonomics of the instrument. However, regardless of how I fiddle with the eq, it has a high-mid bark that I can't seem to dial out, and getting a clear, glassy top end out if it seems to be beyond the capabilities of the current preamp (an 18v 302 board). Is it worth fitting, say, a John East Uni-Pre (I've had several different East preamps and they've all been great) or would I be wasting my time & money? All advice gratefully received! [/quote] Have you tried changing string type yet? I went through two pickup replacements and two aftermarket preamps plus one DIY one in a similar scenario (too dark in my case though) before I finally got around to trying that. The third preamp did help a lot, but the strings probably made even more difference, and starting there might have gotten me close enough to what I wanted to not bother trying all those other tweaks.

My three latest DIY onboard preamp builds: The one in the middle is my latest design, a three band format with a "filter" style treble control section. I expect to post it eventually as an open source project including circuit board fabrication files. Initial testing has been going pretty well, much better than I really expected to be honest. Here are the two stomp box enclosures I just received in the mail today for some tester versions I can pass around to friends for user feedback: I'll also have them in some friends' booths at the NAMM show in January, but again just to see how I might be able to improve the design. I would love to eventually sell some IP, but have little interest in marketing hard goods.

[quote name='Lord Sausage' timestamp='1480943683' post='3188218'] When you see a band in a pub or function, do you ever go and speak to the bass player afterwards? [/quote] The vast majority of the live shows I attend these days feature friends of mine on bass and that is a large part of why I go, so definitely. Since I'm in the US, very few if any of them frequent Basschat though. But FWIW, I know literally hundreds of Talkbass members in what passes for real life.