Passinwind

Nope, I wouldn't put speed bumps on any fretless bass for any reason.

Done!

16 minutes ago, Smanth said:

Analogue is the past!

Digital is the now, future (IMHO)

 

It's like LP vs CD

 

S'manth x

The near future just might be unamplified acoustic instruments around the campfire, just sayin'. But I'm not at all fussed on one delivery method over another, just want to hear great original music played by humans who actually really mean it! And I greatly respect all those who help make that happen, in whatever fashion. 😉

9 hours ago, Smanth said:

Yes, being able to control using a phone/tablet is (IMHO) a powerful capability ... but having to do so is not.  I believe that Proteus must be able to act as totally stand alone unit that can be configured/run without the need for anything else (except perhaps power and a bass lol)

 

S'manth x

Cool, looking forward to seeing how this progresses! I've been toying with the idea of making some DSP based DIY widgets for a while now but I already spend far too much time in front of a computer screen and also have a lot of new analog projects to finish up or get to anyway. 😉

7 hours ago, 6v6 said:

> v2 of the WTHPF pedal, a bit more aggressively voiced than the first one and using some new-to-me opamps:

 

Looks great @Passinwind - how did you do the graphics on the enclosure?

That's a UV print job from Amplifyfun in Portland Oregon. They are very quick and very inexpensive if you live in the US, and all they need is a basic PDF done on templates they send you in various formats. He offers laser etching and CNC machining as well. That print job cost me $6US plus shipping and the whole process took less than a week from inception to my mailbox. Another Portland vendor drop ships powder coated enclosure to AF, gets there next day. AF typically takes a couple of days and once they ship it gets here next day. I may be a bit spoiled! 😎

On 15/10/2022 at 03:32, Smanth said:

Fair point, I feel that the physical elements of a touchscreen are incompatible with the physical rigours a pedal needs, but that is just my view.

 

Thoughts from anyone?

 

S'manth x

Carrying a phone or Pad to gigs would have been an instant deal breaker for me (phone always stayed in the van), but I could have lived with using my iPad for programming at home.

Love the open source aspect of this BTW.  I've been doing open source hardware for musicians for several years now and find it a very fulfilling diversion in my retirement years.

v2 of the WTHPF pedal, a bit more aggressively voiced than the first one and using some new-to-me opamps:

On to the open source fixed frequency high pass filter next, which will be my first 1590A build ever.

On 16/10/2022 at 15:22, thisisswanbon said:

 

 

Long story longer, is there an active pre out there with the responsiveness of a passive bass, that'll also allow a control to double as a passive tone in passive mode? If not, am I better off looking at an external EQ pedal? Any advice from the absolute fountain of knowledge that is the basschat community would be much appreciated!

 

 

Yep, Noll sells a dual section pot that can be switched from active to passive funtionality, or you can just set it up to do both things in active mode and act like a normal passive tone control in passive mode. It comes standard on some of their preamps too. What's really slick about it is that the passive section only works from noon counterclockwise, so when using active boost the passive section won't mess with that even if you leave it wired in all the time. I used that pot with one of my DIY preamps for a customer build and it worked great without any need for a switch.

53 minutes ago, Smanth said:

You have got to be joking!  Can anything be worth this!?!?

 

S'manth x

I know people who have a whole lot more than that invested in pedalboards, so I guess it just depends! 

On 16/10/2022 at 04:01, Phil Starr said:

I'm looking at using REW which is free and pretty powerful. It's also fairly well supported and there are plenty of instructional videos on You Tube. Any 2 in/2 out interface should work and I'm probably going to use my USB mixing desk. REW lets you do a calibration plot so if the interface does have any artefacts they can be allowed for. There might be a problem with connecting some BTL (bridged) amps to earth but most DI boxes should let you fix that. Currently John is doing his measurements with an oscilloscope and other software. I'm not sure if that is an issue, if they lead to different results then we can investigate.

 

The only other issue I can think of is all agreeing a protocol so data can be collected and compared. For measurement I think 20-20kHz measurements at low power makes sense and REW allows you to centre results at 0db. Displaying results as a graph is useful but a table summarising results would also be good as a quick reference (-3db points, frequency range, rate of roll off, centre and size of any frequency anomalies) Ideally it would be good to make the data files themselves available to anyone who wants them. I've no idea about how they are stored.

 

I'm no expert on this so any help/suggestions are very welcome. We might need to take this across to another thread if this takes off

 

REW is pretty danged good IME and the price is right. I bought the full version of True RTA eons ago and so I mostly just use that because I like the memory storage format for A/B capabilties. One gotcha is that many commodity interfaces have non defeatable HPFs built into some or all of the input channels. Steinberg UR series, I'm looking at you! 😎

As far as your original post, I've been wrestling with this for several decades by now. I used to help out on installs in many different sorts of spaces and in churches I would rather hilariously often get drafted to read from the pulpit because I have a big voice and a decent feel for the behind the mic experience. Dead flat was pretty much never the goal or the end result, but it makes for a uniform reference at least!

I happen to be building some new preamp pedals this week and testing various HPF formats. By the time you factor in rolloffs in various amps and onboard preamp stages just spec'ing a net 4th order HPF at 30Hz is a lot less straightforward than one might expect. At some point taking the box to an open mic and letting half a dozen bassists play through it often teaches me more than a zillion RTAs and Spice models do. But of course once we can correlate all those things reliably we're way ahead of the game!

3 hours ago, Vin Venal said:

Those are beautiful!

 

I can't really justify spending that much on knobs at the moment, but I love the idea of asking him to modify some of those pick shaped knobs to be heart shaped - think that would look really cool. Especially on a bass with those vintage ibanez style heart shaped tuners...

I like that idea a lot! He's pretty well known for throwing in freebie extras, and in my case he even sent me a bunch of raw cuts to reshape and finish as I pleased. So I ended up getting a dozen of the walnut pick shaped ones in three sizes, plus two sets of four round ones in matching wood, all for about what a quartet of the fancy finished ones go for. And then he does discounts for returning customers too. For me it's almost like dealing locally, as his stuff gets here in 1-2 days via snail mail.

On 12/10/2022 at 04:33, Bassmidget209 said:

On a similar note. Does anyone have any particular knob vendors or emporiums to recommend? Perhaps a one man operation somewhere? A merchant if you will. 

I do enjoy moving away from the norm but I've not found something that's really caught my eye and eBay is about as far as I have ventured this far so would appreciate some venerable recommendations for your favourite knobs.

I really like working with this guy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PickKnobs

He loves doing custom work and the pictured stuff on Etsy barely scratches the surface of what he can do.

On 13/10/2022 at 04:40, Jaybeevee said:

Can i get some real world experience or advice?

I'm in the market for a new (used) amp. My bass amp experience i can count on one hand but include Mesa tube amp, Ashdown, Old peavy SS amp, Tecamp and Markbass. I think all of these coloured my sound providing varying degrees of warmth, fattnes etc. What i am wondering about is how amps which are so called HiFi amps, or are designed to deliver clean sound only or 'the sound of your bass' actually sound and work compared to Amps which are designed to colour you sound? Do they 'suck out the vintage' from old P basses (as i have read), are they only good for Soap bar basses (as i have read) or not that suitable for this genre or better for this or that. Can a decent EQ section warm things thicken things up? Do they need to be warmed up? Just throw a tube pre amp or other pedal infront? 

 

For me, i enjoy my vintage basses and have a couple of boutique basses with my current collection pretty much covered by P basses, J bass, Yam BB and a stingray and TKS 112 cabs. I play usually guitar based bands of various forms but pretty much rockish based. My skills are somewhere in the intermediate area (no pro here) and play mostly pubs and gig venues usually through the PA.. There are a couple few intriguing amps for sale on here and locally to me that are 'clean amps' such as thunderfunk, Glocks, Aggi AG700 Epifani, Eden..  I really fancy any of these, but then i get cold feet about it and think i need a Mesa Walkabout or Ampeg or Ashdown or simillar.

Any thought please? Real world for someone at my level... 

Cheers

Jay

None of the ones you mentioned as being clean with the possible exception of some Glock models really are, IMO and IME. I've built a few that were closer but IMO very few people really actually dig that for bass guitar. Perfect for upright though, which was my primary goal at the time. OTOH, I absolutely love the sound of my BGs plugged straight into a mixing board without even a DI, but there's still always at least a bit of voicing in the onboard electronics I build myself.

2 minutes ago, Smanth said:

Just to check.

 

On desktop - knobs, buttons OK?

On floor - footswitches?

Either - WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth or MIDI to control from either a web browser (Custom apps are so 1990s), one of the several control surface apps or your DAW?

 

I am considering some small BLE based control buttons that could be mounted on a bass too.

 

S'manth xx

No foot switches needed or wanted, do it on the bass with a simple keypad. Desktop unit, knobs and buttons fine as long as I can switch presets plus control the most important parameters such as volume, drive, and EFX blend right on the bass. No web, no DAW, no control surface unless it is on the bass. Not asking too much, right? 😎

On 06/10/2022 at 02:12, Smanth said:

I'm reaching out to ask what you would want in a MFX

 

Cool! I want full control on a wireless or possibly wired connection from my bass. Anything living on the floor that requires me to bend over, ever, is out.

18 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

I think in KiCad I can update them all at once I think? 

All the ones that use the same footprints, yeah. Make sure you update your libraries when you do so, it'll save future heartbreak.

1 hour ago, LukeFRC said:

There you go then - the ones on the big cap are bigger. 
Not the manufacturer - 100% my design! 
Plus the missed trace, plus that whole bit of the circuit I got wrong

 

It's a good idea to look at the drill tolerance specs from your fabricator, JLCPCB call +0.13m/-0.08mm for instance. Doing my own footprints for just about every component can be a definite time suck, but it's worth it!

4 hours ago, Rich said:

I've just upvoted it  Why did it take me so long to join that forum?

I started hanging on there recently myself. I love effects but not the pedal format so much, however it's a great crew and I'm actually learning some new things, so all good.

5 hours ago, neepheid said:

 

Yup.  They leave me utterly cold.

Same here. I can walk around NAMM all day and barely even notice 95% of the FSOs. I wouldn't necessarily call them ugly though, just a bit boring. And as others have mentioned, safe and boring has its definite place.

As far as what I do like, a proper upright bass looks worlds better to me than any bass guitar ever has or ever will. No paint, no plastic...ah, so nice!

Bench tested yesterday, on to listening tests today:

I'm hoping to have one of the well known pedal PCB suppliers port this to a simpler one board format with through hole parts for DIYers and sell it on his website. As usual, no commercial stake in this for myself, although this build was done on a commission and with luck I may even make something close to minimum wage on the assembly part! 

Not quite science fiction, but the Peacock Mantis Shrimp has a bit of scary sea monster vibe, no? 😎

5 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

The desire for every other finish but sunburst / tort is just a passing fad. You will eventually come back to the classic finish that we all love eventually .

Its tradition and we all love tradition. 😂

You just dont realise it yet 

Dave

Ah, you mean a proper upright bass. And you're not wrong about that!

On 22/09/2022 at 02:19, Osiris said:

Not the design but the finish. Sunburst and/or tort are disgusting enough on their own, but when combined they are truly hideous 🤢🤮

Just add gold hardware for the holy trinity of awful bass aesthetics! 

 

It needs a gold ashtray. 😎

1 hour ago, LukeFRC said:

I was looking at that - or the aeon Cornish compressor clone.

 

advantage of buying a kit you know it will work!!!

I have the board and LDR for the Aion OC-1 and just need to work out whatever "my" build spec is going to be and buy the rest of the parts. To say I'm not very good at following published build specs would be a huge understatement! 😎

On 21/09/2022 at 11:38, Passinwind said:

Next up in my build queue, adding an HPF and shrinking the box size:

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the actual box, which got to me two days after submitting the graphics art to the printer guy the same day I posted that: