Passinwind

20 minutes ago, John Cribbin said:

Switchcraft used to, or maybe still do, an extended version of these for when a body was to thick for the one shown to be fitted. Maybe there's an equivalent fitting for pots? 

From the thread I linked to:

Noll sells Alpha blend pots in 250K with 10mm long bushes, they  are A/C taper though, not M/N: https://www.noll-electronic.de/potentiometer/

Omeg will happily make you some with 12mm bushes as well but you may need to buy ten.

A few of us who play in my long open source preamp thread at that other place have also worked up various bush adapters. This guy did the nicest job IMO: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-passinwind-open-source-preamp.1259692/page-49#post-25906207

In my usual fashion I just went to my local hardware store, bought a few lamp fixtures and some superglue, and came up with this for some Tayda/Alpha dual pots I used in a DIY filter preamp build:  

There are still the stock 7mm dia. bushes underneath the threaded lamp rod, which is 3/8" with a slightly coarser thread than is standard for potentiometers. My hardware store sells a few different style nuts that worked fine though. I had these in my bass while waiting for the Omeg ones I bought to come in and they held up fine.

And finally, V/V/T works better than a blend pot in a way that matters a great deal to some of us and not at all to others. And vice versa...no need to rehash that here.😉

I've done a fairly substantial gear purge recently, goodbye to the two 115s and the AudioKinesis TC112AF that served me so well for eleven years. So I now have this DIY 110 job a local friend built:

It was built to fit a G-K MB500 head but I was gifted it without a head installed. The little Traynor SB-200H is a great fit for the semi-acoustic weekly jams I play. The tiltback wedge piece serves as a hinged access door to the amp's back panel and there's room for a couple of cables back there as well.

And then on the other end there's a new sheriff in town:

That's an AudioKinesis TC118AF, which also has a secondary back firing tweeter. Fairly big and absolutely huge sounding, but at 46Lbs it's an easy enough one hand carry over moderate distances, and balances well on the two side handles for longer schleps. I had been coveting one of these cabs for quite a few years and the owner of this one reached out to me when it didn't move locally for him. He happened to be driving within an hour of my place last week and I was able to go pick up without taking him more than a few minutes out of his way. My new tube amp should fit on top quite nicely once I finally get it all bolted together.

10 hours ago, itu said:

That green one looks very good even without the electronics.

 

How much is your circuitry consuming energy? Volts and milliamps? Could I put it inside a bass with a battery?

John covered most of it, but to flesh that out:

The original open source one used LT1351 and LT1352 opamps and drew about 800uA @9V. For most of the newer onboard ones and probably all the pedals I've gone with OPA145 and OPA2145, which puts nominal consumption at around 1.4mA. I've had one like that in my 5 string bass for several months now and haven't gotten to the first battery change yet. The former two chips come in DIP-8 format (through hole parts) or as surface mount parts and the latter two are SMD only. The SMD boards (two in this version) are quite a bit more compact than the original board but are not as DIY friendly, so I have an intermediate solution in mind for if and when I release a new open source one.

And then I have a pedal in mind with a few more features, for which I'm still considering all the obvious options like variable HPF, gain and volume controls, DI, headphone amp, Aux In for playalongs, etc. It would probably run on +/- 15V via one of the ubiquitous charge pump converter chips that are getting more and more popular. So, still would work fine on standard 9V pedalboard power and power conversion happens in the box. As John mentioned, the pictured pedal will be happy with anything from 9-18V, maybe higher even. Those boards should come in next week and the black box needs to be ready for my friend's NAMM booth first week in June. He  requested that color scheme and the "chameleon" one is likely to be the default if I start selling these since reception has been very good for it.

OK, about that "chameleon" finish now that the new boxes are in hand. Same box in both pics:

And here are pics of the new ones from the American print guy. I know who I'll be using going forward. The bottom one changes color from green to purple with viewing or lighting angle changes, can't wait to see it in person.

First V2 build  of my open source filter preamp in pedal form:

Enclosure and UV printing from Tayda for this build, but I'm trying a semi-local US print vendor right now with more uptown Gorva S90 enclosures and should have a couple of new ones in by early next week.

2 hours ago, funkle said:

Fantastic @Andyjr1515!

 

I’ve got this week off and will be doing some recordings with the Lusithand preamp. 
 

I also managed to get some photos of the Wal circuit boards, before I had to give the bass back to its rightful owner. It looks like (according to a friend who knows about these things) that it’s a state variable filter design. I would not be the best person to ask, but there you go. He’s going to have a shot at working out a circuit diagram, we’ll see if it’s possible. 

Oh, and it looks like the potentiometers are made custom by a company called Radiohm. Here’s an old ‘for sale’ thread with what they look like - https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/343198-sold-wal-mk1-and-later-control-pot-set/

 

Omeg in the UK sell some Radiohm clone parts from the original tooling and their own evolutions of them. I've posted a few times about my experiences ordering custom parts from them, good ones in both cases so far.

8 minutes ago, TimR said:

 

I found playing in bands like that, you're given the dots to play. No improvisation, you play the arrangement. The great aspect of that is that you know the finished article will sound good, and you don't have to spend time working out your part. Turn up and play what's written. 

 

I remember once we bought in a pro  conductor for a concert, he stopped us during a rehearsal and asked the drummer what the hell he was playing, the drummer couldn't read music, and up until then the conductors had let it slide if it fitted. 😆

 

If you think Sex on Fire is boring you want to try playing some Tuba lines...

 

 

Heh! I did a stint in my my local community big band a few years back. I had never done the usual jazz band stint in school and felt I might as well take a stab at improving my dot reading, plus I had quite a bit of gigging experience with the first chair guys doing the usual Real Book small combo thing. Many of their charts had long open sections with just chords, maybe with a sample walking line, maybe not even. No problem there, but catching and/or providing all the section cues and nailing the dynamics as written took a lot of homework. When I'd get asked to mentor the local high school kids it was a real mixed bag, and they were definitely doing plenty of the teaching!

8 hours ago, Shiveringbass said:

Hello,

 

Just be aware that the passive tone knob only work in passive mode.

 

The same pot, trebble knob, is used for active treb control and passive tone.

 

You can't have passive tone and active treb at the same time like on the Sadowsky preamp for instance.

That's a function of the Glock bypass design IIRC, the pot itself as Noll sell it is perfecty happy to be configured as in-circuit in both modes. You get a "double dip" in cut mode, but I consider that to be quite useful.  Separate pots have a different tradeoff set, but can work really well too IME. Nice to be able to boost the active side and cut the passive at the same times to move the treble peak around in frequency, for example. But it's alos one more thing to keep track of! 😉

On 04/04/2022 at 13:16, carlsim said:

 It states on their website that the stacked treble and bass doesn’t have a passive tone, but the one with the separate bass and treble pots, the treble acts as a passive HF roll off which I suppose is a tone control. 

am I wrong in that one then? Would rather confirm before buying as a passive tone would be desirable…

I've played around with the dual purpose treble/tone pot thing a bit. I think it's a great idea, especially for preamps like the Glocks where the active treble tuning is pretty high in frequency compared to many others.

On 02/04/2022 at 14:35, Owen said:

I am PAINFULLY aware of the piezo into a front end which is not high impedance. Nothing is quite as sad as an unbuffered Double Bass piezo.

 

What I was enquiring about was what Audere offer in some of their on board preamps. I had an Audere once. It had some kind of impedance switching option. It was utterly bonkers, in a good way. All I know is that when I flicked that switch back in the day all sorts of super gnarly stuff happened which was very attractive. Not just LF, but grunt and edge.  I should have left the bass as it was, but........ you know how it is.......

It could just have been a level rise which in turn drove the front end of the amp harder. It could have been how the preamp was interacting with that specific pickup (also long gone).

 I had one in a bass with Q-Tuner pickups briefly and the "Low-Z mode" barely did anything at all. When the owner of Audere, David Meadows, let me try his own bass at a GTG it was fairly dramatic though. He invited me over to his shop to investigate but that particular config had other issues and I decided to just start building my own preamps again, and have never looked back. It's a really cool feature when it all works though, for sure.

I live an hour outside of Portland (Oregon, there are others in the US) and owned a fretless TB2000 for forty years. If you get any leads feel free to PM me and I'Il see if I can help. I'll keep an eye out and spread the word as much as I can in any case. Best of luck!

Just now, Passinwind said:

. 😉

On 06/02/2022 at 10:55, Rayman said:

Here's a question.....

 

Have you ever felt guilty, or that you're really not good enough to own that expensive bass?

 

Thoughts?

Nope, my only thought is wondering if that expensive bass is good enough for me. I clearly deserve better but since you're only giving away a Fodera and not Glen Moore's Klotz upright, it'll  have to do I suppose.

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

Any Cobalt Flats users here? What string is it similar to in tension/flex? 

I had them on my Crescent Moon fretless for a few years. The lightest gauge are just a little more tense than T-I Jazz Flats IME, I did end up tweaking the truss rod just a very little bit. I liked the Cobalts a lot more than the T-I JFs and may easily put another set on that bass if and when I decide to bail on the current roundwound experiment using DR Sunbeams, which incidentally didn't require any truss adjustment at all from the EB CFs.

On 30/01/2022 at 03:29, Aliwobble said:

So recently it was my privilege to play on a friend’s recording.  This was my setup, and it sounded great!  Now show me yours...

Nice!

New recording rig, hoping to try tracking with it for the first time this week:

Probably with this Marco Bass, possibly with the whole bass rig too though:

On 08/01/2022 at 18:27, bubinga5 said:

I had given up on jazz basses to be honest and I had this up for sale. then I played and got to know this Atelier Z . Just an incredible instrument. 

 

Its hard to describe how fat and huge this bass sounds, not many people mention the necks on these basses. .  I thought the Lakland 5594 was a fantastic instrument but this AZ blows it away.

 

Did you find a keeper.?

Over fifty years of playing I've owned all of 8 bass guitars and four are still with me, so yeah. One lasted 40 years and was my only bass for half that time. The other three I no longer own only stuck around for a year or so at most, and my oldest keeper was made for me in 2003. I do tend to mod everything sooner than later though, often multiple times over.

7 minutes ago, Owen said:

I have not played through a Simone. But the Monique was very, very lovely. I no longer own it because I cannot play without earplugs. So any of that luscious detail is lost on me. I like other people, but not enought to treat them to a fabulous thing they would not notice becuase of Mr Drummer and the Guitarmageddon. 

I can totally relate to that even though earlpug gigs are far in the rear view mirror for me. I built a pretty sweet rack tube preamp several years ago at great expense but just never ended up taking it out on very many gigs, and eventually I traded it out and built a compact solid state amp that sounds 97% as good and stopped sweating that last three percent. 😉

57 minutes ago, Owen said:

I used to have a Monique. It did things to the sound that nothing else I have found does. The saturation it delivered made my bass sound 3D. And this was while A/Bing it in the same room as a Demeter Pre and and Avalon U5. They each had their merits, but the Monique was the one for me at the time. I believe that the Simone is designed to do the same thing.

I've only heard the Simone prototype that was in the NAMM booth I worked at in 2020. We had a Monique in the same booth in 2018 as well. I think Jule reworked Simone a good bit after that show, and we were also using different power amps and maybe cabs with each preamp. They were both cool but the Monique was really in another time zone for me, as it should be given the price difference. Jule is super cool and just a great guy to hang out with in any case.

I let a friend whose day job involves hand soldering SMT parts take a crack at building one of my new three band preamps:

The board itself came from DigiKey's new-ish fabrication service, it gets a thumbs-up from me.

Look at Schatten Design's offerings if you change your mind on budget. I've not heard them in the flesh yet but I had a nice chat with Mr. Schatten at the last Winter NAMM and was very impressed by his build quality.

If you are comfortable with DIY building then some variation of the ubiquitous Tillman circuit is a great low cost solution. I do have an open source/non commercial buffer in the works, but if you need a little gain and very low cost the Tillman may be your jam.

On 01/06/2021 at 07:31, Dood said:

What do you all look for in a YouTube video? What do you want to see more of, what do you want to see less of?

Are short five minute videos touching on the key areas better for you than 15-20 minute offerings that go in to greater detail? (How to use something or more available sound examples)

Please quote me and comment as I (like I am sure all videographers and vloggers) would be interested to find out!

 

Original music with full band backing including real drums, no play alongs or "covers." 3-5 minutes tops, with very minimal talking if any. You have 15-20 seconds to convince me to keep watching, use it wisely.

1 minute ago, zitherman said:

Thanks passinwind for a comprehensive reply.i realise its quite a complicated idea.I wondered if one of the controls on the tone pots could switch to passive mode when switching the voltage off.Im not keen on the modern styling with 4 or 5 knobs and prefer a simpler look.might have to have a rethink. Cheers

Normally when you switch into passive mode the power doesn't actually get switched off, the signal path just changes and the preamp stays in standby to avoid the nasty switching pop I alluded to. With a standard preamp bypass switching scheme like that it's no problem to port to a passive tone control, and Noll sells a cool tone pot meant to allow for exactly that (ie active section and passive section on one control shaft), although I think it works even better with the passive tone control section just always being engaged, a la Sadowsky. Noll set it up so the passive part only engages at settings below 12 o'clock, which is quite clever. While unfortunately that pot is not suitable for a MM preamp, it works perfectly for many of the other usual suspects though. It still won't help you in a two hole control  build however, as it's not in a concentric format.

Best of luck! 

19 hours ago, zitherman said:

Im now onto my 3rd 51p bass build but want to do it a little different. In addition to the single coil pickup im going to add a mm pickup but i still want it to look clean with just 2 knobs.So im thinking dual concentric volume control,and a dual concentric bass/treble control with a mm type preamp.Also the abilty to switch it to passive and have one of the tone knobs become a passive tone control.I wouldnt mind a couple of mini switches.ie pickup selector and battery switch(for passive selection.Is there anyone on here able to build a preamp to do this.cheers

That's quite a big ask, I would just use at least three pots personally. I can do custom preamps to a fairly high standard but I'm in the US and it wouldn't be cheap for what you want. I'm also quite backed up at the moment. You'll need a very custom tone pot, for starters. This is the only readily available option I'm aware of: https://www.omeg.co.uk/potentiometers/unswitched/p20/p20-3-concentric/

You'll most likely need to buy at least ten of those pots, but you can try pinging Omeg and see if they are willing to do a one-off for you. And then it has to fit in your cavity route, how deep will yours be? A two gang one (ie no passive option) will fit in even a standard Fender route just fine though IME. But again, there are no stock ones like that AFAIK, you will have to custom order. I recently went through that with a different needed feature set and Omeg were great to deal with.

If you used a pickup selector and only one volume control you could do volume/passive tone on a concentric pot, I think this is a better bet.

Power switching without transient pops is problematic as well, but a typical MM preamp draws so little power that I wouldn't bother.