bobbass4k

On 29/07/2020 at 23:14, Jonathan Bee said:

what a beast!!!! Any sounds clips? 🙂 

An extremely rough phone clip I accidently recorded - some silly textural guitar stuff I was messing about with trying to find sounds that work through an amp. The phone clip is actually useful cos you can hear the guitar acoustically too. 

20200809_012404.m4a

14 hours ago, alexpea said:

Thank you! Glad you like the vid, I enjoyed making it. I’m fairly new to Cardiacs but already love Jim. Defo underrated. 

Tarred and feathered is probably one of their more straightforward Tunes - A good thing to remember is that Tim played some of the basslines on the records (though Jim always reproduced them live), or especially on Sing to God there's a lot of programmed synths that weave in and out of the basslines. Have a crack at Insect Hoofs on Lassie or Horse's Tail if you fancy some fun. 

Very nice work - I've spent the week going back trying to learn some of the basslines I gave up on years ago and good GOD was Jim an underrated bassist. I know the whole Cardiacs story is one of criminal under-appreciation but Jim (JIM!) is maybe the biggest victim.

5 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

But if you limit it to the number of usable sounds, it's doable in one standard Earth month my sources tell me.

I'm still working on it - sounding like a swarm of horny space whales having a laser orgy may be of debatable usefulness, but it IS a lot of fun.

Peppered with the DIY fruits of lockdown labour - 

1 hour ago, BrunoBass said:

This hurts my head. 15/8? 

Yeah, I tend to think of it as alternating 4/4 and 7/8, but 15/8 is probably neater. There's a couple of bars of 7/4 here and there if I remember correctly too. 

They do the same thing the other way round in different people (the main riff) - alternating 7/8 and 4/4. 

As much as I love vertigo/infinity land Biffy, I am very glad they're still peddling weird rock in stadiums and festival main stages. 

It's likely exceeding the current capacity of the supply, a cursory google says the donner has a max draw of 140mA. Not sure which Joyo supply you're using but on most of them most of the outputs are 100mA max. You'll need to figure out which output has a higher current capacity (probably 500mA) and try it on that one.

They're not very common at all, madbean does a kit that does it (the dreamtime delay) but the tremolo isn't controllable beyond the speed. If you fancy building a kit that'd be a good option but it's a difficult one. 

Edit: I've got one and I absolutely love it, apart from tremolo it does regular modulation and an almost ring mod kind of sound. 

11 hours ago, PJ-Bassist said:

Loads of great suggestions - thanks guys.

We settled on a couple of Steve Wilson and Porcupine Tree songs to have a play with which I guessed strayed into prog somewhat but not too far.

Though the drummer and I are in dispute about what time signature Trains is actually in (for the main riff the Acoustic guitars play) - any thoughts?

 

I'd probably just treat it all as 4/4 (except for the banjo bit obviously - 6/8). They're shifting the feel around about a bit, extending it by a couple of beats here and there, technically it's probably a mix of 4 and 2, it's generally easier to just treat those as straight 4.

What always works for me - look at what you could get with the money and draw up a shortlist. Make it a real, direct connection in your head rather than an abstract. I get very attached to gear and don't like to let anything go, but as soon as I start looking at stuff I've wanted for a while, that pedal i haven't used for ages start to look like £150 rather than a pedal I might maybe possibly use someday.

It's pretty stark to hear them AB'd like that - there's maybe a little more trebly twang on the boss, but £150's worth? 

I was blown away by my thunderstorm (flanger from the same TC range) - got it on a complete whim and I was blown away. Pretty much the same circuit that all the boutique flangers will be using - complete with reissue Bucket Brigade ICs. How they're doing this range for £30 I have no idea. 

Good video BTW, I wish more people would use that format - especially in A/B tests, I don't want to hear how fast you can play pentatonic scales or how quickly you can jump octaves - I want to hear the same, normal riff played 100 times.

On 09/07/2020 at 09:00, NancyJohnson said:

Undoubtedly there's going to be a plethora of stuff posted here.

If you want musical madness combining odd time signatures juxtapositioned with ever odder key changes and dischords, look no further than Shudder To Think.  Despite my description, it's all amazingly coherent.  I turned @hiram.k.hackenbacker about a week ago, loads more previously.  I'd suggest listening to Pony Express Record (where they really hit their stride) and then navigate backwards (Get Your Goat).  I mentioned to Brains that he ought to listen once and then go again.

This has recently surfaced...unedited live footage from MTVs 120 Minutes show.

 

It's always nice to see some StT love - how they weren't huge I'll never understand - x-french tee shirt is a masterpiece (anthemic sing along ending over a single chord? Mad genius).

I could list songs and bands all day long that you've most likely never heard of, but based on your original ideas I think you're looking for things more ensconced in the bosom of popularity.

Building on Mountains - a lot of the newer Biffy stuff still uses odd time sigs - Different people (main riff is a 15/8 feel), Spanish Radio (5/4), Bubbles (ends in 7/4) and a lot of the older stuff (Glitter and Trauma, now the action, jaggy snake etc...)

Deftones sneak a few in every now and then - Poltergeist (Very fun 7/4 bass riff), DIamond eyes (11/8 feel chorus), Leathers (11/4 feel verses)

Radiohead of course -  2 + 2 =5 (in 7/8 not 5, oddly), 15 step (again 5/4, not 15...)

Obligatory plug for my favourite band Oceansize, especially tempting bait to a drummer - maybe a bit on the proggy side for some people but very musical and melodic -

5 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

How did you put the labels on? I have tried that in the past and  found it hard to get them correctly positioned and you only get one chance.

Mostly just patience, I marked the labels and the boxes with the mid points then peeled the back off just a tiny bit of the corner, i found that way i could align the bulk of the label with the midpoints then press the corner down, then you can pull the back off and it'll stick itself, smoothing it as you go. Not all mine are completely straight but they're close enough.

One annoyance I did find is that the clearcoat I use (plastikote gloss) took a full day and a half to dry on the labels, as opposed to overnight for the painted bits. 

2 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Are the lables special?

 

I just got some inkjet gloss label paper from amazon, with a decent clearcoating it should hold up just fine.  I think you can get some thicker, fancier stuff from specialist places but it's expensive. 

Oh and a final tip, you'll notice the stargate one (bottom right) looks quite dark and blue saturated, because the clearcoat has soaked through on to the dark blue of the enclosure. I couldn't be bothered redoing it but I learned my lesson for the phaser - i put that label on to another plain white label first to give an extra backing and the results are much better.

On 22/06/2020 at 14:41, Rich said:

Bit of a zombie discussion alert...

We definitely have a Stag and a Lloyd in the lab at work, not that that's much help  
however... I think I might have an old Dataman programmer lurking in my drawer in the office. If I can think up an excuse to go in one day this week, I'll check. If it's there and it fires up, you can have it, if it'll be of any use..?

Ooops sorry haven't been on in a while. It'd definitely be a massive help if you had one knocking about, I'd only need it for a few days (assuming I could figure it out in that time...), I'd massively appreicate it.

On a different note, the fruits of lockdown -

I've finally got into label printed graphics (waaaaay better than transparent waterslide decals) and I apologise for nothing.

Top - EQD Ghost echo clone, lovetone doppelganer clone (phaser), madbean dreamtime (an amazing FV-1 delay in a 1590a)

Bottom - Frostwave funk-a-duck clone (absolutely mad envelope filter), DBA space ring with improvements (deadendfx wurmloch, ring mod)

Rate LEDs on the phaser are tempoerarily a bit rough because the 10mm LED bezels I thought I had were actually 8mm, so they're bezel-less for now

1 hour ago, pete.young said:

Apologies for the slow update. I've now sorted this and it's working properly. The problem turned out to be that R1 had failed open circuit and I hadn't been paying proper attention to the resistance measurement. Replaced it with a new resistor and all was well.

Learning point for me - if I make any more pedal kits I'll be sure to check the resistance value of all the resistors before I solder them onto the board. Schoolboy error!

To be fair, a fresh resistor going open on it's own is pretty rare, you've been very unlucky there. I would say routinely checking all your parts pre-soldering is waaay overkill. A common cause of opens is mechanical stress on the leads, make sure you're not bending them too sharply, some people do it with pliers which can be fine but its easy to overdo it. 

I've never seen one with a 30V out I'm afraid, it's not a standard voltage - the rusty box is the only pedal I know of that takes 30V DC in (a lot of other pedals run n 30V but they take 9V or 18V in and step it up internally). You could get one with 2 x 15V outputs and use a series cable to combine them into a 30V (has to be an isolated output brick for that to work).

No one did it better than Melvins in their Big Business phase - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpgZ5MUnkkE

Couldn't get the time together this month unfortunately, bad form I know, but too many half finished ideas and not enough time... Great crop though, not all what I expected but all the better for it.

4 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

EPROMs?

These day people just use NAND flash which is reprogrammable at standard supply voltages.

What do you need an EPROM for?

Evil tinkering - finally getting round to doing the XP-All mod to my old Digitech XP-100 -  https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/newsarchive/XPALL.html

Annoyingly I bought all the stuff years ago when I worked at a PCB assembler and had access to an EPROM burner - but didn't have the foresight to burn the chip while I had access so I'm hoping to find some kind soul who has one knocking about in the loft. Backup plan is to use my spare raspberry pi, which can apparently do it from the GPIO.

I've seen people do DIY paste stencils with vinyl cutters etc. - but I think very quickly you hit a point of diminsihing returns with SMT in DIY - but it might be something we have to contend with as the big manufacturers are gradually pivtoing away from through-hole packages for a lot of ICs/Transistors.

As an aside - does anyone happen to have an EPROM burner and the burning (see what I did there) desire to be super helpful?

7 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Isn't that what we all want?

A man can dream.

58 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Hey all,

Is anyone aware of a boost kit that doesn't start from unison, that starts from -∞ and then also boosts past unity.
Might have a little project that could benefit an output volume control that goes from fully cut to a little boost (doesn't need to be crazy).

Thoughts?

Si

 What you want is a super hard-on with a standard volume control instead of just bias, enter the EQD black eye - https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=116920.0

Or the LPB, I think fuzzdog does a kit for that, basically you're looking for any boost with a standard grounding volume output control.

I've had a eureka moment, I was trying to do lots of creepy intervals and dissonant chord shapes on guitar but found it difficult to get going - ended up in a frankenstein tuning that just sings foreboding evil (F# F# B F# G# E low to high)

3 minutes ago, pete.young said:

One side of C1 is connected to ground, the other side gives open circuit. The -ve side of C4 is connected to ground through R6, it's showing IM on the highest setting of my meter which is the value of R6. If that all checks out, what should I look at next?  I think a check of C4 is in order, but I have to start unsoldering pots to get at the connections for C4.

The input side of C1 should be grounded when it's in bypass, as the bypass switch wiring that fuzzdog uses grounds the circuit input in bypass (to prevent noise bleed). But it shouldn't be grounded when the effect is engaged - if it's reading ground in both switch positions then you likely have a problem with your switch wiring. 

6 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Hmmmm, that’s odd as the 

Hmmm, that’s odd as the build instructions show an LM386 as a legit replacement?!

Unless they just mean that totally it works, but fail to mention the 386 pinout is different?!

Hmmmm

Si

 

 

Hmm, I didn't get that far in the build doc, but it's a mistake. The 386 is a very low wattage power amplifier, even if you did patch the pinout it's never going to replace an op-amp, it might pass sound but it would not sound great. Yank it out, put a tl071 in there and email JMK to get that changed.