Beer of the Bass

I do like to hear some extra upper mids/lower treble (maybe 2-4K or so) with flats to bring out a bit of grunt. But some amps and cabs accentuate this range anyway, so I don't always need to do it with the EQ. With the three-piece I'm playing with right now, what seems to work is to really dial in plenty in this range, take the tone control back a bit for mellower songs and open it up for the rockier numbers. It's been several years since I tried gigging with rounds at all, so I'm not entirely sure how my approach with those would vary. I've got an unopened set of stainless steel rounds knocking about - I might stick them on for a few days some time, just to remind myself.

[quote name='Twisted Blues' timestamp='1469179483' post='3096317'] Thanks for all the advice and help I checked and the transformer is 115v only. I bought a 300W step down transformer and that's done the trick, just another heavy lump to lug to gigs in the name of all valve authenticityt!! Pretty miffed with the seller though, not my best introduction to owning a MESA. The story is not yet over though. Amp powered up and going through all the EQ and power options i discover that th1/2 power function produces a noisy overdriven distorted sound. I switch back to full power and its fine? Any ideas?? Cheers Andy [/quote] This is unlikely to be the cause of your distortion, but a 300 watt stepdown transformer is cutting it extremely fine with a nominally 250 watt valve amp. Valve amps are relatively inefficient and use a lot more power than they put out to the speakers. I'd be inclined to look for something like a 1000W stepdown transformer if you're depending on it for gigging.

I like the feeling of having more room for my right hand with less than 24 frets, but the lack of a high E note on a 20 fret bass does occasionally annoy me. So 21 or 22 seems a happy medium.

I'd concur that they look like Thomastik Superflexibles - I've used them before and still have a couple stashed away somewhere. Those are a high tension string (despite the name), I'm not sure of the numbers but they feel at least as stiff as Spirocore Mittels. So most of the strings mentioned so far would be a pleasant step down in tension. It's an interesting looking bass - the grain on the top is quite unusual and I like those old hatpeg tuners.

An ebony tailpiece like on a Benedetto archtop guitar would look very classy. Lots of work though!

From the few I've done, payment in advance seems to be the way. It's nigh-on impossible to pin down the bride or groom on the day, and I wouldn't like to try.

I've been using the studio's Bass 350 on top of a Peavey 4x10 for the last couple of rehearsals I've done. It's a good sounding amp - I'd always associated SWR with the Marcus Miller slap sound (which is cool but not for me) but it turns out to be quite flexible and easy to get my preferred sound out of. It does seem to hit the limiter sooner than I'd expect, but I am playing with a guitarist who likes to crank things a bit, and it's an 8 ohm cab. It would be interesting to play my own rig in the same room with the same band for the sake of comparison some time.

[quote name='Twincam' timestamp='1468691090' post='3092723'] And too add to what I said that's the same when testing pots. If you measure when things are connected its going to effect the reading. So your measurements are not accurate there. [/quote] Components in parallel will reduce the resistance reading across the pickup, but never increase it. So while measuring a pickup coil in circuit will under-read slightly, a 256k reading almost certainly indicates an open coil. I suspect the meter will be seeing the 250k resistance of the pot, and the coil would measure open if tested out of circuit. Depending where the break is, it may be possible for the repairer to just unwind a couple of turns and re-solder rather than doing a full re-wind.

I get the impression that Danish oil varies between brands, but it doesn't seem to get that sheen on it as readily as Tru-oil does. A further derailment; that walnut guitar in the first post is lovely! I've got a nice plank of walnut leaning in the corner waiting to be something, I just can't decide what yet...

I had a look back over my photos from when I did the Jazzmaster body. I had remembered wrongly - it was a spirit based stain that I used. I didn't try wet sanding until I had several coats on already, as I was also a bit apprehensive of going through the stain. The colour has held just fine, and it hasn't stained any shirts. Here's a pic from several coats in.

Those are looking great, and the finished weight is impressive. They'd probably make a decent small PA, too...

While the weather's nice, I've been doing some back garden carpentry. I used up most of my budget on the amp itself, so I'm using re-claimed 18mm plywood which was part of the stage in a short-term arts venue (Edinburgh is handy for that sort of salvage). It's not the nicest looking plywood or the finest bit of woodworking I've done, but the tolex should hide a multitude of sins! I'm building the combo cab in a similar manner to the old Marshall combos - chassis mounted on the back panel with controls at the top, and top vents to keep things a bit cooler. The speaker will be an ET90 from Warehouse Guitar Speakers - it's supposed to have a Celestion type voicing, is rated for 90 watts and I've seen comments that it makes for a big sounding 1x12" combo so it seemed like a good choice for this amp. I've also got to the bottom of my low volume issue with the amp. After spending a few hours measuring voltages and poking around, I tracked it down to a bad solder joint which was throwing out the biasing of the second preamp stage. I'm sure I learn more from figuring out mistakes than I do from the actual building...

Good looking finishes there. I did an alder guitar body in green stain and tru-oil a couple of years ago and it's held up very well, although the alder is quite prone to dents. IIRC I used a water-based stain from Rothko and Frost, thinking that it would be less likely to be soluble in the oil. Are those water based inks you're using?

The Beta can still make a good sounding cab if you're on a budget and don't need huge power handling, especially as they sometimes show up used for about half of the new price. I've been quite pleased with them myself, though I've only used them in conventional ported cabs rather than BFM's horn enclosures. However, it would seem a bit counter-intuitive to go for the extra complexity of the Lite design to save weight and then put a ceramic driver in it.

There have been similar devices for ukulele going back as far as the 20s, but I'm not sure if there was ever a guitar version of those. [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_Master"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_Master[/url] Still, the chap has such enthusiasm about his invention that it would feel mean-spirited to take the pee. Although part of me does wonder whether the autoharp solved this issue a century ago...

I've only used the D'Addario and not the LaBella, but I'd say tapewounds can be brighter than most flats. They don't have the metallic zing of rounds, but there can still be quite a lot of high-end detail. They do respond well to the tone control though. Mine didn't change much over the first year.

1/4" plywood? That's certainly going to be light, though I'm quite curious to see how the bracing is done when using such thin ply.

Three pages and no mention of white power cables yet?

Very nice. I approve of sparkly grille cloth!

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1467559980' post='3084540'] Very nice build! Looking forward t seeing how you do the front panel, as that often tends to make or break the overall perceived build quality. I have tried really hard to get away from using IEC inlets these days. The Neutrik Powercon is my current favorite, for a variety of reasons. [/quote] The Powercon does look convenient for mounting in round holes, and locking too. I might have a look at those some time. I'm going to do the faceplate in thin perspex, using laser printed decal film for the lettering and painted from the back. It seems a bit fiddly to do, but I've seen it work well. It turns out I have a little more troubleshooting to do on the amp after trying it at volume last night. It really sounds good, but it just doesn't get as loud as a 50-watt Marshall-style amp should. Plugged into a 4x12" it gets up to earplugs-loud, but from past experience I'd expect leave-the-room levels of loudness. So I'm going to go through methodically to check component values and connections against the layout, recheck the voltages and bias, and if I still haven't figured out what's going on I'll have a look at it with an oscilloscope and signal generator. I'd imagine it will be something simple, once I find it...

I've now got the reverb working. My reverb issue turned out to be that I had connected the reverb circuit to a point on the power supply where the voltage was slightly over the 300v maximum that an ECC83 can handle and it killed the ECC83 and blew the HT fuse as soon as I switched it on with the valve in place. Thank goodness for fuses! Moving the B+ connection for the reverb one step further down the chain sorted that, and it's working nicely now. I was worried that this stripped-down reverb circuit might sound anemic compared to a blackface Fender style reverb, but it sounds good. It has less depth available than a Fender reverb, but that just means the knob lives in the upper half of its range rather than in the bottom quarter. It doesn't go full-on surf, but it's not that style of amp anyway. I'm taking it along to a jam tonight with the friend I'm building it for, so we can find out what he thinks of it before I start on building the combo cab for it. [quote name='Meddle' timestamp='1466886243' post='3079597'] Have you tried a bass through it? Instant Jack Bruce? [/quote] I've just given it a try, and it does exactly that. It doesn't have much headroom in the preamp and breaks up pretty early. The bright channel can bring out more top end than the old Jack Bruce sound, even with flatwounds, but it really leans towards dirty rock bass. I can imagine it would be spectacular as the treble side of a Ric-o-sound style setup...

Looks like fun - I like weird old valve amps. Do these have a transistor input stage like the Gem guitar amps do? If so, the lack of treble Truckstop mentions might be down to a low input impedance which causes passive instruments to lose high-end. It seems to be a common issue with transistor preamps of this era - I've had a couple of old ss pre/valve powered Dynacord amps with the same thing going on. Running a buffer in front (like a Boss pedal in bypass mode) livens up the response of the Dynacords, so it might be worth trying with this amp.

Nearly there now - I've got the amp up and running in it's basic state without the reverb circuit connected. The reverb itself needs a bit of tweaking, but everything else is good. The voltages check out as expected and I've set the bias. I had one obvious error in my wiring; I had connected the output transformer primary with the wrong polarity. This design uses negative feedback around the power stage, so if the phase is accidentally reversed you get positive feedback, making it into a terrifyingly loud oscillator. That was soon sorted though. As it turns out, my lead dress still isn't up there with some of the fancier stuff out there, but it isn't causing any problems either so I can live with that. There are a few tweaks from the original design - rather than having four input jacks and having to use a patch cable to jumper the two channels, I've used three jacks for bright/normal/both. I have a couple of added toggle switches - one switches between different value bypass caps on the second preamp stage. Adding a bypass capacitor gives a little extra gain and the value determines what frequency that starts at, so my switch selects between a full-range boost, a boost with the bass rolled off or no boost in the centre position. The other selects a resistor and capacitor in the tone stack, switching between the value used in earlier Marshalls or the values they changed to a little later, which lets more upper mids through and sounds more aggressive and crunchy. As to the sound, it's a lot of fun to play through. It's a very different style of amp to my own little Fender Princeton Reverb copy, and really crunches up nicely. The Master volume works well to bring it down to reasonable levels, but I could do with checking it out somewhere I can play loud. It seems to have a bit more dominant low end than I was expecting, but then I am testing it through a ported bass cab rather than a proper guitar cab, so it could just be down to that. Next up will be fiddling about with the reverb some more and doing a faceplate and combo cabinet for it...

Pics aren't showing at the moment, congratulations on the new bass though. I feel like low tension synthetic strings plus low action might be a recipe for a quiet bass, but you could always have Bill install bridge adjusters so that you can find your own sweet spot.