colinmk

Hi, I have a DM100 rack delay from Ibanez, it's not really worth much but I love the sound of it. It now adds a serious hiss to the delay end of it, only when the signal is wet. Does anyone know anywhere in Scotland or the UK that could repair this or any ideas how I might myself? I have no proper electronics knowledge at all though. Cheers.

A lot of these suggestions sound good actually, does the TC nova have a tap function on it?

[quote name='crez5150' post='858997' date='Jun 6 2010, 04:12 PM']You could try and hunt down a TC 2290 which would be great but may cost..... or try one of the less expensive TC Nova Delay pedals..[/quote] Had a quick look, a grand!!! can't afford that for a delay man. I have never really liked the sound of TC stuff in comparison to Lexicon that I have used in the studio however I haven't heard their delay only stuff. I'm only looking to pay up to about £150 or maybe more if it is good enough to be used for vocals etc in the studio.

Wondering if anyone can help me out, I'm looking to get a new delay, the one I use is an Ibanez dm1100, think it is on the blink though so need a new one. Don't think I'll get the same one because even though I LOVE the delay sound of it, it can be very noisy and they are old so pretty unreliable. Would quite like one with a tap delay on it too for ease of use live although the sound is more important. I am looking at a space echo, the sounds I want are dark and quite ambient for a song I do with harmonics and another song which is dark and powerful. The bass riff is the main driving force in the tune and it sounds great with a bit of delay on it to fill the place up. Any ideas?

[quote name='dood' post='793963' date='Apr 2 2010, 01:27 AM']Hmmm! Sounds strange! That's the same configuration I put in my old SVP - as recommended my Derek @ Watford valves. Preamp valves don't wear anywhere as quickly as power amp valves - so unless they are very old?? Hopefully it's not a problem elsewhere.. there are sections of the schematic, that, should a component on the bass side of things go open circuit, could cause a lack of bass - but it has been far too long since I calculated filters to give you a rough guesstimate of the effects of different faults in the design. Hmmmmmm..... Tell you what you could try - first plug your bass in to the input and connect your power amp to the effects send. Note the tone and volume etc (preferably with all the tone controls at 12 o'clock) - then plug your bass in to the effects return and power amp in to the output. There will defintely be a volume difference - but see if you get a massive difference in bottom end one way or the other. The first way round will IIRC give you 4 valves and all the tone controls, the other way round is half of the fifth valve on it's own (connected to the master volume) - which in my opinion is a noisey hissy part of the SVP design. My preference was always to run the send in to my effects - then the effects output would go straight to my power amp. My 'master volume' was then the line driver on the effects unit instead. It cut down extraneous noise a great deal. Mebbe try that too and see how you get on? Sorry if this doesn't read to well - once again, I should be sleeping, not feeding my bass chatting addiction![/quote] Hi Dood, been busy this month and forgot to go back to this thread....your advice about going from the effects send into the power amp cuts out the noise almost completely, does this suggest that it may be the '5th' valve that is faulty or just maybe the output of the preamp is dodgy? I put my old valves back in to see the difference but it's pretty similar. I suppose I can just go straight out of my delay unit to the power amp then. I'm going to check again tonight though what the bottom end is like between each set of valves. The DI out seems to work perfectly though as I recorded with this a couple of weeks ago and the bottom end is fine. Played a gig at the start of the month and the sound eng was complaining about the noise out of the pre out into the DI for front of house so it's not just at my house either. Thanks for your help so far, wouldn't of thought to use the effects loop!

[quote name='dood' post='793729' date='Apr 1 2010, 09:09 PM']Yes, this could be a problem with one or more valves messing about. Do you notice any additional noise or 'plinking' noises through your speakers when the power amp is turned up? First thing to try is to reseat the valves. Turn off the power for a good half an hour, then pop out each valve in turn and push back in to it's socket after a clean. Be GENTLE but firm! - Next step if it doesnt help - will be to look at replacing the valves I think. Any idea how old they are? Or - better still - can you pop the lid and tell us what they are? If they turn out to be naff valves (not assuming anything) - then yes, an upgrade will be like night vs day![/quote] These are valves from watford Ecc83 str harma and 5814a philips. I'll try reseating tomorrow. It is fairly noisy when turned up but I have a Rivoli with 60's humbucker and assumed this was quite noisy anyway. I'll clean the connections too.

Having a strnage problem with my svp pro pre or possibly power amp. Seem to be lacking bottom end? I play high up on my bass a lot of the time but the songs I play low down seem to have much less level in comparison. another guy who borrowed my head at the weekend said he found the low end to be kind of muffled and lacking and had to turn the bass control right up and even the graphic EQ lows right up. Something is up surely, can this be due to a faulty valve or something? It still sounds great to my ears on the higher up notes. I have a crest ca9 power amp.

Not sure if anyone is interested or not but I have swapped my crown pa for a crest CA9 and my set-up is now complete. The tone I'm getting is better than I hoped for, the valves in the preamp are sounding lovely when overdriven and this crest is fantastic, such a difference from the crown. The sound is just so solid now even at low volumes it cut's through and you can still feel it. Only one gripe with the crest is that it is quite noisy but it's a small price to pay tbh. I am now putting less wattage into my cab too, had the crown going at 1100w bridged and now the crest is 600w single side and it is much, much louder. This would support the argument that the difference in input sensitivity makes a big difference with this preamp as the crest is 0.775 compared to the 1.4v crown. The crest cost me £400 but I'm delighted I spent the extra cash on it.

[quote name='colinmk' post='449008' date='Mar 29 2009, 09:59 PM']Using a crown ce1000a I got off ebay and it's sounding beastly now. Dunno what the problem with the ep2500 was but I've sold it now and it seems to be working OK for the buyer. Maybe it doesn't like unbalanced inputs? Just managed to get hold of four harma's and Jan 5814a too and going to put them in tomorrow to complete the set-up. Interestingly the crown's input sensitivity is 1.4v and I'm not getting any issues with it however I have the option to change it to 0.775v if I mod it myself. According to my voltmeter the ampeg's pre out is around 0.7v so I'm thinking I might go ahead and do this for the sake of matching up the voltages. Don't want to break it now it's finally working though! Sounds fantastic at the moment too, really cutting through like I wanted and capable of gritty BRMCish tones like I wanted and a good amount of balls in the low end department too even though it's just a 4x10. My Rivoli's loving it.[/quote] First jam with the new valves and interestingly I have to turn the gain much further up to get a good level now and it the pre doesn't start clipping until it's pushed very hard now. Not sure if I prefer these valves or not yet. The tone I got from the older ones seemed to be more gritty which maybe suits me better. Going to test it out a bit on my own tomorrow and see which are better.