Bassybert

The Joshua Tree is one of my favourite ever records and you’re bang on about the Americana sound. From listening to interviews over the years it seems like U2 have always had a strange relationship with the US and find the place a bit of an enigma. On one hand you’ve got unbelievable scenery, amazing music, a melting pot of cultures, the American dream etc and on the other hand corruption, politics and the military involvement in a lot of places, especially around Central America during the 70s/80s. The amount of space in the songs on that record is perfect, Adam Clayton's basslines are always serving the song and none of them feel overblown, just the right amount of everything. Brian Eno had a lot do do with that I think.

U2 are a big target for musical snobbery across the board, some of the stuff I’ve seen written about the Edge is pathetic. I’m not sure if it’s jealousy behind it all. On the surface some of their music seems fairly simple, so I think people dismiss it as ‘I could do that easily’. I’ve never understood it at all, they’ve written more great songs than most people have had hot dinners!

I bet that sounds amazing! What GK model is that?

Hi Luke, do you have a Hammond 1590BBS by any chance please, still not heard anything back from Musikding about the backorder 😫

Having looked at a couple of different sources it seems the mid control is acting as a filter... I found this (From Talkbass) by searching on the big G... Aion's own instructions gives the following info... • Mid is a variable bridged-T filter allowing the mids to be scooped or boosted. • Treble and Bass form a 2-band amp-style tone stack.

Ha, I know exactly what you mean, I used to be a graphic designer and got into web development around 2005/6 which then morphed into data analysis around 5 years ago. 8 or more hours a day looking at a screen full of code means I'm craving hands on/organic stuff!!

I really like the style of the punched letters 😊

Thanks mate, I find it quite a relaxing thing to do 😊 I was planning to use some of my children's Posca pens to decorate the enclosure, will probably prime it first and then come up with something a bit creative. It's quite easy to get an old school ZVEX kind of vibe with the pens.

For anyone interested I’ve started a build diary thread. You can find it at…

Hi Rob, it’s just the preamp. I was planning to use it the same way I use my Sansamp by running it into the effects return of an amp.

If anyone's eagle-eyed enough to see that C18 is missing, that's intentional and part of the design. The extra cap is there if you want the TS-60B version as that was the only difference between to 50 and 60 apparently. Now it's just a case of waiting for the enclosure...

As I mentioned in the DIY Effects thread, I've recently purchased an Aion FS-50B kit from Musikding - The kit is based on the pretty awesome sounding amp used by players like Bob Weston from Shellac and David Wm Sims from The Jesus Lizard. It's a 50watt solid state amp from the late 70s/early 80s I believe, and has a pretty big following in alternative music, especially for recording. The Tronographic Rusty Box pedal is based on the same amp and used to great effect by Adam Devonshire in the Bristolian behemoth that is Idles. Think snarly, mid heavy growl but thick and chunky and you're in the right ballpark. It took couple of weeks for the kit to arrive from Germany, and when it did arrive it was sans enclosure - I had a card in the box saying it was on backorder. A bit annoying seeing as I had to chase the guys from Musikding up to see if the kit had been posted (They say allow up to 7 working days for the kit to be marked as shipped but I didn't hear anything for 8 days so dropped them an email which seemed to get the ball rolling). Hopefully it won't be long before the enclosure arrives 🤞 Kit looks decent, all quality parts with the PCB being a really nice matte finish, all components organised into bags and the hookup wire has been recut and part stripped so it should be easy to hookup once I get the enclosure. 1. Ready to rock and roll! I printed the instructions out from the pdf, everything is really comprehensive. 2. The PCB comes with a perforated link that you can snap apart if needed, hopefully I'll be able to keep it all in one piece within the enclosure and just run the jumper wires for power and signal to the main part to the power/switch part. 3. All nicely organised - FYI all pots have plastic covers which helps avoid any accidental grounding to the soldered side of the PCB 4. I always start adding parts from smallest to largest, so it's resistors up first! 5. Even though all values are labelled, I still double check them with a multimeter just to be sure as I've been caught out with this in the past. Thankfully these were all spot on. 6. It also helps my brain if I check the values off the list when I've soldered them in. I tend to solder 3-5 parts at the same time but depends - If there's loads of the same value I'll do all of them together. 7. Working through them all... 8. With added inductors (These look like larger resistors in the bottom left) and diodes - only 3 small ones in this circuit. 9. Capacitor time! Again working from smallest to largest, I tend to add ceramic/film caps first then electrolytics at the end 10. Once they're in, it's time for transistors and ICs. I pretty much always socket transistors and always socket the ICs - It's a lot easier to swap them at a later date if needed but more importantly they're really sensitive to heat and it can be easy to cook a transistor. So sockets in first. I also added the big ass power supply chip (TEC 2-0923) in the bottom left of the smaller board. Never used on of these before, but it's a one stop shop for converting 9V DC to 15V DC. 11. All ready for the trannies! 12. That's the board pretty much as far as I can go without the enclosure - I tend to add the pots and switches to the enclosure and then add the PCB to that before soldering all in place, it makes it much easier than soldering them to the board then finding out they're misaligned!

The instructions say 1590BBS so 94mm x 120mm x 42mm - I ordered the pre-drilled enclosure to make things easier

Kit has just turned up today - Unfortunately minus the BBS enclosure which is on backorder 😢. Hopefully won't be long before it arrives. In typical German style everything looks top notch, all labelled and bagged into different part types. They've even included pre-cut hookup wire with the insulation partly stripped which I haven't seen with a kit before. The PCB itself from Aion looks really nice, well laid out and has a nice satin finish, again a first for me as I've never seen a PCB with that kind of coating. Might do a little build diary!

Hi mate, that would be great if you could thank you. I'm still waiting for it, have chased it up and have had an email from Klaus today saying it's been shipped so hopefully won't be long 🤞🏼.

Looks great Rosie! Are those the EBS flat patch cables? I was thinking about getting some of those as I've got some cheapie Amazon jobs at the moment and the connectors are quite bulky.

Bought a Pedaltrain board and case from Danny - great communication, well packaged and arrived very quickly. A top Basschatter to deal with ☺️

SO MANY KNOBS 😂