Al Heeley

Having just taken off the rear jack panel the 2 sockets are wired together tip to tip, sleeve to sleeve, so there is no other circuitry involved - no horn so no crossover, etc. The wires from the 2 jack sockets go straight to the speaker terminals. This is the 1x15 cab I'm talking about - the 4 x 10 is trapped in the boot of my car but again no horn so should have no crossover circuit in it. It will make no difference whatsoever whichever socket you plug into, unless one of your wires has come unsoldered creating a bad joint. This would make sense otherwise surely Hartke would stipulate in the tech brochure that you must plug into the primary input socket, or something to that effect. Back to square one. My Tour 450 head doesn't seem to be very loud for a 450 watt into 4 ohm amp.

On both cabs its true, one jack socket is labelled 8 ohm, the other is labelled 'Extension'. I've never tested to see if there's any difference between them, my logic again would say there should not be, but I'm intrigued now and there's a screwdriver in the drawer.....

Running it without the 1 x 15 takes away quite a lot of the 'Oomph'. Was playing it last night with just the 4 x 10 and it only just held it's own, whereas I feel I should be easily able to keep up with the 2 guitarists - one has Mesa dual rec head and 2 x 12 cab which is very potent, the other has a 100w marshall head and 4 x 12 cab. I've tried running the cabs in a chain as well as individually fed from the amps 2 outputs but my logic says it should make no difference. [quote]I use a Tour 750 with a 1x15 and a 2x10 and I noticed a marked difference when I sat down and made two seperate leads instead of 'looping'.[/quote] Are you saying the vol/power is greater with separate leads out to each cab?

Having played with a little Trace elliot stack at our local practice rooms I have to conclude my Peavel Tour 450 head is not [i]that[/i] loud. I'm driving 2 8 ohm hartke cabs - one is a 4 x 10, the other is a 1 x 15. the Tour 450 is 450W into 4 ohms. Now I have input gain on 3/4 (thats 75%, not 3-4) and master vol on about 75% and thats as loud as it goes to get the red limiter light starting to come ini when I hit the E string hard. I'm keeping up with the rest of the band, an energetic punk/rock bunch but there's little if any headroom left. I can't help feeling there should be more. When I'm playing the Trace its only on 3 and there's loads of headroom, it makes your guts shake. Is it the amp head or is it the cabs? (or a bit of both)

If I get a downer about a gig I tell myself I'm getting paid to go out in the evening and play live music and get people dancing. It feels a lot sweeter than working in an office. I can get disappointed after a gig when I know we did not play as well as we could or we didn't make the most of the occasion, or some drunk yob spoils the atmosphere, but I still find it empowering when I am back behind my desk during the week to have this musical outlet at the weekends.

[quote name='Mog' post='1052194' date='Dec 8 2010, 10:21 PM']Tuner>comps>wah>dist>mod.[/quote] ...and any time based echo/delay on the end of this. Disclaimer: there are no hard rules about this, but Mog shows the conventional wisdom that works for most.

...and a real bargain at $35. Is it a real one or a home-printed?

It would certainly make it more comfortable when the crate doubles as a stool for tuning up. Go for it.

You can get dense foam disc isolation pads for audiophiles, £40 a set, to put under the feet of your hi fi amp, speakers and cd player that achieve similar principle to this. I cut up circles from an old foam-backed mouse mat and improved the sound of my rich neighbour's expensive hi fi significantly for the price of a beer. Go DIY'ers!

so its a hex socket but all the allen keys you have are either too small or too big, yes? My warmoth neck is fine with a 3/16th key, should be same as a jazz bass. Maybe a silly Q but have you got a full, comprehensive set of allen key sizes in metric & imperial?

If you want a budget bass chorus, have a try of the GLX bass chorus as well. Only £35, reportedly budget line out of the same chinese factory as the Boss units. [url="http://www.rockfactory.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=gfx-glxbch"]http://www.rockfactory.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=gfx-glxbch[/url] I'm not a fan of Behringer pedals, they sound a bit weedy to me and casing + knobs feel cheap - well they are cheap! The GLX units are cheap but they are robust. Worth finding a local shop with a few units to choose from, and giving them a test. Only then will you see and hear if it's worth it, or if you will be selling it in a few months to get a better unit. If so, then that's £25 wasted.

that should do fine.

+1 great idea, to raise funds towards the site running costs, recycling unwanted gear back into the community.

[url="http://www.warwickbass.com/media/manuals/Basses/WWBassManual_EN.pdf"]http://www.warwickbass.com/media/manuals/B...ssManual_EN.pdf[/url] Page 19 tells you all you need to know. Clean duster should be fine. Rub wax in for 2-3 minutes then buff. Do it a little more regularly than once a year if you truly love your bass!

Maybe if the new strings were a different gauge, a little lighter and exerted a little less pull on the headstock, that would cause the neck to have a little less relief and the action would be a bit lower, hence you're starting to get a bit of fret buzz. If its only on fretted notes then my speculative theory would start to make sense. Solution: loosen the truss rod a tiny bit to compensate, and put a bit more relief back into the neck to raise the action slightly.

My avatar pic is a Warmoth 5-string gecko i built a few years ago. I found the parts of very high quality (they are not cheap) and they slot together like a simple lego set. Well finished, I just rubbed mine with wire wool and tru-oiled it. It was a really easy build and first time I'd ever done anything like this. Just a screwdriver and a soldering iron for the electrics. I got a really nice playable and unique instrument with a great tone. I've heard criticisms of Warmoth customer care and delivery times but I was delighted with mine from start to finish.

Yep - couple of things to look out for - one is the strings break angle over the nut. Winding the strings downwards onto the posts helps get the best angle thus the string will tend to sit firmer in the nut slot. If theres room for the string to move in the slot then u can get a buzz. On the saddles, it can only take a tiny burr of metal at the saddle groove to cause a buzz, so if u have a set of needle files then make sure the groove is smooth and slightly angled back. It can only be a few things: 1) Buzz on a high fret 2) Vibration in the nut slot 3) Vibration in the saddle slot 4) Loose part - such as saddle spring or truss rod 5) Loose teeth or dentures inadvertently resting on the body of the bass when playing. Hopefully you can rule out the latter.

My MM ray neck is stable but pretty sensitive, only a mm or 2 adjustment can make the difference between too high and too low. On the electrics front, when was the last time the battery was changed? Check with new battery first if you're getting cutouts or distortion, it could also be something simple like a dirty jack plug or socket.

I thought ric boards were bubinga, if he'd hewn it from a single piece of bubinga it would have left him with some very blunt router bits and back problems. Is 5K a bit on the steep side? Something fishy here...

Outrageous! Is that an acoustic guitar you're feeding in to the distortion? Does your mum nag you about tidying your bedroom?

tuner first to ensure purest signal, but since my head has separate out for tuner its easier to put it there out of the way of any pedal train or amplified signal path

Took me a while to finish this one but here is the final result. We have a shocking gutshot of the soft underbelly revealing just how disorganised my wiring is. The Mosfet boost circuit vero can be seen peeking out on the left of the tubescreamer board. The tubescreamer has the 1meg gain pot that the Keeley mod uses, to extend range of available overdrive. We have selectable toggle switches for 2 different diode clipping stages - standard Si or LED which gives a louder harsher distortion. We have a toggle switch for the AMZ 'Phat Boost' mod which switches in a larger value input cap to allow big fat slugs of bass through, this makes the pedal suitable for use as a bass guitar overdrive/distortion too. The 2 toggle switches each have a red/yellow bicolor LEd to show the status. Mosfet boost switches in an extra 10 or 12db of boost after the tubescreamer to act as a solo boost and really crank up the input of a valve preamp. All in all a fiddly build but a pleasing end result.

I think someone has to stand up in defence of the tour450. It's been my gigging head for the past year and I like having the (9) eq sliders as well as the bass and treble knobs and mid scoop. I tend to leave the graphic with a same approximate setting, a bit of mid scoop and a touch of boost at 63 and 100 hz. Then if a pub or hall is a bit boomy i just turn down the bass knob a bit or if it sounds a bit muffled i put in a bit of treble. Its not the loudest 450, I've never used the sub-octave but its been a good head for the money and I love loads of knobs available to play around with even though most of them don't get moved.