philw

23 hours ago, Piers_Williamson said:

What a stunning bass.  Do you know why the back-plate serial number, and the written number inside the electronics cavity are very slightly different?

Non-matching label and neck-plate serial numbers is, I seem to remember, not unheard of. Call it a Wal quirk.

P

2 hours ago, bigdumby said:

Weight: 3.6kg - Will doubly verify once the wife gets home.

So, "the wife" also weighs 3.6kg and you need to balance her against the bass?

Lovely bass, by the way. GLWTS. 

Oh my! That's one of the very, very few basses I'd sell my Wal for (although I'm not going to).

P

Evening all,

Can anybody suggest somebody in Brighton/East Sussex to re-set the fallen sound post in my battered old cheap as chips double bass?

Thanks

Phil

That's brilliant Sandy. Thank you so much. I'll have a look at the bass again over the weekend but your pics should enable me to fix it.

Phil

20 hours ago, sandy_r said:

Hi Phil

Are you still looking for info on this/fixed it/gone to Plan B?

 

Sandy,

I've replied to your PM

Phi

Yeah converting the bass to passive might be an option, but we’re actually planning on selling it so having it working properly is much the better option.

Do you still have the preamp you pulled out of your bass?

P

Hi Phil,

Thanks so much for the pics, but yes, it was the battery box end I wanted - in particular, where does the red wire from the battery positive terminal go. If you look in my picture, the red wire from the battery terminal is disconnected.

Cheers

Phil

Hi Phil,

Having spent some time looking inside a Honer Jack recently (https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/481089-honer-jack-electronic-repair/) I suspect the source of your noise problem might be the decidedly messy original wiring and the lack of any control cavity shielding - it really is a huge mess of over-long wires in there.

To answer your specific question about bridge grounding, in "my" Jack there is what appears to be an earth wire heading off to the bridge, so I don't think un-earthed strings are your problem (although having just checked the continuity with a multimeter, there's a about 300Ω resistance between the bridge and earth, and that's a bit of a surprise - not sure if it's supposed to be like that). Anybody?

And while I'm on, back to my recent Honer Jack post, if you were able to take a couple of pics inside your Jack to show me where the red wire from the battery goes, that would be very much appreciated.

Cheers

Phil

Afternoon all,

I'm trying to fix the active electronics on my Wife's lovely old Honer Jack bass and I'm stuck, so I wonder if anybody can shed some light ('cause I believe I'm not the first to have tried to fix an active Jack). The active preamp is housed in a battery sized metal box that sits in a double sized battery compartment alongside the actual battery. As you'll see from the pic, there's clearly a 1k resistor with a broken lead-out and that's obviously part of the problem, but there's also a loose red wire from the positive connector of the battery that I suspect ought to make its way back into the battery box to be soldered somewhere on the preamp PCB, but I've no idea where - without it, the preamp has no power.

So if anybody here who has a Honer Jack would be willing to open it up and take a few pictures so I can se where that red wire is supposed to go, I'd be eternally grateful.

Thanks

Phil

No reflection at all on your lovely looking bass, a bargain that will surely make somebody very happy, but come on Fender - rusty screws on a 2022 bass!

Back when I was a design manager in consumer electronics, one my biggest gripes was my purchasing colleagues thinking there was always pennies to be saved on screws. They'd buy the cheapest they could find that, apparently, met the design spec. They'd be made out of the softest metal known and they'd go rusty almost while you were looking at them. Seems Fender have a not dissimilar problem.

Gorgeous bass though. GLWTS

P

I had one of those, an Aria Cardinal CSB300 as my first "real" bass. Well, an un-modded one anyway. Wish I still had it really.

Blimey that's lovely. Won't last long around here. GLWTS.

Gorgeous looking bass and all but identical to mine. Also yours is numbered  just 27 basses earlier.

Wenge faced fretless Mk1s are unusual too – there's very few about.

GLWTS

P

On 29/12/2021 at 08:12, franzbassist said:

Hi Phil

 

DM me your address and I’ll send you a set of hardly used D’Addario nickel round balanced tension strings 50-67-90-120, which might do the job for you.

 

Cheers

 

Gareth

Hi Gareth,

Hope you're well. That's a very kind offer but I suspect 120 will be too heavy, especially as I'll possibly be retuning back to E for a couple of songs mid-gig.

And @Doctor J - you've never experienced a Paul Diello gig have you? There's typically time between songs, while Paul has the entire audience bent double with laughter, to build an entire bass guitar from scratch, so I reckon a quick re-tune to E will just about be feasible.

Thanks again everybody for the help. I think I'll go for a 110 set, or maybe a 105.....Keep your eyes peeled for me selling a little used set of strings shortly.

Phil

Thanks all. I think the majority of the songs I’ll be playing on the Wal will be down a tone (all strings, not just the E). So I think going up a gauge will be worthwhile - the tension on dropped 100 - 40 (D’Addarios I think) gauge just doesn’t feel right. I guess it’s just a question of whether I go to 105 or 110 (and experimenting with bass strings is an expensive business).

P

Afternoon all,

I have a series of covers gigs in May where a few of the songs will be played down a tone. I’ll be using my Wal fretless and it would normally be strung 40 - 100, but that’s too light a gauge for drop D. So what string gauge/brand/type should I go for that’ll work for both tunings? Thoughts and suggestions please!

Ta

Phil

On 15/10/2021 at 19:58, TheGreek said:

@philw was/is the UK importer for Veillette. He's had a few crackers...

 

Not any more but I'm still occasionally in touch with Joe and he's still building some amazing guitars and basses.

That red singlecut retro looks an awful lot like the demo model I bought when I first started working with Joe, but I'm pretty certain mine was passive. Anyway it was a really lovely bass. Anybody who goes for the sale one will I'm sure be very happy.

P

Just to chime in on the shipping, I would imagine there could potentially be some CITES issues  with a Wal. Wenge, Mahogany and Rosewood are all listed varieties I believe.

Brexit may also result in complications if the bass comes to the UK from Germany after 31st Dec.

Phil 

Oh my giddy aunt! My first fretless was one of those - exactly the same (expect that I epoxied the fingerboard - not very well if truth be known). Bought in about 1982 (from Bootleg Music, Epsom) and sold not long afterwards to help finance my Wal. Memories, memories....

P

Never seen one of those before. Love it!

19 hours ago, ped said:

Hi mate just to say the .HEIC pics don't embed properly so if you can export them as .Jpg or .Png or something that would be better. I think .HEIC is a direct export from iPhoto?

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Compression) is the default image format in iOS these days. It's a good format (less destructive compression than JPEG) but not widely used outside Apple and some pro image processing (yet). You can change the default format in the iOS settings and put it back to JPEG to make things more easily shareable.

Oh and an Aria CS380 was my first proper bass. Bought it, coincidentally in Chichester, the day John Lennon died.

P

What an extraordinary bass. A couple of decades ago I discussed with Chris making something very similar. Sadly I chickened-out.

Best wishes for the sale!

P

Thanks all. That's all interesting stuff. I had a feeling that the VT 200 might be too good to be true.

P

Anybody here have any experience of the Tech 21 VT 200 combo?

It seems remarkably affordable and I'm not getting on particularly well with my current TC BG250.

Thanks

Phil