funkle

I have done my utmost to ask people to produce schematics. We have one here in the thread, a few pages back. There is another possibly coming from another interested party, I await that. They definitely have hard to find components - not proprietary, but limited supplies/out of stock and by modern standards, outdated components. I suspect Wal bought a huge supply of these older ICs and are just working through them slowly. Their production rate is so low that they probably have a lifetime supply. I have looked a couple of times at getting someone off the internet to make a custom preamp from the schematic, but I'm not sure they can get all the parts... I may yet try to go down that path, but Lusithand (Nuno) makes it so easy to just buy his that I haven't bothered.

If you are offering, I am game. No one is willing so far to make an exact copy of the preamp, at least that I can find. I may have one person who is looking at this presently, but I haven’t heard from them in a bit. Plus a few of the parts are very hard to find for making an exact clone. Nuno is definitely the closest I have found so far. The Wal pickup, well, I haven’t found anyone yet making an exact clone. Herrick use neodymium pickups, Rautia just closed up shop, Aaron Armstrong can do them but it’s £720 a set, and Chris Turner is using his own ‘near Wal’ formula which sounds great but is not an exact clone either. (Although that may change. Watch this space). I have no idea how close the Bass Culture Walbuckers are to the real deal either. Furthermore, I have recently found out that the ‘well known’ specs for the wire used in Wal pickups may be wrong. So it may be that those who have been making clones have been very slightly off. I had always found in searches that is was 42 AWG, but in fact it seems it is 0.06 metric, or 42.5 AWG equivalent. This makes a big difference when winding 10,000 winds per coil. And it’s probably another reason why people using the ‘well-known’ formula have been slightly off.

They are if you find it hard to figure out where knobs with minimal markings are turned to!! Lol. My original plan was to use numbered Luminlay knobs, they make perfect ones for this bass. But since they are out of production, I had to go custom…and @Chopthebassknew a fella…

We’ll be sticking to using inserts/machine bolts for the neck. The bridge, well, Hipshot A in brass presently. Easy to swap if needed..

For interest. @Chopthebasshas kindly agreed to take on building a custom body for me, after we chatted when I clocked his Wal Mk3 clone build in the ‘Build Diaries’ section. He’s rather good with the CAD software, and we have a final design. Mahogany core, flame maple facings front and back. I think it looks rather good! You may observe I have moved away from the Precision body design to a refined Jazz shape that is ‘reminiscent’ of a Celinder. After a decade with various Celinders I decided it’s probably my most comfortable body shape.

Presently I am planning a brass Hipshot A bridge. Now I wonder about swapping to a Hipshot Vintage one…

Thanks for that. First time I’ve heard a convincing difference between bridges. Touch less high end on the high mass bridge. Those bridges I think are both zinc? So main difference is mass, I suppose. Lol, I preferred the BBOT..

Question on bridges. I am absolutely unconvinced of the sonic differences between bridges after swapping them around on different basses myself. I’ve used Fender bent plate, Fender high mass, Hipshot A and B bridges in aluminium and brass, cheap stock ones on Ibanezes, Hipshot Vintage ones, the stock high mass one on my Squier CV Jazz, the Babicz bridge, a huge 2-Tek on my old Hamer bass, all sorts really…. I have found many whose form and function I prefer, but I just haven’t been convinced they make a huge sonic difference. I am open to persuasion, but not through long chats on here….I’ve read too many conflicting opinions. However. If anyone has convincing links to YouTube videos or sound clips demonstrating a significant sonic difference, I’d appreciate seeing them. I would consider this the best evidence. Otherwise, I’ll probably just stick a brass bridge on here, as at least it has some zinc in it, which is what the Wal bridge seems mostly to be made of.

@Kinkhthank you! I sent you a message on another issue also over on Talkbass by PM, have a quick gander there

@Kinkh did already answer this, and indeed the filters are set differently for the different pickups. They look to go down to where I thought they did - thank goodness my ears and my frequency analyser look to be working ok. lol

@Kinkh can you perhaps answer from the schematic you drew up? I'm testing out the Wal and my Wal-ish side by side into a frequency analyser. I think the Wal filters seem to work down to different frequency levels for the neck and bridge pickups. Listening to it and looking at the frequency analyser, and using the filter boosts to help make peaks more obvious, I think the neck pickup filter goes down to about 100Hz, and the bridge one goes down to about 150 Hz. This is the first I have heard of this; I may not have been paying close enough attention. Are you able to help answer?

Bought a Bergantino B Amp from Dave...quick shipping, quick deal! Thanks Dave!! It sounds great.

Egeligor Basses will do a custom acrylic or Blackwood ramp for Jazz basses, and they can fit a variety of spacing. Check out their shop - http://egilegorbasses.com/egilegorbassesshop/en/ I have acrylic ones on all my Jazzes. They’re not radiused, just flat, how I like them. They did a custom one for my Celinder.

I like ramps on Jazz basses. On other basses the pickups are bigger and function for me in a similar way.

For interest re: bridge construction. Interesting email from a chap who has made Wal bridge replicas. ‘All Wal Bass bridges are foundry cast zinc that's painted or plated. The saddles are plated zinc and also foundry cast. The only piece of brass in the bridge are the square blocks the saddles rest on. The plate under the saddles thay allows them to move is a piece of stainless steel, I believe. I discovered all this when I molded a real Wal bridge to create my copy.’

Thanks. Just emailed them, though it turns out I may have a solution already in someone international.

No, pick attack was off on the Wal when I did that comparison.

I emailed them last year and asked them about it. Got a good email chain going. Then, they just stopped responding and I decided they might not be reliable. I got an email a while after that explaining one of their team had gone on paternity leave hence the unanswered emails, but by that point I had lost faith.

Yes, absolutely right @NickA. This has been on my mind too. I have contemplated going for a proper set of Chris Turner’s pickups wired like Wal Custom pickups and the Dual NFP Special preamp from Lusithand to match them. The cost of this duo would be in the region of £600. When I’ve been contemplating this at various points, I have then been listening in some detail to the sound clips on Chris’ website. He has relevant sound samples of both wirings of pickup (Wal Pro style and Wal Custom style) which help with this decision. https://www.turnerpickups.com - scroll further down the landing page. The Wal Pro style pickups wired in parallel (*not series*) and the Wal Custom style pickups sound nearly identical to me. I struggle to justify the additional expenditure when I listen to these sound samples. Josh Parkin, of Parkin Guitars, said in an email to me he thought the individual coil pair buffering offered by the Wal Custom preamp probably didn’t add a lot to the sound. This gave me the confidence when ordering originally to go with Wal Pro style pickups that allowed series/parallel/single row switching, as opposed to the Wal Custom style wiring. Incidentally, this is why I have stuck to recording and testing the pickups I have in parallel. I thought it was most similar. (Though the series and single row modes I have switches for both sound great, and add more flexibility to an instrument that already has too much of it.)

Lol. I’m already talking to the fella who makes the knobs and the bridge… 😜

I bet it does. I just asked Andy to make me a neck as close as we could to a Wal one whilst still being comfortable yet deep. I left the truss rod up to him, but specified no inserts, as most Wals don’t have them. The Luthier’s Roundtable links I posted on previous pages talked about neck inserts and truss rods quite specifically. There is a noticeable effect on tone reported from the material used (carbon, steel, titanium, none) and amount. It’s a great read. https://www.bassgearmag.com/luthiers-round-table-5/ Heiko Hoepfinger (the chap who owns Basslab) is a physicist as well as a musician and has published some really interesting articles on neck stiffness/resonance. The whole series he did in Premier Guitar is well worth a read. https://www.premierguitar.com/amp/bass-bench-neck-joints-science-and-sound-opinions-2651066838 https://www.premierguitar.com/bass-necks-adjustability-and-resonance The second article in particular has a very interesting conclusion. For bolt-on necks, he concludes the sonic impact of the body is significantly over-rated.

It’s a recipe. I guess best I can say so far is I’m clearly documenting which bits I’m following and which ingredients I’m varying, and that allows us to make our own judgements as to what is key. I am continuously eating humble pie. The fretboard wood made a huge difference, and the neck build obviously as well. I thought I’d get away with maple fretboard; I was wrong. I will I think need a proper mahogany body to get that last bit of sonic detail right. Alder isn’t quite right. Though it’s not as much of the signature as perhaps others would have said. Pickups/placement seem vital; you can’t have pickups with a strong built in resonant peak. Looks like Chris’ ( @slowburnaz) pickups fit the bill, even if they’re not quite exact Wal build clones. And it turns out rosewood boards can sound very bright with the right pickup sensing their output; that was news to me. And of course the pre with some built in grit/authentic sounding shaping. Nuno doing his work here.

I have considered it. I may do it yet. But first I need to show that I have gotten close enough with things as they are.