funkle

It definitely did in a rehearsal space, and it wasn’t straining at all. I took it out busking with just the guitarist last weekend and we decided to try plugging him in to it too (he brought his Bose S1 Pro Plus). It coped fine with both us at the same time, and when we tried him solo, it absolutely beasted the Bose for volume, and the Bose was pretty loud… My drummer is buying a compact kit for busking. I anticipate zero problems

This. I've got one going spare you can have too, if you want. I think they're around £90 new, but you can have mine for a lot less - just PM me if desired. Pete

I definitely haven’t. Interested to hear others experiences. I’m not exactly sure what all of what was posted means either, but I assume that someone with better knowledge can translate.

Howdy all My current band is getting out a bit more, and our guitarist wants to start busking. Fair enough. He has plumped for a Bose S1 Pro Plus which sounded great with his pedalboard. I was astonished that it could actually do not too bad a job on bass when I plugged into it. Battery powered as well, loud enough, and actually had some first harmonic bassiness going on with it. Not much happening below 65 Hz, but still, great sound considering it's being run on batteries! I did my own research to pick up my own little battery operated bit of fun to match. I found a bunch of different solutions for bass, all of which have compromises somewhere, and I plumped for a secondhand Everse EV8 (£400) as my balancing point. It's tiny and has an 8" woofer with a decent sounding compression driver. https://products.electrovoice.com/na/en/everse-8/ It has an F3 of 60Hz, though the graph shows it drops off pretty steeply after that. (Of course it's meant to be crossed over to a sub for most use cases.) After some tinkering, I've set it up with the 'Live' EQ setting so I don't get the huge hump at 80Hz, I've EQ'd it a bit to get rid of the dip at 1.2kHz as best as I can, and I've ruthlessly HPF'd it using the Stomp at about 60Hz as well to maximise my useful output. I am astonished at how loud it is, and very portable at 17 lbs. It sounds really good. It's really quite liberating to not have to worry about power for a cab, and it will power my Helix Stomp too. Note it's not necessary to use the Helix as a preamp - the output from even my passive basses is good enough to give good volume - but it's nice to be able to run effects without plugging into the wall as well. I took it out to a full rehearsal with drums/guitarist/me and it held up well, and after 2 hours was down by 1/3rd of battery power. What a joy. I plugged the guitarist in at the same time as me and the cab held up well to both of us playing through it. Fab. I'll try some busking this weekend or next with my guitarist and see how we do. My drummer might buy a cajon and we could probably mic him into the cab too, if we wanted. It's not got the same depth as my LFSYS Silverstone has - @stevie is still my favourite cab builder - but rather than having to get a Jackery battery power supply and cart it about with my B-Amp and cab, which would probably need a trolley and mean I was carting around 40-50 lbs of amplification gear, I can carry the EV8 in one hand and my bass/helix/other bits of kit in my gig bag on my back. I had no idea battery powered stuff had come so far until I had to look into it recently. Pete

Very cool indeed. No idea what they’ll sound like, but knowing Nordstrand, they’ll sound great.

Thanks @three, really appreciate your positive comments. It’s been a lot more work than I expected…but worthwhile.

Very cool @ead. I like that a lot. Series will be big and beefy on that as well, I bet…

Yep, the Lusithand Double NFP Special with the newest ‘English voicing’ MC4X with the pickup output trims all the way up on the board is in fact louder than the Wal. Which is pretty impressive.

I bet it would work very well. But you’ll need to get the pickups in Wal Mark 1 or 2 positions IMO. No-one seems to consider the Mark 3 positions as ‘classic’. Link to the post on pickup positions -

I put them in the video as well. You just have to pause the screen at the right point, they’re not there for long…

Ha, those were made by a chap called Ross. He did a nice job on them, although it took a while. I’m not sure he’s set up for mass production. I’ve just replaced them with the newest knobs from Nuno, and they’re great, but they suffer the same issue - the markings don’t go as far as the travel on the pot. I’ll talk to Nuno about it.

Ok. Finally managed to get my editing done. Here's the latest.

That sounds like a great preamp. May I ask @luthifer, does that preamp have any harmonic distortion, or is it clean?

This!!

The influence of the fretboard is profound. Far more than I would have given credence to a few years ago. But in swapping around necks I have found that the sound of the bass trends to follow the neck, assuming pickups unchanged and strings unchanged. Assuming nothing else changes and the neck is a bolt on single piece of maple, I find a maple fretboard is bright and clean, rosewood has more mids and no ‘spank’ at the very high end and has a nasally kind of twang to me, pao ferro is somewhere in between maple and rosewood but very pleasant, and ebanol sounds like it has a big fundamental but also plenty of mids. There is endless debate about where the sound of a bass comes from, but I’m not entertaining a lot of debate on this thread, quite deliberately. This is what I think and what I have reasonably shown from my own researches and videos.

None of those are likely…lol…but there will be an uptick in people buying Turner pickups and Lusithand preamps, I think…

I wonder the same. I’m probably not going back to it though with these pickups and preamp. I will speculate on this further in the video, but presently, I think the pickups and their placement make the biggest difference, the fingerboard next, the neck construction after that. The EQ is critical to get the characteristic distortion and ‘quack’ but given the pickups need buffering has to go hand in hand with that anyway. The body I think does make a small difference, but not on the same scale as the others. I don’t think nut, tuners, bridge make any audible differences to me in this context.

Brief update The mystery preamp had mysterious technical issues - couldn’t get it to work. The maker is very kindly going to make another one, but it may be some time. I need to record some video, but I have tried out the latest Turner multicoil pickups with a design that is closest to the Wal - more windings per coil, different wire, etc. Paired with the Lusithand Double NFP Special, these are a triumph. I did some very rough recordings today and I now doubt anyone could tell the differences. This is a win. The Wal and Double NFP Special preamps handle treble quite differently, but actually you can get similar treble boosts out of them. Basically ‘10’ on the Wal for the front pickup is ‘8’ on the Wal-ish, and ‘10’ on the Wal rear pickup is about ‘6’ on the Wal-ish. So, on the Wal, you get more treble either by pulling the ‘pick attack’ switch, or by maxing out the control knobs and pulling the filter boosts. On the Wal-ish, I just turn up the filters to closer to ‘10’ and/or pull the filter boosts. Of course, given how the preamps work, the Wal gets more granular mid controls, a little bit at the expense of finer trable control. The Wal-ish gets finer control over treble and slightly less over the mids, as the range of travel down to 0 on each knob is less than on the Wal. However, it does this with 1 less switch and a less complicated preamp design overall. (The Wal, as we know, separates out the treble then adds it back in later, if I recall correctly mainly from the neck pickup signal). I’ll make the video…It’s easier to show/explain I think. I took the Wal-ish out to a band rehearsal last Friday and it was a win there too. I’m very happy. I think I’ll be able to sell my Wal next year. I may keep it for reference for a bit - I’d like to compare other preamps - but I think the Wal-ish is finally where I want it to be.

I think those basses are a great price/value point. Would have bought either if they had the right neck!

Brilliant, that looks (and I bet sounds) amazing. Great job!