muzzer

Aah, the maestro speaks, glad to see you still monitor these forums Mr Fitmzaurice [quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='619624' date='Oct 7 2009, 02:54 PM']Insist that he follow the instructions to a T, including the choice of materials and adhesives.[/quote] Absolutely, I learnt my lesson a while ago when attempting to build a Tuba24 - I thought I would make a few "shortcuts" but the less said about that the better I think For anyone else reading this post, I can't praise Bill's instructions enough. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is covered. I would love have a go building a Jack, but currently have absolutely nowhere I can do any work apart from final assembly (at a push). Cheers Steve

Thanks for all the replies - I had thought of using my local B&Q/Wickes what-have-you but as mottlefeeder and DLP say [quote name='Mottlefeeder' post='619160' date='Oct 6 2009, 11:41 PM']I agree that you can pay the supplier to do straight cuts, but that still leaves you with the angled cuts where the horn starts and ends.[/quote] My woodworking is absolute cr@p and even I can do better than what happened the last time I asked B&Q to cut some angled panels Anyway, I have done some asking around locally and there is a furniture restorer close to me who will apparently do cabinet work so I'll give hime a go. Cheers Steve Edit: Oh, nice work by the way DLP, those cabs look excellent - I hope my one turns out half as good.

I have been "GASing" over the new Jack cabinets that Bill has designed here [url="http://www.billfitzmaurice.com/Jack.html"]http://www.billfitzmaurice.com/Jack.html[/url] I have bought the plans with a view to building myself a nice 2x10" version with the two deltalite's I have currently sitting wasted in an old G+K cabinet, but unfortunately I have no way of cutting the ply up to the sizes required (or the skill for that matter ). So, I was wondering if anyone here on Basschat is still building cabs and would be willing to make me a "flatpack" version of the Jack 2x10" ? I know a couple of people on here used to build BFM cabs, but can't find any references now. Any takers? I'll pay for the ply, time etc. obviously Cheers Steve

I've just received my new project in the form of a Schroeder cab that needs a little TLC. Snapped up from our very own wotnwhy for a bargain price, the cab arrived very quickly and was well packed. I would like to say nobody should have any problems dealing with him if this is anything to go by

[quote name='wotnwhy' post='312419' date='Oct 22 2008, 07:33 PM']yes, i'm fully aware of this it's precisely why i ordered one [/quote] Hi Tom, Will you be doing a "build diary" type of thing when you get your Hypex module? If not, could you drop me a mail on your first impressions of the module as I am thinking of doing a similar thing with the Schroeder, when I get it Sorry to hear about your experience with BK electronics, I was also looking at their D-class module with a thought to building an active bass cab, but I thought "Hmmm, 600 watts is a bit too much and so is the price!" I have used (and still use) one of their 300W FET amps for monitoring and found it to be excellent. Lets hope that Hypex fill the gap for us DIY guys. Thanks to Stevie for the link. Steve

+1 also Though it sounds like the component you're talking about is probably a 150 microfarad non-polarised capacitor. It's being used as a simple "crossover" to reduce low frequencies going to the HF horn. You won't be able to measure this using the "ohms" scale on multimeter as they block DC current and only let through higher frequencies. Sounds to me more its more likely the HF pad or level control is likely to be at fault. The level control will have at least two terminals or wires going to it, you should be able to read a change in resistance when you turn the control (or a fixed resistance if you measure across the outer 2 contacts of a 3 terminal control - either outside terminal should be variable to the middle one). Hope that makes more sense than how it reads Anyway, if you get an open-circuit across across any of the connections it's probably blown - you should be able to just short across it to bypass this if you don't mind the horn at full-blast all the time. HTH Steve

I had a black one of these back in the early 80's (first bass) and the neck twisted on that as well - you're probably better off with the refund From what I've heard most of the hondo bass necks were more than a little dodgy.

[quote name='ahpook' post='224507' date='Jun 22 2008, 10:02 PM']just mooching round the 'net i found [url="http://www.albertkreuzer.com/preamp.htm"]this[/url] again, something i stumbled across a while ago. in my quest to get rid of the 'annoying fan' situation i've just scored a cheap [i]silent[/i] power amp from ebay and i thought i might try to cook up my own pre to go with it. anyone ever tried this ? know of any good schematics ?[/quote] Hi ahpook, I found this link too and thought "mmm, that looks like it might sound ok" and as I was looking for something simpler and "cleaner" than my bass pod pro I've had a guy I found on ebay make me up a PCB for one of these. I've ordered most of the components up but haven't got around to building it yet, especially as an impulse buy of a Tech21 Sansamp BDI (which I can heartily recommend)sort of makes it redundant now I'll see if I can finish it off soon and I'll post a mini-review. I'm at work at the moment, but I sort of collect schematics and I'll have a root around to see if there's any others when I get home. Though I assume that this was probably the most likely candidate as I started building it! Cheers Steve

Hi Osiris, sounds to me like it may be a component on your pre-amp starting to go faulty, maybe one of the op-amps. Though you saying that replacing the battery clip and the jack has improved things suggests it might be a bad or "dry" solder joint and the disturbance of wiring etc. when these were replaced has changed the way the fault appears. Not sure what type of pre-amp the SR500 has, but my EDC705 has a pre that looks like this: (this is the track layout, but you get the idea ) Your's is probably similar, it uses a couple of TL062 dual op-amps which I have seen causing "random noise" sort of problems and is the most likely cause after bad connections or intermittent control pots. You could try gently tapping/prodding the various components to see if this re-creates the problem. Bypassing the pre-amp worth a try I suppose but, as EBS-freak said it's pretty unlikely to be pickup related. If the worst comes to the worst, replacing the two op-amps on the board would be fairly simple and the chips are pretty cheap if you can find someone willing to do it (assuming you can't yourself). Good luck.

As promised, here are a few piccies of the installed pre amp: As you can see, the pre amp is small - about the same size as a normal 9v battery - and the pots are pretty tiny too. Luckily my bass has a huge control cavity so there's plenty of room to fit 5 pots, two switches, an LED, the pre amp and two batteries in with room to spare. I can't wait to see wait this thing sounds like at a gig

A quick mini-review. I've just finished installing the 3ZB2 pre/eq and I have to say I'm VERY impressed. Right from opening the box things looked good, the packing was excellent and the instructions seemed very clear. Everything, and I mean everything, is supplied - right down to heatshrink tubing for connecting the pups to three different coloured washers/nuts for the switches (chrome, gold, black) and o-rings to use as spacers for the tiny pots if you had larger normal pots installed as I did. Even a watchmaker's screwdriver to adjust the trim controls! The instructions were very easy to follow and highly detailed. Each step is clear and I encountered no problems at all. It must be said that even though I am an electronics engineer by trade, I feel that anybody with a bit of confidence and some basic soldering skills should have no problem installing one of these. Now to the sound. I plugged the two batteries in (this is an 18v option), plugged the jack in and set all controls to mid, set the 3Z switch to "high". The blue LED flashed on for 3 seconds (batteries are new so no level change) and I got sound. Very nice sound it was too, in active high-z mode it sounds the same as my pups passive but a little warmer and a fair bit louder. In med-z mode and you get a very "active" sound, just what you'd expect from a normal bass with a decent pre in it. There is loads of adjustment available from the three-band eq with some nice tones in there I'm sure. The lo-z setting is something else altogether, you've really got to hear this to believe it. The sound, to my ears anyway, is very similar to the pups in passive mode but just BIGGER. The bottom end is huge but very controlled, the highs are clear and not "tinny", the mids are well defined and you can still get a nice growl should you need to The 3ZB2-VB 2 I installed has the 18v, pickup blend/balance, three-band eq and passive bypass switch options fitted and it was installed in my custom Jazz clone 5 string with a pair of custom Wizard "84" custom wound 5 string pickups and a set of D'Addario Pro-Steels. Unfortunately I haven't been able to compare it to any other top-end onboard pre-amps (unless you count the Sansamp BDI I use in my rig), but I'm still very happy with the results - especially for the price. If you need scores, out of 10: [b]Quality [/b] 10 [i]Think of a Bavarian car maker[/i] [b]Instructions [/b] 10 [i]Think of the opposite to MFI[/i] [b]Sound[/b] 10 [i]Especially the Lo-Z mode [/i] [b]Value[/b] 10 [i]Buy one![/i] All in all I'm very impressed, I would recommend one of these babies to anyone wanting to "update" a passive bass that they like the sound of, but just want more flexibility and a wider range of tones. I haven't tried this out in a live situation yet, but I'll be very surprised if I don't like it and post any comments here. Hope this was useful. PS. I'll try and update this with some photos later, too busy playing at the moment