northcountrybob

Couple of differences between the Micro Terror and the Micro Dark Terror. The Micro Dark Terror has an analog cab sim on the headphone output which is always in circuit. The standard Micro Terror does not have cab sim, so it can sound pretty harsh on headphones or if you record from the headphone output. You won't get a "Dry" signal from any of the outputs. The speaker output is actually a BRIDGED output. The amps use an STA540 chip for the 'power amp' section. The speaker output isn't connected to ground like it is on most typical guitar amps, but carries what you might call a hot and cold signal to a speakers positive and negative terminals. In something like a fender champ, the negative speaker terminal is grounded to the chassis of the amp and the positive terminal is connected to the signal. In the Micro Terror amps, the speaker cable is carrying out-of-phase signals between tip & sleeve on the output. If you plug the speaker cable into a device which grounds the sleeve of the speaker cable jack plug, you'll be dumping signal to ground in whatever you've plugged the amp into, which may not be ideal. Incidentally, the standard Micro Terror has no FX Loop, but VERY first batch of early Micro Darks has a resistor missing from the FX loop that stops the loop from popping with certain pedals by providing a ground reference. I don't know if the PCB was updated but I added HUNDREDS of resistors to micro terrors myself when I worked at orange. I actually did a couple of things with the micro dark before and on its release.

Thanks so much! This is exactly the kind of advice I was after. Really appreciate it. I won't be using my setup to record a whole lot of mic'd up amps and vocals, so DT990's seem like the way forward. I live in the standard issue tiny London flat so if I need to be loud it means going to a studio. I didn't think about syncing via USB. I only have the HX Stomp and Context 2 that accept midi and I've never tried doing anything with the midi on either, but having those synced to the DAW seems like it would be a good idea. I was thinking that clock distribution would have to happen over a variety of cables... like sending midi clock to the HX Stomp via USB, but then from the midi out to the Context 2 via a 5 pin to TRS cable. I didn't consider clocking everything over USB but I can give that a go... might need a little USB hub. I've got some of the free Spitfire plugin's. A reverb I think? I can also pick up Helix Native with a discount since I own the stomp, which seems like it might be worth it. 50 quid i think. And yeah... shopping around controller and their software bundles is a great idea. Studio monitors I'll have to kick down the line a bit which is a bit of a bummer!

Hello! I thought I'd post here. I've been after some advice on putting together a basic setup at home but also recommendations for a bit of kit. So far I have... Lenovo T490 Laptop w/ Reaper. I quite like Reaper and I've been putting some time into setting it up. HX Stomp as an interface. I've been using this for guitar as I don't seem to have latency issues but thinking of getting a proper "interface" Akai LPD8 MKII. Been using this purely to get drums onto a midi track Sitala plugin. I used this to hold samples which get triggered by the LPD8. Cheap earbuds for monitor. With that setup I can just about lay down scratch tracks if I want to try writing some guitar/bass/drum parts but I've been listening to some stuff like Seefeel and Ulrich Schnauss and expanding a bit on that would be fun. I could do with a better interface. Been looking at the Arturia Minifuse 2 as it has midi outs I could potentially use to sync stuff. Like my HX Stomp and Context 2. Maybe there are better bang for buck interfaces on the used market? I could do with some headphones. I'm thinking Beyer DT770? I also wondered if anyone here uses a something like the Arturia minilab to control their DAW and also play in some synth lines? Further down the road I think I'd like to try a Hydrasynth but that needs saving up for! I'm very new to all this stuff but I think I have thought about the main bits of the setup. Not sure how to arrange phones, interface, and keys in some order of priority... hmmm IS there a synth/home setup gallery thread?

Nice racks! Here is one from where I work... I'm actually quite tempted to get into old rack effects ATM. Midi/Quadra verbs and such.

All good points. I just wanted to say I don't think the bridge ground is so much about electrical safety as such. Hum for sure, but it isn't a safety earth. I worked on a friends Sunn Model-T once which was an imported amp. It had a high(ish) impedance short in the "death capacitor" between the Live mains wire and the amplifiers chassis depending on which way you plugged in the 2 prong mains lead (No safety earth) into a US socket. When you plugged in a guitar or bass, the grounding in the guitar connecting to the amps chassis ground through the shield in an instrument lead would leave the strings of the guitar at 120VAC. According to my friend, his fingers were tingling when he sat down to play. I've also been shocked pretty badly when playing guitar through an Vox Valvetronix that had a fault in an old central London practice room. Again from touching live guitar strings. Signal grounds aren't the same as connections to earth for safety. That's why I think mains socket testers or RCD fitted socket adapters and PAT testing can be handy if you're playing sketchy venues. Some of the stage sockets you see in venues look like they've had several pints poured into them!

i love the fairfield accountant. Super easy to use. sounds great. You might be able to get a deal on one second hand. It's not around the £100 mark new but thought I'd throw it out there.

I concur!

The CR120 is a bit odd in comparison to other solid state amps. It's an opamp verion of a rockerverb and all the component values are close to what is in a real rockerverb, rather than scaled for lower impedance circuitry. The rockerverb and most modern oranges cut bass early in the preamp by having a small coupling cap between the first and second stages. That's a common move on high gain heads now. It's to stop them going flubby at higher gain settings. Orange do a thing where they use increasingly sized coupling caps between gain stages to allow more bass to pass later in the preamp. There was a band called Black Peaks that ran a bi amp set up. I think that may have included a Thunder 50 for the dirt??? The OB1's are cool. I've played guitar through one a lot but not since years ago. There is actually an OB-1K. A 1000W solid state version that predates the 300 and 500. The Obiwan Kenobi reference was not lost on anyone. But I think the story was it never passed unwanted electronic emissions testing. Haha! I've worked on amps that claim to be 50watt amps with output transformers the size of chokes. When you run them up on a scope the output can look dreadful. At the other end of the spectrum you get bigger OT's designed to have wider frequency response. I think transformer design is old and understood pretty well. I'd surprised if 50's-60's amps had commonly over spec'd parts. Ampeg used to give pretty detailed specs compared to most amp makers. I had a VT22 once and the power spec on paper was 100W RMS at 3% Total Harmonic Distortion across 20 - 20KHz. Most manufacturers will give a power rating at some level of THD around 10%, or just won't tell you anything apart from an RMS figure. The VT22 at 10% THD is a fair bit over 100W but I can't remember the figure! LOUD is the answer! What it doesn't have is small transformers... brutally heavy item!

Yeah putting it on a chain is a good idea. I have a chain I keep a ring on but don't often wear it. It's actually the outside of an old pound coin that was drilled out and gold plated by a mate. ha! I asked my dad why he never wore one. He's a welder / fitter. Was worried about getting it snagged in machinery. I work with untidy bays full of TV broadcast critical cables... so snagging things is a bit of a worry sometimes but again... I can take it off (like I take my watch off in the same situations).

Ha! I have been looking into materials other than gold for the ring... I didn't think of a tattoo though! I have got a lot of tattoos but I never felt I'd do hands neck or face unless I was totally covered elsewhere. Just a personal preference.

The answer I guess is going to be, try it and see how I feel, but it's nice to know taking rings off isn't uncommon. I wondered if some people use thinner rings, like 4mm or less just to not feel restricted. Maybe I could permanently wear a slide 🤔

May be more of an off topic question, but I was wondering what you folks with weddings bands on your fretting hand do when playing bass? Can you not feel it, do you take it off, do you have a thinner ring rather than a wider one, do you wear it on your non-fretting hand? I don't ever wear rings. I due to get married and looking around at rings. I kinda worry about how it will feel to play?

@Lozz196 the guard arrived from eBay! It’s a big snug but I’ll take it off and sort it after the holidays. Got the gotoh bridge on too. Might get some loctite 222 for the saddle screws…

Cheers @Lozz196! I ordered a guard from that place in the end. Not arrived yet. It's meant to be dark red tort. hopefully it'll look good. If it doesn't fit I might try one of those listed in the accessories. Sat and played it this weekend. The spring spacing seems noticeably narrower than the fretboard width, but it feels fine to play. Also the back of the nut doesn't have a volute... of sorts, its more of a shallow gradient getting thicker from the first fret to behind the nut... feels ok though. The last one of these I had, I sent back because the neck was flat on the low E side from the nut to the 4th fret. Really badly carved, like a asymmetric neck profile. Bridge ground was also not connected (granted, an easy fix) but QC on these basses seems a bit hit and miss based own my experience. Saying that... this one is good enough. I put a gotoh bridge on it that I had lying around at the weekend too.

Cheers! They have quite a lot of stuff don't they!

My first jazz bass! A player series Fender. For some reason I always thought I didn't like J Bass neck widths but the last time I really played one was probably 20 years ago now! I need to set it up and I have a Gotoh bridge for it. I'll mess with the pickups and wiring at some point too. I think the ground wire to the bridge might need looking at. It's a lot of fun. Lighter than my stingray. A gateway into the Jazz Bass world. If anyone has a link to a tort guard that would fit on this with no bother, I'd much appreciate it!

I don't know much about the fella. I plan on digging a deeper into both Babbitt and Black Merda. When I woke up I just decided that being from the region close to Wigan, I should probably be a bit more aware of what folk call Northern Soul. Deffo been missing out. Checked out the Gloria Jones version of Tainted Love for the first time. Banger. Obviously some lovely bass work in a bunch of those jams but it's all new to me. Feel free to make recommendations!

Good info. I did wonder about Bob Babbitt... Apparently Starr's early band became Black Merda but may have been out before war & peace was recorded.

Hey y'all, I was listening to Time by Edwin Starr on my way into work today (actually I was giving a Northern Soul playlist a shot while on the commute) and I got really into the bass part. I'm trying to work out who is playing on it but googling it seems difficult. I'm not sure if it's VC L Veasey. I'm not clued up on Northern or Non-Northern / Multi-geographical soul so looking for assistance!

Made a real small version. Soldering 0603 parts by hand isn't something I've done for a while. hopefully it works.... 🤞

Not sure if anyone is keen on this but I thought I'd drop a post in here... I've been playing around at laying out some PCB's and wondered if anyone might like one to play with, or if anyone has any suggestions. The green PCB I laid out for miniMELF parts and a through hole LM4250. The parts sizes on this board are a bit mixed and it's not the best layout I've done. I have a version where I dropped an SMD SOIC8 opamp onto this layout in place of the through hole footprint. The board will be 25x35mm. The red PCB is pretty much the same circuit, but has a SOT-23-5 footprint for an opamp. 25x24mm. I have a version of this with C7 as a smaller part, an extra pad for a second pickup, and all the relief holes removed, which is about 25x18mm. I haven't proven they work yet and don't have final BOMs. I want to play around with some different opamps on these. My plan is to jam one into a Player Jazz Bass. It's just the classic 2 band stingray EQ. I cross referenced the schematic that's all over the interweb with my own Stingray Classic. Just wondered if anyone might find one handy for a project?

Thanks for picking that up @dirgefornovember ! If you get stuck trying to come to something you can always PM me on here and I'll see what's up with guest list spots or something

Oh thanks! Much appreciated. That is indeed me. Outbreak was crazy! I didn't spend any time there as I had my Fiance looking after herself and our dog knocking about in Manchester so I sort of ran into the venue, played, then ran back out again. Heard it was a bit stressful with nowhere to sit and no re-admission.