northcountrybob

I've used a CE-2B which was great, the Walrus Julia which is great, but I'm currently using an EQD Aurelius. Aurelius has a clean blend, and you can switch between knob settings, and one of 6 preset settings with the foot switch (as well as on/off). Has an expression input too. I think it's as nice as the CE-2B and Julia for bass.

from a few months ago

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll take a look at them all. It's a bit of a shame but my J Bass needs to be returned. Too many issues including one I can't fix with it. I think I found one link to some PCB's that could be ordered and a bunch of vero layouts. https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/dqkkDv24 I did think about ordered that. I don't know if there are other options. The retrovibe seems a bit steep for what it is. I'm almost tempted to do my own PCB layout with lower profile surface mount parts... but I'm also lazy!

Maybe the MM style 2 band (3 knob) is an option. Pretty steep though. If only John East sold just a PCB.

YO! I just picked up a Player Jazz Bass. TBH it needs some work. It arrived with the bridge ground wire detached. Nut edges are a bit sharp. The neck on the bass side around the first few frets feels kind of flat and not really rounded down the side of the neck. The collet for the low E tuners is also sitting quite proud of the headstock... I swapped a guitar for it and it's brand new so... I dunno. it's my first J Bass and I actually dig a lot about it. So it's got me GASing for something better, but as I'm not into this for much I might play around with it once I sorted some of the issues. I have a Gotoh 201B-4 to put on it. I can sort the ground wire when I replace that. I can also press in the collet. Besides that, the volume pots seems to do very very little. A tiny turn down from full volume and then there's no change around 98% of the sweep. I'd replace these with some CTS pots or something but not sure about the best taper. Then I got to thinking about putting in a 2 band EQ and either having the pickups in series or parallel to a single volume (or input to a preamp a la Stingray). Just wondering what simple preamps are out there. I'm not really into multi band stacked pot type things. I do love my stingray preamp on my stingray... not sure if that's useful in this scenario...

You'd be really pushed to get 100W out of a pair of EL34s. I've come across an old Bogner (iirc) doing about 90W on two EL34's, and there are other vintage amps and run EL34 that hard, but I wouldn't think it's a good idea if you want a reliable modern amp. The KT88 is just designed for higher dissipation. More robust screen grids. One problem with running high plate voltages like 600+ is that it's not uncommon to get arcing across the octal valve bases from plate to filament pins. You'll find in AD200B's that sometimes from the factory they have a little heat shrink ring around the tops of the plate pin or filament pins on the 6550's. Could be an idea to run DC elevated heaters. I also have a vague memory of Pin 1 on some KT88's like the JJ's maybe being tied to the metal valve base??? Just means during the build that may need considering if you want to avoid any voltages ending up on the exposed metallic part of the valve. The JPF is pretty small. Standard OT, Toroidal PT, Sowter inductor mounted on the top. You might get it small by having a custom taller / slimmer toroid, I think the space saving would be negligible. Probably don't want everything crammed together and cooking either. If you're going for a fully metal enclosure it may well get toasty. Side handles may be a shout!

Reminds me of this. https://jpfamps.com/jpf-prototype-nimrod-100w-bass-guitar-amplifier/ 100Watt 2x KT88 Toroid PT EI OT Vol, Bass, Treble, Active mid cut/boost with frequency select. Presence. 14kg

That's true, almost had one hit me in the face once... and the Negative Temperature Coefficient Thermistors used to break off the IEC inlets, and the 6V reg for the heaters in the preamp valves used to to fail. The switching FETs in the supply would short out. The rectifier diodes mounted under the power transformer would expire. The switching IC's driving the power supply FET's would expire. The core in the transformers would come loose and rattle about in the middle of the windings. The posts the power supply PCBs were attached to would break off. Inductors on the output PCB would break off. The switching frequency for the output drivers would come out of calibration (set by two little trim pots). The potential divider on the output PCB that sets a reference frequency that determines the "dead time" of the output FETs isn't set to anything from the driver chip spec sheet. So "dead time" is minimal, which means there's very little time when one output FET turns off and the next in the pair turns on, which increases the risk of shoot through in the output FETs. I'm fairly certain it was also designed around 230V mains, when we have up to 252V here IIRC. The input to the supply is a voltage doubler when switch to 120V for the US, so that makes issues with spicy mains worse I think. My guess is that's partly why some people would have repeat problems even after all the PCB's in their amp being swapped out.

The old terror basses we're sometimes a bit touchy. When they went for repair Orange used to replace every PCB in the amp and send them back out under warranty. Most common failure is "shoot through" on one of the output transistors; it shorts out and takes the mains fuse with it. The new ones should be more reliable. The first prototype for the MKII actually became the Little Bass Thing I think. If Orange don't fancy taking a look, I'd recommend JPF Amps on Demark St in Central London.

Maybe try emailing Orange. The old TB is pretty much an AD200 preamp into a class D power amp, but it has quite a few quirks. A preamp issue shouldn't be too hard for a tech to sort out. Could be a power rail that has failed, dodgy switching jack in the send of FX loop (sounds like you've ruled out the return jack), bad pots, bad solder joint, bad push on connectors (if there is any) or a failed component like a JFET. If the tech thinks it's fine maybe it's intermittent, or is that not your experience? Where are you based?

How old is the Terror Bass? I'm very familiar with the old ones, not familiar at all with the new ones.

This weekends rig!

Love the V4B. I used to own a VT22 combo which was crazy heavy. Like an ultra linear twin. Never seen this version. Looks great!

I had a TU-2 for a long time. I didn't realise until recently that the TU-2 was the first compact pedal tuner and only came out in '98? So I must have originally got an early one. I was playing guitar more than bass and I started struggling with how any TU-2 left my G string sounding. I ended up switching to the Sonic Research ST-200, which has been amazing and my go-to for over a decade. I recently got a Sonic Research ST-300 Mini to save board space, and I've put the ST-200 somewhere "safe" and lost it!

It's not that big is it! Ha. I've in South East. New Cross. Don't mind a bit of travel. I'm also pretty flexible with what nights things happen. I've found a few things googling around, like Troy Bar seems to be highly rated. I think I should also look at some websites for people to just jam with and learn from.

Thought I'd drop a post here. While I play in a band I would like to get out and play a bit more while I'm feel inspired to do so. Wondering if anyone knows of an good jams, either to go along and check out, or to join in, that take place around London? Cheers!

I'd like to try some Player P's and J's at some point. Last time I really went hunting for a P Bass was because I'd been asked to cover Bass duties for a friends band from overseas coming to do a EU tour. I had the money for a MIM or Standard. Played a few. Picked up a Matt Freeman Squier and thought it sounded and felt the best, so I ended up taking that over all the half dozen or so other P Basses I tried. I still have it. Still sounds ace. Last tour I did in the US I borrowed an older MIM P Bass and I really struggled with the sound of it which was surprising. It's nice to see that the Players are rated highly amongst people with a bit more experience than I. Fender does seem to discontinue things that end up having too much "bang for buck" pretty sharpish though. Maybe that's why their product lines have changed up a few times in the past few years, to confuse things a bit!

Cheers @Waddo Soqable I think I've stumbled onto that thread while researching a few things. I got the new trem in last night and strung the thing up before going at the neck relief now it's shimmed etc. It's feeling much better. String height on the low E is about 2mm off the 12th fret. A little lower on the high E. I have now found some of the fret are poking up at the high end, but I'm going to wait until the wiring is done before working out how to approach that. I'll refrain from posting pics again... it's probably something to post in the build pages rather than here.

I sorted out an original USA Sunn Model T for a mate once who said when he played it his fingers were tingling. It was running on a 120V stepdown transformer and had US 2 conductor mains wire. The chassis of the amp and the therefore the strings of anything plugged into the font end were sitting at 120V. That was a failure of a "death cap" which is usually between the incoming mains and the chassis of old amps. Occasionally they fail and in some cases fully short circuit (which would ideally blow a fuse) or in others fail enough to leak the mains on the chassis without blowing a fuse... or someone swapped the fuse for a nail or something. Some people don't believe this is possible, but it absolutely is! I also had a whack from a practice room amp once which knocked me clean across the room when I touched my strings. Got a free practice out of it. Good old Enterprise Studios. RIP.

The springs are to wide to sit in the plate of the trem nicely, but not too tall for the cavity. I got the new springs the same height as the original. I wanted a trem with a stop button (in case of string breakage) so I got hold of a cheaper Hosco/Gotoh which i believe from slap-dash googling is the fender japan offset trem. The yellow spring fits in this one but the blue spring is a little big. I suspect down to slightly thicker coating on the spring itself. I have a stepper bit and a cone cutter somewhere I could use to increase the diameter of the plate hole, but I've not made a decision on that yet. I don't mind drilling into a £45 Hosco versus a much more expensive AVRI though! The Hosco spring is the same height as the yellow die spring but has slightly smaller outer diameter and larger inner diameter. It also has a proper brass articulating perch vs the stock trem.

Shims arrived! Here are a couple of shots. I actually found a "shim" already in the neck pocket. Possibly factory? It's possible to see how it's been compressed in neck pocket, so it wasn't doing much. The Crimson shim looks a lot better but doesn't fill the whole cavity. I have a stick from an ice lolly that could probably be made to fit. I could attempt some trigonometry to work out the front and back height of the extension... and then make it very poorly by eye-balling it!

Cheers. I got a couple of shims from Crimson guitars. I wanted a shim that took up as much of the pocket as possible. It may not be a great fit, but we'll see. They were probably a bit expensive for what they are but much cheaper than Stewmac, and I didn't want to use a bar just at the back of the pocket. Just looking at it I thought a full contact shim just made more sense... might fill the back of the pocket with something at some point once the shim has had a test fit. I recently got a set of feeler gauges to help me keep an eye on my stingray neck. It made sense to straighten the neck out to a decent point of relief before removing the neck and adding a shim. Good to know my thinking is along the right lines as this is a bit of a first for me. It's also handy to know how big a difference a small shim make, so I know what to expect! I appreciate that.

Cheers @Andyjr1515 I did have a quick go at adjusting the truss rod last night which got it more playable but as I know I'll be shimming the thing I haven't really put more effort into the setup just yet. It'll be the first time I've shimmed something, so we'll see how that goes! @Waddo Soqable Yeah I quite like the idea of the strangle switch. With the rotary switch I intend to use a couple of 0.0068uf caps to give me a bit more low end when when one is in circuit, and 0.0034uf when both are in series, back to the stock strangle. At least the control plate is easy to take off so experimenting should be easy! The other 3 positions on the switch will start out as something link 0.022uf, 0.047uf and 0.1uf for high end roll off. See how that sounds then take it from there.

I got round to taking the trem off. The stock classic vibe spring feels about as strong as the yellow spring. Yellow spring may be a bit tighter and compress more though. Interestingly the thimble/perch in the stock CV isn't the typical cone shape found in US offsets. It's much more like the thumb nuts I found, and also M4 threaded. Only problem here is the hole in the bottom plate to accommodate the spring is ~15mm, and not 16mm like the outer diameter of the yellow and blue springs... so that would need opening out. I plan on getting the AVRI trem off my Jaguar which is at my old mans place next week. I've had a think about the electronics and I think I'm going to replace the strangle switch with a series/parallel switch. I also think I'm going to replace the tone pot with a kind of passive varitone. Two strangle value caps, three high-cut value caps, and a bypass (tone off). Got a few neck shims on order!