Mediocre Polymath

Fender are going to be in quite a pickle, that's for sure. Don't they have two factories not far apart, one on either side of the US-Mexico border?

The one that bothers me is when the songs are on Spotify, but the mix is completely different to the CD release. There are a couple of early Jason Isbell albums in particular where the Spotify mix just seems to have a few of instruments missing from the audio. Take for example the fun bit of boogie that is "Never Could Believe" off Here we Rest. Here's a YouTube link with the CD mix (that particular upload also includes the brief instrumental "Ballad of Nobeard"). The Spotify version meanwhile has a weird echoey mix and the first guitar solo is just missing, meaning there's a weird interlude where the piano player and rhythm guitarist seem to be vamping between verses. There's also "The Blue", a lovely song off his self-titled 2009 album. The original mix has a metronome that's very prominently and deliberately left in the final mix, but it's gone in the Spotify version.

I suspect it was a combination of slightly iffy port tuning and the driver being potentially a bit of a wrongun. Like I said, I'm not particularly bothered – the 6FE200 works and while I'm not a independently wealthy gentleman of leisure I can eat the cost of a busted speaker without feeling bad.

Slightly bigger box on my build, volume of about 13.5 litres, but it looks like it would work reasonably well with the 10 litre box with a ~8 cm long port tube, you'd just lose a bit of oomph from the low end. That said, I'm not anything like an expert on this sort of thing, so if you're considering making your own I'd suggest that you wait for Phil to get time to have a proper think.

So the 6FE200 arrived today (along with the handle that I'd forgotten to get). I recut the tuning port and wired it all up. It sounds much better than the 6FE100, and is noticeably much louder for the same power. I think that might be a consequence of tweaking the port tuning. I had the gain on the markbass at noon, and all eq knobs flat. Got it up to about 12 o'clock on the master volume before my ears started to hurt. Speaker seemed fine, if a little farty in the low end, distorting a little, but not in an unmusical way. The speaker excursion wasn't visible to the naked eye at that volume. With the low end boosted (destruction testing, I suppose) and the low pass filter turned up it did a great impression of the "Ampeg fliptop running flat out" sound you get on Otis Redding live recordings.

Ah, that's reassuring. From a more detailed look at the many variables (you spurred me to actually figure out more than the tiny fraction of WinISD's functionality I'd been using up to now) it looks like the Faital 6FE200 might work well. Requires a slightly bigger box, and its higher frequency drop off is more pronounced, but it otherwise looks to be reasonably solid. I'm making this cab for someone who uses an 1970s EB3 though, so high frequency response isn't particularly important for my purposes.

Yeah, I think I probably over-reached with what I could reasonably get out of a 6-inch speaker. Interesting learning experience though, and it wasn't particularly expensive to learn. I'm mostly just pleased with how the cab itself has turned out. It was more a sewing exercise than a can building one. The speaker/wiring is the most straightforward part of the process. Look! built in cable pockets!

I'm inclined to assume it was something I did, I've never had problems with Faital drivers in the past. Might try again with the 6FE200 and a port tuned to about 80hz.

So I've been tinkering away on a mini speaker project very similar to this one, something small enough that my dad could easily take it to open mics and house jam things. It was going to be a christmas present, hence me working on it today. Like CBD, my attempts to model a flat response curve with the Fane speaker were a bust – I'm guessing they've changed the specs since the original House Jam cabs were made. No matter how I played around with cabinet volume and port tuning, it always had a pronounced 4–5-dB spike around the tuning port frequency and then a drop in efficiency between 100–160 hz. WinISD twiddling suggested I'd have better results with a Faital 6FE100 and a slightly larger cab (about 13.5 litres) tuned to about 65 hz, so I went with that. I built the cab and finally wired it up this morning and while it sounded good for about two minutes, it quickly started distorting, then crackling, then cut out entirely. I was only driving it with a MarkBass 250-watt amp, running at 8 ohms and about 1/4 volume, but yeah, it dead. Any idea where I blundered here? Was my port tuning too low?

Sorry. Wrong thread.

I mostly play a fretless bass (headless even, for double points) and have very long hair, but yeah, no ponytail. In my experience the ponytail is the preserve of the heavy metal dudes and theatre technicians. I generally wind my hair up in a bun when I'm soldering or using power tools. Less flappy.

I recently disassembled and reconditioned the original 3P4T rotary switch in a 1973 EB-3, and I can confirm that those old components can be taken apart relatively easily so long as you have the right tools (surgical hemostats are the answer to many things). However, I only did this because the switch is an unusual type and comparable modern replacements don't really exist (just cheap sealed plastic ones that in my experience break within a few weeks). I wouldn't bother with bog standard components like pots.

Ooh, that's a nice thing. How's the stringing/tuning process? The major downside I'm seeing is that every time you played a gig with one of these, you'd have a bunch of curious nerds down at the front trying to figure out how it works. EDIT: I've also just noticed that there's a routed-in plug of wood under the bridge – did you have difficulty routing the (square?) through holes for the mechanism, or is that just an in-fill for the bridge that was there before

I'm very tempted to have a look at tickets, even though I generally hate big shows with a passion. Showing my age (or perhaps lack thereof) but Travelling Without Moving was the first album I ever bought. I didn't play bass back then, and had no real interest in learning, but I remember being obsessed with the interplay between Stuart Zender and Derrick McKenzie on tracks like "Funktion". I recently stumbled across this fantastic recording, which caused me to totally reassess Jay Kay's role in the band. I'd always assumed that he was the lyricist and the charismatic man-up-front, but not particularly involved in the instrumental side of things. This loose rehearsal jam really shows him in band-leader mode, conducting what sounds like just the core group of McKenzie, Zender and Smith through a song that's already clearly fully formed in his head.

It's a lovely preamp. It's not totally uncoloured, but I'm not sure if that's even a thing really. With everything left flat it subtly changes the sound compared to passive in a way I can only describe as "better". I'm currently playing my NTBT-equipped bass while half paying attention to a work teams meeting.

Here's a pic of my bass's Bartolini gubbins from when I was transferring it all to a new body. The layout of the module is slightly different but the general look is the same, as is the colour coding on the wires. This particular module is more than 20 years old now (yikes) and I don't think they make it anymore, so visual differences wouldn't but surprising.

I know nothing of Vigiers, but that module looks a lot like the Bartolini NTBT I have installed in one of my basses. Does it have any writing on the sides? The trim pot on my preamp is the overall output trimmer.

Yeah, I ended up downloading the technical drawings and working out how they work from that. The cost of these systems is a tough one. It feels excessive (I got my ABM tuners second-hand) but on the other hand the design of these things puts a lot more stress on individual components than conventional tuners. The entire force of the tensioned string is generally borne by the threading of a single bolt. It makes the quality of the metallurgy a much bigger deal. I ended up using the ABM tuners because I knew I would be designing the whole instrument around whatever bridge I chose. If I picked a design that failed after a year or two, and I couldn't source an exact, like-for-like, replacement, then that would be a lot of nice wood and 40-50 hours of my life down the drain.

On my build I used ABM tuners, but I recently came across this company, Riviera Gear, which have headless bridge units with a really interesting design. The tuning thumbwheel is on the top, so you don't need to have them on the edge of the body or over a recess.

I've made one and have been vaguely thinking about making another. I posted a build diary here, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

My local too. I remember back in the very early 2010s walking past there and seeing a mint Warwick custom shop Chrome-Tone five string thumb in the window. Generally I quite like cash converters as a place to get old and weird stuff. I like it specifically because it's all a bit ropey and shit. You can get bargains because it's really hard to search for anything and most things are labelled wrong. I have a Sony TA-1055 stereo hi-fi amp that I got as "guitar amplifier, silver" and a 1970s fancy swiss made Goldring turntable that was labelled "record player, Goldman". EDIT. Just noticed that I replied to a post that's older than my nephews. Still getting the hang of this site's ways

I think that might work if it was a more sensibly design short scale, but Gibson EBs have big bodies and a huge headstock so sadly no. I think the Epiphone EB0 case is probably the best shout. It doesn't exist according to Epiphone's website, but Thomann apparently have them in stock.

Yeah, it looks like Epiphone make an EB-3 case, but they're rare as hen's teeth and from what I can see online they're designed to fit the EB-3L as well, so they have about 15 cm of empty space above the headstock with a short scale EB-3.

My dad's EB-3 recently developed a fault with its pickup selector, so he dropped it off with me to fix. That was easy enough (taking apart the rotary switch and bending some worn internal components back into shape) but while it's been in my house, I've had an opportunity to properly take a look at its case, and I've realised this is in an absolute state. My dad bought the EB3 secondhand in like 1975/76, and the shop threw in a cheap fibreboard case that he's been using ever since. It's got mojo for days, but it also has rusting hardware, completely dessicated padding, and angle brackets screwed into the corners to hold it together. I also suspect it was made for a Mustang bass or something more like that, as it doesn't support the neck at all. Does anyone make a short-scale case that would work with an instrument like this? It's a proper mid-1970s Gibson so the headstock is massive and quite steeply angled. Bonus picture of "The Count" in his velvet-lined case.