CXIII

Cheers for that. The only other thing I am concerned about is that at the minute when I do the Gary Willis 'elbow first fret' relief test the A string sits on the fret board which would indicate the need for a bit of neck relief and hence raise the action higher?! I'll have a read through those articles and ponder the next step.

Hi all, Looking for a bit of advice/opinion on a fretless bass set up. I recently took the plunge and bought a fretless Fanndec 5-string bass, by no means a top of the line instrument. The bass originally came with a set of roundwounds and upon reading about strings for fretless I changed the the strings to a set of Hot Wire half-rounds (125 gauge). After the restring I noticed the action to be a tad on the high side especially at the upper neck region and a bit of the characteristic 'mwah' sound had been lost mainly on the E and B strings. On further reading my general understanding is that the straighter the neck on a fretless the greater the 'mwah' so was going to tighten the truss rod and hence lower the action? Also was going to file the nut down a touch if needed? Any advice on fretless setup would be much appreciated.

I picked up an RH450 last week second hand from here (instead of going for the BH500 for the portability). Its a great piece of kit. I have it running through a Ashdown ABM 410T and Trace elliot compact 1x15 and the bottom end is there in buckets. Still trying to find that sweet spot between rumble an punch, baffled by the whole shift-eq function - so if someone can give a quick simplistic overview of this that would be appreciated. Having the spectracomp, tubetone, tuner and preset features on one kit is fantastic.

After tinkering with the amp for the best part of today I've finally narrowed down the source of the problem. There is definitely something wrong with the input jack. Most times I unplug the the guitar lead from the amp and back in again the signal cuts out altogether or will die a fair bit and only when the input dial is cranked fully can you hear anything and its quite static sounding. The other strange part is that when I unplug again from the amp and in again it doesn't sort out the problem (maybe 1 in 6 does unplugging from amp works) whereas in nearly all 'attempts' unplugging the lead from the bass and in again results in signal coming back fully. I've cleaned the amp input jack which as done jack. To me it does seem like a surge problem? What tell tae signs should I be looking for on the pcb for blown components?

[quote name='icastle' post='1099680' date='Jan 23 2011, 02:44 PM']Intermittent faults are the absolute pits. Taking a stab in the dark and assuming your EVO is out of warranty... You could narrow it down - try tapping around that input control and give it a little 'wiggle' the next time the amp dies to see if it miraculously comes back to life - if it does then chances are you've got a bad joint in the area you were tapping. If so, you (or someone else) needs to get to the underside of that board and check that the connections from the pot are well soldered - in fact I'd just remove the original solder and resolder it again just to be sure.[/quote] Yeah its well out of warranty. I've been trying to get the amp to 'die' all morning to do exactly as you say and try to narrow down the source of the problem - no luck yet...(don't know if thats good or bad).

Hi folks, anyone have a similar experience with the problem described below? I've an Ashdown ABM Evo II 500 amp that is intermittently cutting out every so often. There is still input signal from the bass just no output and usually a simple off/on reboot will solve the problem (although not always). I'm running it through an Ashdown 410t and TE 1518c cab, both input/output dials usually sit between 10/12 o'clock) - have checked all leads, bass battery (mute button) etc and they are all fine. Straight of after reading some other users Ashdown problems that it was the effects loop either connections or pcb but that board seems to be working fine when I hooked up a pedal through it. I opened up the amp, all connections/wires/fans/solder joins etc seem fine. The cutting out seems to happen when I press the flat/shape button while amp is on (but not all the time) and I also noticed recently that if it does cut out cranking the input dial up to full seems to get everything going again. I've emailed ashdown who basically said you need to get this checked out (duh). Being based in Belfast shipping the thing over to Ashdown and back again is going to be costly so was wondering if anyone here has had the same problem or has an idea of what the problem could be so I can either repair it myself or drop it in to a repair shop here with a specific-ish diagnosis (because as I say the problem is intermittent so the amp could seem fine to techs over here). Any help would be appreciated.