brensabre79

Not at all Mykesbass. It was great of you to let me try yours at a gig by the way! I was converted by the end of one song, I just enjoyed the rest of the set. My Genz seemed cold and lifeless after you'd left with it. I ordered mine the next day. To clarify, the Carvin is not an all valve amp, it's the closest thing (I have tried) to the feel of all-valve by a long way. I have also purchased an all valve amp, which is great up to a point. At 160W I find it gasping for breath on bigger gigs. It also weighs more than the rest of my gear put together. I've got 3 gigs this weekend, two will be with the Carvin. So in summary, if you absolutely want no compromise big all-valve sound, you'll need an all-valve amp. If you want to get 90% of the way there (and let's face it only you will know the difference) then I would heartily recommend the Carvin BX series. I would also say that their 500W model is about as loud as the Shuttle 9.2 was.

Just noticed you're in Worthing! I might have one knocking around at home so if you get desperate I'm not that far from you in Haywards Heath

Oh yeah I see your original pot has a plastic shaft rather than split shaft. So I'm guessing the knobs are the type with a screw in rather than push fit right? Usually this will be fine, I would try to make sure the end of the screw hits the split instead of one side. It's easy to crush the shaft by overtightening the screw otherwise. in some cases this can lead to one side breaking off. If you aim for the split it will tend to force the two sides outwards a little but this will be stopped by the inside of the knob and make it a tight fit.

I'm the one on the right (in case you were wondering)

I love my Carvin. It's the closest thing I've found to an all-valve amp without being all-valve! Oh, and it's VERY loud!

No worries. My Lakland is passive and uses the one in the link - The Alpha ones are pretty industry standard for a DPDT volume control... Not sure if yours is a 250k or 500k though

A quick way to establish if its the volume control is to simply bypass it. remove the two wires (on lugs 1 and 2) and twist them together. Your bass should be at full volume. If it is not, then the problem is elsewhere. If it is, you know [url="http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/pot-push-pull-500k-wdpdt-switch-2461-p.asp"]what to do[/url]...

Thanks iiipopes. I'd say it's a little further back than a R'backer 4001 yes, not as far as the 4002 though. I shall try the .01 microfarad as well as the .0047 suggested earlier and see what works best. This gives me a pretty good range to experiment with.

[quote name='dannybuoy' timestamp='1398761202' post='2437233'] Makes sense to me that if you sum two pickups and the result is less volume, there must be some cancellation going on, so flipping one of them should produce the opposite result, i.e. louder than one pickup soloed? [/quote] Ahhh if only it were that simple Yes, you're right that if the pickups are out of phase you will get a significant loss of both volume and low frequencies, resulting in a rather nasal middly sound. However, if the pickups are in phase, turning them both on 100% will usually result in a slight loss of volume as well as some low mids. The reason for this I think is partly to do with the combined impedance of the two pickups (a bit like speakers in parallel), but also to do with the [url="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun13/articles/qanda-0613-3.htm"]comb-filtering effect [/url]where certain frequencies will cancel out. This will differ depending on the distance between the pickups. on a Jazz bass it's not too bad as basically the pickups are not that far apart. The effect is more prominent on my 70s spacing Jazz bass, but not that bad. On this particular bass, one pickup is right on the end of the neck, the other is roughly where the MusicMan Stingray Bridge pickup goes - so there is a larger distance between the pickups, and a larger amount of the combing effect when both are on full... Meaning that if I select both pickups full up there is an unacceptable loss - so either I turn down until selecting both pickups then turn up for that setting to compensate, or find another solution... It's accepted on any 2 pickup passive bass that a certain amount of percieved volume drop happens when both pickups are on. however, I'm trying to overcome this with circuitry the best way i can find The shocker is that Mr Hall's company seems to have used two solutions that work. The other being running in Stereo and letting two amps fight it out.

Thanks Danny. Wouldn't that mean the two pickups are just out of phase though? i.e. thin and nasal sounding... with no bass? My Sabre had an "out of phase" switch for the two pickups. Has to be the single most useless switch on a bass ever, including one that's not wired up! I swapped it for Series/Parallel switching instead. Maybe your Jazz was out of phase to begin with Danny? Interestingly, I spoke to Lakland via email - very nice people. According to what they say, the humbucker circuit should have 250k pots, and the single coil circuit 500k pots. I'm not convinced this isn't a mis-print though to be honest. But the wiring diagram confirms that the above diagram is correct - i.e. pickups seem out of phase. Probably because they don't do a neck and bridge version, just a universal one...

Thanks beer, interesting... I might try that in conjunction with the preset pot then. Or maybe put a switch for the cap mod on the tone control. For me the switching is essential as I rarely get to audition a tone setting between songs, so I need to just pick a setting and go with it knowing exactly what it will sound like

Brilliant. Thanks iKay (again!) Yep pre-sets are basically to have, say, 100% NPU with 60% BPU but as a switch position instead of having to dial in each time. When I've done this on my other basses I will have it open while I set the pre-set pots to get just the right sound. For the centre position I wanted both pickups 100%, but this results in a huge loss of mids (and volume) so thought I'd experiment with the capacitor trick. Although i suppose ideally a mid boost would probably do the trick, I don't want to go active though.

So I recently aquired a lovely Lakland Decade. thing is, the old Jazz Bass V-V-T controls never worked for me. On all my Jazz basses I have replaced with a 5 position pickup selector switch, then volume and tone controls. This bass is a little different though. For one, the pickups are Humbuckers (and very nice they are), but secondly, they are spaced very far apart - a bit like a certain type of bass that shall remain nameless (although this one is certainly not a copy of any other bass). The result is that with both pickups on full volume, there is a tremendous loss of level due to the comb-filtering effect of running the two pickups in parallel. Most of may basses are also active so this isn't really a problem, but I'd like to keep this one passive and the volume drop is a huge problem for me. the whole point of the pre-set switch is to quickly dial in the sound I want in between songs. Now, I've heard that on a certain make of bass (where the pickups are placed in a similar position), they add a capacitor in line with the bridge pickup to roll off the lower frequencies when both pickups are on full. the idea being to get the just mid & high frequencies from the bridge pickup, with the full range of the neck to avoid the volume drop. So I'm interested to try this out. But I have no clue what value capacitor to use. I do realise it might be a bit of trial and error, but I was wondering if anyone had tried a similar thing and could give me a good starting point? My proposed diagram is below, the capacitor in question marked in [color=#ee82ee]pink[/color] Thanks for looking! Any advice welcome [color=#000000]P.S I know the pickups look like they are out of phase on here[/color], but they are not reverse wound on the BPU so need to be.

Nice combo of bits there. My Bitsa P is Squier VM Jazz Neck (white blocks though), EMG pickup and a cheapo body from eBay. I'd been taking it to gigs as a spare, but to my amazement have played it far more than the main bass ('74 Jazz). it's light as a feather and just sounds more airy. All that is about to change with my new aquisition, but I'll still be taking the Bitsa P

Thanks Mark Great communication, received the Lakland bass today as promised. well protected etc. A pleasure to buy from you. Cheers, Bren

They are pretty heavy by todays standards, but which one to get depends on the sound you like. Can you try them both with your head?

Yup get the t-shirt. Car stickers are a bad move. I remember the MU used to have one saying "Keep music LIVE". It may as well say "Expensive stuff kept in this vehicle" or "The owner is in the middle of a 45 min set and won't be back for some time..."

Yep those personal monitors are the bomb. We use two of the Thomann ones - similar to the Behringer i think. I would seriously think about a graphic EQ between the desk and monitors though - and FOH for that matter, but definitely monitors. If you're wedded to the passive wedges, then a class D power amp will do the job. the Behringer iNukes are pretty good (and cheap!), if you get the one with built in DSP there's a graphic EQ built in - it isn't that easy to use but it's only 2 rack units, it'll do bridge mode or dual mono from a single feed so you don't even need a splitter from the desk.

cabinet maker? carpenter? or if its rack-able - the above suggestion...

The newer ones are pretty darn good IMO. I don't think they use plywood much these days. Although I think plywood can come in many forms - many £1,000+ basses effectively use plywood! The Affinity series are the cheapest. The VM and CS ones are awesome value for money - even new. i think they use solid Agathis wood for the body on those.