Solomon

Wow that Sonuus is quite a beast - well certainly in terms of functionality - and seems to sound really nice. I don't know if I got one of those then I would get my value for money - I'm not a massive effects freak but I've got a funk project on the horizon that, if I had one of these, could be quite influential in the band... certainly a very interesting option. Regarding the old 3leaf, I found one on ebay but the guy selling has withdrawn it I had a snipe ready to go as well - it didn't seem to be getting much interest so I think he just chickened out. Gutted!

Lovely idea... but as far as I can tell, I can pick up a 1st edition 3leaf for around £50 and it'll be hard to get a Mutron III for less than £400, and probably get hit by customs fees when it arrives too. I can't afford to throw that much money at it at the moment. What about this HAZ Mutron III+? Is it any good? A poor imitation or a worthy successor?

You know, I kinda picked that up when I was looking around for videos but I assumed I must've made the wrong assumptions - no one that young could be that awesome, could they? Perhaps he's actually 40? I think I'll see if I can pick up the old one for cheap and see how I get along with it - it's sounds great in this video. If I get on well with it I'll upgrade because a blend and delay control would be great too.

Oh yeah, @Bigwan, I'm loving that Proton! Thanks for the tip. It might just be this kid who has sold me on it though... [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5IMP_8kO0[/media] wow - the lads got some chops!

I've not come across that one before - the humanizer effect certainly looks fun but it's perhaps still a little too clinical for me - it's not that far removed from my Digitech pedal.

Alrighty, people. I am about to continue my quest to find the finest autowah / envelope filter on the market and I'm look for a few opinions. And, yeah, I expect this topic has probably been covered before My first experience about 20 years ago was with a box that an old mate built. It cost me 30 quid if memory serves! A simple Maplins' metal box with two knobs and one button. It sounded great. I then owned the Digitech Synthwah which is nice enough but a little too surgical. Clearly, I'm after the Bootsy kind of sound but not necessarily quite so extreme. I want something warm and full, retro as you like,quite versatile, with plenty of bottom end and so funky I need to wear a gas mask! I've also already got a really nice valve preamp pedal to dirty up the signal a little. It'd be great if presets could be programmed in so you can change the effect without having to stop playing, but that could be a bit of a dream unless I buy a few pedals! I've been looking at the HAZ Mutron III+ (probably purely because it carries the Mutron name), the QTron (because it's like the Mutron but cheaper), Source Audio bass envelope filter (which offers far more than I need but offers programmable presets), the Snow White (which sounds great), and others. Just wondering what other people use or would recommend? I''m selling my fairly new SWR Redhead so hopefully I'll be freeing up some money soon - I'd probably be happy to throw a couple of hundred quid at the pedal if I can get what I want for that kind of money. BTW, feel free to check out my Redhead on eBay [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SWR-Redhead-Electric-Bass-Guitar-Pro-Combo-Tube-Valve-Amplifier-2x10-400-650W-/171036556789?pt=UK_MusicalInstr_Amplifiers_RL&hash=item27d292bdf5"]http://www.ebay.co.u...=item27d292bdf5[/url] Cheers!!

bump...?

Touche! Right then... I'm pretty much there now. After barking up a tree for a while I've decided to drop the 4-throw switch idea... mainly because it'll just be too painful to pay £12 from Mouser to get the part I need because they appear to be the only people in the known universe to sell such an item! So, because my plan is to get as much versatility from a single humbucker pickup as possible, I still want to get the series/parallel/north/south options from the pickup... and I've been bashing my brains to figure out how this could be done on two DPDT switches but for the ilfe of me I can't figure it out... I've got very close but not got it nailed. I'm prepared to believe it can't be done! Now my plan is to have 2 SPST switches - one for each coil. Then a DPDT (on/on) for a series/parallel selection. Clearly the series/parallel switch won't do anything if one of the coils is deactivated. Beyond this arrangement a standard volume and tone control... then (just for fun) a kill switch (DPST on/off/momentary). [attachment=118798:wiring-final-pots.JPG] Assuming this wiring idea is sensible and will work I would like to entertain the notion of changing the switches for pots... I don't see any reason why that shouldn't be OK but that might just be my lack of experience talking! So, with that in mind I've thought about swapping over the pickup selection switches (so we now effectively have a volumn control for each coil... clearly the normal volume pot would be redundant in this situation). In principle I reckon this is OK but I can't predict if this will trip up when we start fiddling with the series/parallel switch. If the coil volume controls idea works then I'll certainly imlement it. Beyond that I've started thinking about using a dual pot for series/parallel instead of a switch. Now my O-Level physics knowledge assumes that this won't work... call it a gut feeling... but I have nothing more than a hunch to go on. Is it a stupid idea or is there some mileage here? [attachment=118797:wiring-final-switches.JPG] Actually... while I'm here, one last question... I know it's common practice to solder the earth to the back of the volume pot - but why? Does the pot chassis itself need earthing? Is it just for the convenience of having some kind of earth "hub"? I've been trying to draw up my diagram in a more "real world" type scenario and I probably wouldn't solder anything to the backs of pots - if I need some kind of hub I would probably just twist all the wires together, solder and heat shrink. Am I missing something?

ha! Perfectly fair enough Shame - it seemed like such a good idea at first! I'm currently cracking on with drawing up my circuit... I'll post it up here shortly for you to have a "laugh at the newbie" moment Thanks for all your help, Mart ([i]et al[/i]) you're a star!

Glad to see I've pushed you to the edge my questions clearly aren't that dumb then I'm prepared to try a little trial and error... I'l cross that bridge when I get to it I guess. I knew pickups worked by induction and I understand that you need magnets to make that work... I just assumed the pickup rods themselves were magnetic Tell you what though, I've been e-mailing [url="http://tweekdoctor.co.uk"]Steve at tweekdoctor.co.uk[/url] and he's been super helpful and done loads of research for me! I really can recommend him. All this help and, when it comes down to it, although he's certainly going to get my business, I'm hardly going to make him rich for his efforts... a good guy! With your (and Steve's) help I'm beginning to refine my wiring ideas now for my SD humbucker involving this 4-way rotary switch, vol, tone and, just for fun, a kill switch. Now I'm just thinking about whch direction to go on the volume pot... 250K or 500K. No, I appreciate conventional think tells you to shove a humbucker through a 500M pot, however due to my lack of experience in these things and to my predisposition to play old-school funk and soul music I feel I might quite like a "bottomy" sort of sound that a 250K might be able to give me. So, here's my idea... if I take a stacked 250K/500K pot and wired it up like the attached picture, would I end up with two volume controls? Basically, if I rolled off the 250K pot the 500K would take over, and vice versa? And if both were fully open I'd just get a normal, straight-through effect? If this did work would the effect be essential the same as a tone control? [sharedmedia=core:attachments:118523]

[quote name='mart' timestamp='1347731432' post='1804453'] It does look like an earth wire is missing; what is that stray wire in the middle of the pickup (at the top of the bottom pickup) ? Anyway, yes, I think you should earth that copper shielding. I think you'll find those magnets are fairly essential - they provide the magnetic field whose flux is dragged by the movement of the strings thereby inducing a current in the wires in the pickup, enabling your instrument to produce electricity which can then be amplified to a nice stadium filling thud. [/quote] sweet... shows how much I understand the principles of these things... I figured the metal rods in the pup were magnetic themselves... I've just tried touching the pups with a ferrous thing with and without the magnets on the back and you're absolutely right... not that I doubted you! So I need to route out a deep enough pup cavity to accommodate these magnet too! I have no idea what that wire is... it does look a little out of place and doesn't seem to be doing anything. I bought this thing from a local guitar shop some 15 years ago and never got round to doing anything with it - I guess it was in this state when I bought it. So I'll connect the two copper surfaces together and then bring an earth wire through into the electronics cavity. It's funny, I've got a good understanding of physics and generally well fettled logic skills, but this is a whole different way of thinking - my questions seem reasonable when I ask them but when they are answered so elouquently and simply by you guys I generally feel the question was quite dumb You do know there's another question coming, don't you?.... Do I need to be careful as to which way round the magnets go on the back of the coils? Or is it enough to know that they are simply magnetised?

[quote name='Solomon' timestamp='1347706057' post='1804160'] Indeed - an excellent link! I've dropped the chap a line - hoping to get a bit of advice about the right selector switch to use [/quote] Just thought I'd mention that I've had a response from this guy, Steve, at doctortweek.co.uk... on a Saturday as well! Friendly chap and clearly knows his stuff. Sadly he doesn't have the component I need but has offered to get hold of one for me if I struggle elsewhere... thanks for the recommendation!

ok - cool... so you wouldn't end up completing some kind of circuit up your arm then? Another couple of daft noob questions I'm afraid, both relating to my SD pickup... see the attached picture of the back of it... [sharedmedia=core:attachments:118378] Firstly, the pickup has no earth/bare wire coming from it but it does have this copper shielding. Does it look like the earth wire was there but has been removed? Do I need to solder on my own earth wire and bring it into the electronics cavity? Secondly, in my hand you can see two magnets which have always been stuck to the back of the pickups... this is probably a really daft question... but they aren't meant to be in the final, wired up instrument are they? Are they there for some kind of temporary protection until the pup is fitted? Thanks as usual

Indeed - an excellent link! I've dropped the chap a line - hoping to get a bit of advice about the right selector switch to use Another adaptation to thin about is something I've fancied for several years - a Tom Morello style kill switch! I'm just scratching my head to figure how this would work in conjunction with this north/series/parallel/south selector. I guess it should go after all the other electronics, just before the signal hits the jack... I fancy perhaps an on-off-on SPDP switch where on side is momentary - the switch in "up" position will give me the straight through sound, whereas knocking the switch into the "down" position will allow it to bounce back up, being "on" when I press, "off" when I don't. Feels like this would be a more natural response. My question relates to Mart's answer previously when he mentioned shorting things out of the circuit...assuming that the switch gets wired onto the hot wire, if I've got a kill switch in the central "off" position wouldn't the hot signal simply terminate at the switch? Is this safe? Should I try and send it to earth somehow, if so how so? Thanks for humouring all my noob questions by the way

Oh... and could you point me in the direction of a 4-way switch that would perform this task for me? I'm not entirely sure of the differences between them all!

[sharedmedia=core:attachments:118368] That's great - thanks. Now, with a little fear that I've gone slightly off my original topic, I've been working on a schematic for getting my Seymour Duncan humbucker into my old bass. I'd really appreciate it if you could give it a once over and let me know if I've made any dumb mistakes or how I might be able to improve it. Please excuse my shonky diagrams - I have no real idea how to draw these things - I've just done it in a way that helps me make sense of it all. The plan is to have a 4-way switch for North / series / parallel / South, followed by a standard Volume and Tone control. The Seymour Duncan [color=#000000][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=1]SMB-4D has the following colour legend...[/size][/font][/color][list] [*]Green = beginning of adjustable coil (South) [*]Red = finish of adjustable coil [*]Black = beginning of stud coil (North) [*]White = finish of stud coil [/list] Beyond that, there's another couple of questions... [list=1] [*]How do I tell which coil is which in my SD pickup? Naturally, I would prefer to toggle the fourway switch neck-wards to select the neck-side coil, and bridge-wards to select the bridge side pickup. [*]I've noticed that volume and tone pots have the input at one end and not connected to the middle (is this called the "common" connection?) - is there a difference between doing that and connecting it to the centre of the pot? [/list] Thanks again

Thanks for all your help guys - it's appreciated! Quick question... kind of related in an unrelated kind of way. I've got a Seymour Duncan humbucker kicking around so I've been looking at playing with that on an old bass I've been working on. Amongst other things I've been looking at coil splitting for a humbucker. I've been studying a couple of diagrams that seems to effectively send both the start and finish of one coil to earth, whilst from the other coil it sends one end to hot and one to earth. I appreciate that this effectively drops the earth/earth coil out of the equation, leaving the other coil connected earth/hot. (for example, [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=1hum_1vol_split"]this[/url] and [url="http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=1h_1v_1sas"]this[/url]) My question arises when I look at another when I look at another coil split solution that uses an on/off/on mini switch that allows you to choose which coil gets through whilst leaving the centre position for humbucking configuration, [url="http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD1H10_03/Guitar-Wiring-Diagram-1-Humbucker1-VolumePull-for-South-Single-Coil.html"]here[/url]. I understand what happens in the central position. Also, in the bottom "on" position on this diagram I can tell that all of red/green/white are sent to earth (so far so good - we have an earth/earth coil and an earth/hot coil like the examples above). However in the up "on" position it looks to me that green is sent to earth but red,white and black are all sent to hot (forgive me if I'm not using quite the right terminology here). This means we have a hot/hot coil and an earth/hot coil. Am I right? So, if we do have this situation, is sending both ends of a coil to hot the effectively the same as sending both ends to earth? In other words, it's not that the coil needs both ends sending to earth to drop it out, rather it is the fact that there's no potential difference between the ends of the coil that drops it out - sending both ends to earth or hot doesn't matter?

I've got a Warwick Corvette $$ - I've opened it up before but only the change the battery - never with a view to see what's going on in there... I'll have a looksie - thanks

Sorry - I've confused you No. there are four pot positions as you correctly deduced from my initial post... but in trying to decide which way to go with rewiring I forgot to count a volume pot... I reckoned on 2 unfilled holes whereas going with Vol/Blend/Tone would leave only one hole to fill, so to speak. I do like the idea of vol/blend/tone, but perhaps if I look into adding an active circuit I could take the route you suggest of vol/blend/treble/bass. I could even go with a push/pull on the volume to bypass the active (for those times when the battery chooses to die mid-gig!)... would I be biting off more than I could chew by doing that? So the 250K pots can take the edge of a pickup that leans towards being too bright, whereas as 500K pot allows more of the pickups natural brightness to come through? I'm not massively into my top end and my sound is quite retro souly funky so taking the edge of a bright pickup would be preferable. The bass itself is Jazz-esque in shape, with its asymmetric hips, but it has four pot positions. If you're interested it's actually one of [url="http://www.adverts.ie/jazz-basses/stellah-sjb-750-5-string-jazz-bass-guitar-new/1161737"]these[/url] - TBH, I would recommend it... I haven't used it in anger yet but I reckon you get some pretty good raw elements if you're prepared to work on it a little... it's certainly a good bass for a beginner.

Hi Brensabre79 - thanks for the feedback! I've looked into the blend pots and they seem to make a lot of sense - I've got them figured out OK. I'm pretty used to active basses to - and I tend to prefer the sound... my basses over the past 20 years have all been active. Is it a simple enough job to add active circuitry then? I've read elsewhere that (forgive me if I've got this the wrong way round...) 500K pots strip more off the top end of the sound because there's more resistance to the signal and the top end gets lost - does that mean it's purely down to taste or is there something more to it than that? it's funny you mention the double tone control - on this bass I have noticed that the tone controls seem to behave a little unpredictably - the effect one has seems to depend on the positions of the other volume and tone pots... not a very nice character really. I have just about managed to find a sweet spot with the settings but, because I'm dealing with "90% nothing" pots, if I accidentally tap any of the pots at all it can lead to a radical change in timbre. Oh, and yeah... a volume, balance, tone = 3 pots... I forgot to add a volume to my thinking! Duh! I've dug around various electronics sites to find wiring diagrams - I haven't quite found anything that fits my need just yet... I'm a reasonably bright guy... perhaps I'll try and design something myself and bring it here for some feedback!

Hi guys I recently bought a Stellah bass guitar as a bit of an experiment - I heard you got a lot of guitar for not much money so I thought I'd give it a bash. Indeed, I'm really impressed with the aesthetics of the instrument - it looks great and sounds pretty good too for a passive bass. It could do with a good set up but that's to be expected really - even my Warwick Corvette $$ benefited from a decent set up when I bought it new. Anyhow, this Stellah bass's wiring leaves a little to be desired - there's even a bit of masking tape holding a splice together in the electronics cavity. I'm thinking about giving it a going over but I haven't had any real experience of this before so I'm just looking for a little advice really. The bass has 2 pickups (1 single, 1 humbucker), a volume for each pickup, and a tone for each pickup too (I think). The main problem, though, is that the volume pots basically appear to do nothing for 90% of their rotation and only really come in at the top end of their travel. My first assumption is that these were log pots, not linear... then after a little research I reaslise that Log pots are deseigned to respond like the ear so, counterintuitively, log pots should [b]sound [/b]linear... is that right? Does that mean that the current pots are probably linear and I could replace them with log pots to get a better response? There are no obvious markings on the current pots that I have noticed without necessarily dismantling the electronics. I've also been considering changing how the thing is wired up - I don't really like the two volume pots thing - I'd rather have a pickup blend, center detent pot to balance the two pickups, and a tone control, but if I wired it up like that it would leave me with two unused holes... I guess I could still have a tone control for each pickup, but what configuration could I go for to give me four controls (at least to fill the available pot positions) that wouldn't be too hard for an amateur electronics dabbler like myself? The bass has no active circuit and the humbucker has just a couple of wires coming out - I assume this means it cannot be coil-tapped? Thanks!!