JapanAxe

Ground bus added

This Friday I will mainly be playing country, so this, with La Bella flats:

Drilled the boards and set the eyelets:

Music stands on stage?

Congratulations - that was great to read, here’s to many more years of even better!

I’ve read that DC heaters can bring their own issues. Heater noise hasn’t been a problem in my other builds, and I can just try the options and see what works best. On all but my first build (which was a kit) I have drawn a full-size chassis layout so as to be sure that everything will fit without any parts fouling. I have chased the transformers...

Although it’s always sad to see our rig options reduced, I have to say my limited experience of Eden amps is not great. I used to play lead guitar in a band where the bass player was a serial amp buyer, and the Eden head he once used (Class D, gold colour, can’t remember any more) sounded very muddy to me.

Barefaced Midget Trace Elliot Elf Warwick Gnome Trend, anyone?

I tried to rearrange the central section of the layout to eliminate under-board connecting wires, but the new layout didn't really work so I ended up re-drawing the earlier layout. This time I added the volume control, which I may move to the other side of the tone stack. Now that I am happy with the board layouts, I have marked out the positions of holes for eyelets (dots), mounting screws (circles), and through-holes (diamonds).

I’ve been a convert to Barefaced for quite a few years now. For a small cab I love my One 10 for its gorgeous vintage voicing in a tiny package; for big gigs the Super Twin packs a huge punch and weighs only 17kg. There are plenty of options these days, all with their supporters. Why not buy 2 or 3 used alternatives through the BC Classifieds, keep what you like, and move on the others.

I have been carefully considering the grounding scheme for this build. I have rearranged the layout to employ a gound bus as described in Chapter 15 of Merlin Blencowe's book on guitar and bass preamps. All ground connections are made to the bus, which connects to the centre tap of the HT on the left of the drawing and to the input socket at the right. That is where it will also be connected to the chassis to set it at ground potential. The ground return for each amplification stage is made immediately after the ground connection of that stage's reservoir cap. The speaker sockets will not be grounded at the rear panel but next to the ground of C19, which is the reservoir cap for the phase inverter, as the NFB resistor feeds the PI grids. I have also moved the tone stack onto a separate board, which will be connected to the ground bus next to the reservoir cap for the first preamp valve. No other connections are shown - once the transformers arrive I will crack on with the full layout.

OK, looks like the Fuzzdog Dirt Dessert Harmonic Messulator.

Is the Prunes & Custard clone a kit, and did you build it?

Although root/fifth will get you a lot of the way there, there is a trick you need to know if you’re playing bass for bluegrass or indeed trad country. When changing from tonic to dominant chord, or from subdominant to tonic, you may find yourself tripping up. Here’s an example in D showing root/fifth for 4 bars of D followed by 4 bars of A. Note names are in lower case: d.a.|d.a.|d.a.|d.a.|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.| The last note of bar 4 and the first of bar 5 are both a. This may sound ‘wrong’ because of the lack of movement between the two a notes across the chord change, and the temptation is to interpose an e note thus: d.a.|d.a.|d.a.|d.ae|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.| However this creates a ‘skip’ that breaks the flow of the music. The Eagles on Tequila Sunrise just played it as the first example, but an experienced country bass player stays on the root in the bar preceding the change: d.a.|d.a.|d.a.|d.d.|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.|a.e.| You will hear this a lot in recordings. HTH

If I use a compressor on bass it is invariably as a limiter. Either a big-box Cali76 (which actually describes itself as a ‘Limiting Amplifier’), or the COMP/LIMIT control on my EBS amp. When I play guitar I have a completely different approach, using compression to produce obvious squash or sustain. If I’m having a bad night playing, no amount of compression will fix that. But I can kind of understand players worrying about becoming dependent on an effect.

It’s coming back to me. I think the guy had actually taped a copy of the suggested settings to the top of the amp for easy reference. One of the settings is called ‘Funk popping’ (not ‘Pop’).

I Googled B15T and that looks right. Except for the buttons. Maybe the guy just had a reference card of settings or something. EDIT: The B15T manual has 2 pages of suggested sound settings. Maybe he showed me that...

Who owns the PA?

Preset buttons?

It didn't look like any of those! The amp part was about 1U or 1.5U tall, about 15in wide, mainly black. I'm now starting to doubt whether it was actually an Ampeg or a flip-top, but it definitely had style-based presets in addition to regular tone controls...

The bass player in my first country band (in which I was guitarist) had a solid state flip-top Ampeg. This was around 1991. It was quite a compact unit that was attached to the top of a 1x15 speaker cab. I seem to recall that it had preset EQ profiles (e.g. ‘Pop’) that could be selected by push buttons on the front panel. So far I have been unable to find this mystery amp by the power of Google - any ideas? Just curious!