basstone

Try to listen to the bc112 project cab. It’s a bit bigger but is not heavy. It’s designed to work well on the floor but with good dispersion so you can hear it as well

Hi Adrian Is your second 10" cab identical to your main cab? if not they may not be well matched or even be out of phase, which could adversely affect the sound in particular the bottom end. It's always going to be hard to hear a 10" speaker on the floor, especially if you are standing to play your upright. Putting it on the floor does however make the bottom end louder as it's reflected directly off the floor. Have you tried tilting your amp / combo back, that is sometimes a good compromise. Your EA amps have good eq options so maybe dialing up the bottom end and cutting some top may help - although I expect you've already tried that! Finally if your pu is passive it will work best with a really high input impedance preamp. Not sure what the specs are of your amps? Regarding the use of DI and PA, if you get the sound you want in your amp and then DI post eq. from your amp a good PA / monitor setup should sound close to your desired sound. I personally never use a DI box between my bass and the amp. Again if you have a passive pickup the DI box input impedence will be affecting your sound. I play mainly fretless bass guitar and use a 1 x 10" custom built combo. I usually put it on a chair between me and the drums so that we can both hear it well. Hope that's some food for thought. Cheers

I agree with your conclusions, although the quest itself is fun and interesting. My next move might be to sell one of my jazz basses and invest in an NS design Omni bass. I would love to try one out sometime to see how they play and sound

Hope to be there again. Cracking day out! I wonder what new cab designs there will be by then!!!

OK thanks. Any other string suggestions welcome. I have tried Thomastik flats, which play and feel very nice but not quite what I'm looking for.

Is there any chance of a sound clip or two to demo these? They do seem to get positive reviews from all who try them. I'm looking for that elusive upright bass tone from my '78 fretless jazz. For about the last 15 years it's had a set of Rotosound trubass nylon tape wound strings, which work well and feel fantastic now that they are very well polished by use, but the nylon coating is getting very thin in places and I'm getting worried it might break and unravel at some point!

I've replaced loads of these barrel jacks, particularly on Warwick basses, which are otherwise very well made instruments. It's a neat and clean design feature but they do seem to fail fairly regularly (2 to 5 years) regardless of which make is used. It's also impossible to open one up to see what's going on, but peering inside with a good light it looks like the contacts are very small, narrow strips so I suspect over time they loose some of the required springiness needed to maintain a good connection. An intermittent connection is a real pain, especially on an active bass that's inclined to pop loudly as the power is applied when the jack is inserted!

Glad your still up[ for another bash next year, but please just try to avoid a clash of dates with the Stafford classic bike show which happens in October ....that's my other money pit (oh, I meant to say hobby).

Yes! I'll add my thanks to Mike and the team for another great day with fab food as always and good to meet faces old and new. Cab shootout was very interesting and good to know that the BC112 is well up there with the commercial cabs.

Try grounding different things with a wire to see if makes an improvement before spending time on screening to track down the dominant source of noise

Yes that would be great. It's really interesting to hear others cabs and chat about their experience and what works and doesn't as well as the design process and tools.

Spot on. These basses have a low impedance circuit. It will only work correctly with the 2.5K pots

This post is a bit old now so you may already have it fixed. I am an amp tech based in Wells and would be happy to take a look at your speaker. PM me if you are interested. From memory the master volume is a dual gang pot and it might be tricky to find an exact replacement. Spare parts at module level are usually available. The last repair I did on one of these was to replace the entire amp assembly. The cost was about £140 for the part and £30 to fit it.

I did a similar thing to a fairly noisy Warwick active bass with Nordstrand pickups. I was slightly surprised that I also had to ground all of the pickup pole pieces to make the bass really noise free. I used a combination of conductive paint (the kind used for car rear screen heater repair) and the self adhesive copper foil to get good continuity across the back of the pickup. This did not affect the tone but the bass was much quieter.

Looking forward to the bash tomorrow. Marshall DBS200 combo is now sold so I will bring my home build 1 x 10" combo as well as my BC 1 x 12 cab.

25 Tony Scragg 🙂

If your circuit is the one above with the switched resistor in the op amp feedback then the sound you are hearing is because of a small dc offset in a very sensitive part of the circuit. You could quickly try switching in a resistor in the other part of the feedback ie the grounded part. Try maybe 2k plus 2k switched. Better yet swap round the resistors and low cut capacitor so resistors are connected directly to ground. Hope that makes sense and is worth a try before the passive attenuators option. Good luck

Hi Stew, The soldering on the jack socket does not look like a factory job to me, so it is possible that the socket has been re-soldered or replaced at some point. They're not the most reliable of components and I've lost count of the number of sockets I've replaced on instruments, including Warwick basses (even made in Germany instruments) that use this type of jack. It is possible that it's been incorrectly wired. The ring connection should be connected directly to the battery negative and nothing else. The tip is signal and sleeve ground. As the bass works when a fresh battery is fitted, it is likely that the tip is correctly wired but the ring and sleeve may be reversed. If you have a TRS jack lead and a multimeter, plug the lead in and check for continuity between the ring and battery negative terminal with the battery removed.