Beer of the Bass

[quote name='Yank' timestamp='1494322224' post='3294905'] Hell, once you lose your sense of humor and try to tell others how to phrase things, you might just as well move to a communist country where you'd fit right in. In a free country you can call me a jerk and unless I want to fight you over it, I have to let it slide or insult you right back. Remember, if someone insults you with a smile on their face it's male banter. Sometimes you gotta have a thick skin. [/quote] Free speech (or as close as we have to it) doesn't exempt you from criticism though. Say what you like, and people will tell you what they think about that; you can't have one without the other.

On bass I tune before each set, or if I can hear anything change during the set. It's rare that anything shifts much. On guitar it's a bit more frequent due to whammy bar usage, though I try and set my guitars up to be as stable as I can get them.

[quote name='Lozz196' timestamp='1494269958' post='3294595'] Yep, I`ve got into some really good bands purely by watching them as we`ve been on the same bill. If I`d been playing Jonny Big B*ll*x and the evening being all about me I might not have seen them. And that would have been my loss, not theirs. [/quote] There have been two bands I've ended joining after having seen them on the same bill, so it can have it's merits. I'm more likely to stay around at DIY type gigs where the other bands are usually friends (or friends of friends), less so when they've been flung together by a promoter.

[quote name='mep' timestamp='1494272852' post='3294636'] I'm I being too PC or just overreacting? What do others feel about this term? [/quote] I'm not too keen on the term either, I don't find it funny and I wouldn't use it myself, and I think it should be fine to point that out in any reasonably open discussion. I'd stop short of saying that people absolutely must not use it - that would be where accusations of political correctness might be justifiable.

Possibly pushing the bounds of "famous" these days, but Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand is a fine bassist on both electric and double bass. I used to see him playing with a couple of bands in Glasgow before Franz Ferdinand took off (one of which I pinched his spot in).

Isn't Yngwie Malmsteen very much in the "transfer your widdly guitar chops across to bass" camp, capable though he is? Mike Oldfield is a good call (thinking of the old Kevin Ayers albums). Also, John Scofield is doubling on bass with the Brad Mehldau trio at the moment, playing a short-scale Mustang bass in a convincingly restrained, unflashy style.

From your description of the problem, it doesn't sound entirely like a problem caused by lack of a speaker load. That could certainly cause a lack of output if the output transformer or any power amp components were damaged, and it may blow the main or HT fuse, but it would be very unlikely to affect the channel switching operation as you describe. Without knowing that particular amp it's hard to say, but it's possible that if the footswitch uses a stereo jack with DC voltage on some of the contacts, connecting a mono jack with a speaker has shorted out and damaged something in the channel switching circuit. Though you could still have other issues caused by being run without a speaker load once the channel switching problem is sorted out, if you're unlucky.

That's kind of reassuring, given that I'm using DIY cabs with the same driver which ought to perform similarly. The power handling doesn't look particularly impressive when modelled, but possibly efficiency in the mids helps them to seem loud, and it can be hard to know how modelled low end handling relates to a real bass signal. I have got the impression that they could handle a bit more amp than my MB200, and that would appear to be borne out in use. It sounds like a fun gig. I haven't been up that way in a few years, but it's a beautiful bit of the country and playing outdoors in the sun is always good when you can get away with it.

That panel does look quite good for decal paper. I've been using it on various things myself, and the results are rarely entirely perfect. I've found it likes to creep when coated over, and my prints always seem to end up a little low-resolution looking, but I'm not computer savvy enough to figure out why. One thing I do quite like the look of is to apply clear decal paper to the reverse side of 1mm clear polycarbonate and use it as an overlay, rather than applying directly to the metal panel. I would be able to get access to a laser cutter, but I've never got around to sorting out my graphics skills well enough to figure it out properly.

A band I played with a few years ago busked on the Edinburgh Christmas market during an unusually cold winter, where it was a couple of degrees below freezing some days. With long johns, multiple pairs of socks, jumpers, scarf, hat, big coat and army boots it was still a bit of a challenge! I was playing double bass, and while my right hand was fine, my left hand was hard to keep warm due to the raised position. Our hat got pretty well filled though!

[quote name='Abominathan' timestamp='1494000016' post='3292533'] Ever since I've owned it yes, never had a problem but that doesn't mean that it's set up 100% how it maybe should/could be. [/quote] I'm not very familiar with Laney amps, but in a lot of EL34 amps the bias supply needs a few resistor values changing to run optimally with 6550s. Of course, this might have been done already - it would just need someone to check the bias and see if it's in a reasonable range for the 6550s. Chances are that if it's run well for years, it may not be far out. [quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1494023474' post='3292761'] What is it they say about "one man's treasure"? I've got a bad back just looking at it [/quote] Ach, a valve amp this size isn't so bad, and can be a fun thing to have around. I probably wouldn't be committed enough to cart an old-school 4x12" around myself, but I'd cheerfully have a head like that.

It looks like a nice bit of kit, with those Partridge transformers. Has it always had 6550s in there? I'd expect to see EL34 in a 70's British 100 watt amp, and the bias requirements are a bit different for 6550s.

Chromes are at the stiff feeling end of things, for a given gauge. I wouldn't describe them as similar to Thomastiks in many ways.

I had an oil can guitar a few years ago, bought on a whim. Mine was made from a can of Unipart brake cleaning fluid. It was kind of entertaining, but it was about the most uncomfortable thing imaginable due to the shape and size of the can. They could be a fun wall-hanger perhaps, but to actually play one seems like a bit of an affectation unless you have a genuine need to cobble together an instrument from scrap materials.

So this is a piece of sculpture the shape and size of a double bass, which is not a double bass? Like, a genuine Bass Shaped Object? I suppose it's an interesting idea, in a Magritte's pipe sort of way...

[quote name='leschirons' timestamp='1493729641' post='3290187'] Sorry, I thought you said dessert rock. [/quote] Dessert rock? Like The Sweet?

I saw a baffling guitar advertised on a facebook group today. It was an Ibanez semi, with a distinctive small body shape that isn't copied from any Gibson model, and recognisable Ibanez hardware like their slotted tailpiece, but with the headstock reshaped and rebadged to resemble a Gibson headstock. Why would you do that?

[quote name='OliverBlackman' timestamp='1493316809' post='3287470'] Jaco only needed 4 strings...... [/quote] Apart from when he used his 5 string! OK, he didn't record or gig with it a lot, but if Jaco can dabble with a 5, we can put that line to bed. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_PFMrCkY8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_PFMrCkY8[/url]

If your 4-ohm 2x10 uses two 8 ohm drivers in parallel (which it almost certainly will), you could rewire it with the drivers in series to become a 16 ohm cab. Then both cabs together would be a 5.3 ohm load with the 2x10 using half as much of the amp's power as the 4x10, which seems ideal. You would want to disconnect any crossover and tweeter components in the 2x10" if you went this route.

The last proper Jazz I had would have looked like the OP's picture when the controls were at 100%, and that was how it came from Fender.

I'll probably take a single 12" cab out for my Sunday gig this weekend with an 80 watt valve head and vocal PA only, and I expect that to work out just fine in that setting. But that's for a chilled-out set in a family pub on a Sunday afternoon where playing at rock volumes wouldn't get us invited back. I do have a second cab that comes out sometimes (in a larger room or when drunk people are dancing), and the pair of them are noticeably bigger sounding though I don't own any amp more powerful than 200 watts currently. My cabs could be described as a typical 1x12" (with around 250cc displacement) rather than some of the more capable 1x12s, so I would not be surprised if a more powerful amp on the right modern 1x12" could do the same job.

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1493193012' post='3286297'] I don't know much about Monique. Do you know what topology Jule uses for the midrange control? Similarly I'm clueless about his sensitivity control. I'd assumed it was just a simple gain, but reading between the lines there seems to be something else going on there. What topology did you use for your midrange control? Is it similar to this: [url="http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/images/Amp-Tone-7-A-A.gif"]http://www.angelfire...-Tone-7-A-A.gif[/url] I can't see any pics from early in that thread unfortunately, although I've read it at some point in the dim and distant! [/quote] The EQ in the Monique has been described as a Baxandall, and from what I've read about it I'd guess it's probably a true, active Baxandall circuit. Jule is a little cagey about how the Sensitivity control operates (quite understandably), though he hints that it also affects the input impedance. Without knowing what topology he has used for the input stage it's hard to be certain what's going on there, though it does look like he's come up with something fairly distinctive rather than borrowing from the same classic designs most other people do!

[quote name='Passinwind' timestamp='1493142810' post='3286032'] There's an old Talkbass thread on a couple of my 6SL7/6SN7 builds: [url="https://www.talkbass.com/threads/a-diy-tube-preamp-line-driver-by-passinwind.345415/#post-4388452"]https://www.talkbass...5/#post-4388452[/url] Some of the pics have gone missing in the thread due to the TB software changeover after I posted them but I can probably scare them up if anyone is interested. JGR is a good friend of mine and it's well worth gleaning what you can from his posts over there too. I opted for an active bass and mid format, closer to the Jule Monique's approach than the Ampeg thing. [/quote] That does look nice, and it looks like a deeper design process than I'm getting into since I'm essentially pilfering sections of existing amps in a building-block approach. I should probably look into SPICE modelling at some point... I'll be using less premium parts than some of your builds - no PEC pots for me! I'm going to make up eyelet boards for the power supply and high-voltage bits of the audio circuitry, though I might put the resistors and caps for the James tone stack on a little perf board mounted on the back of the pots to save some space, since those are low-voltage parts.

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1493105252' post='3285549'] I've most of the parts for a similar build just waiting for me to free up enough time to start building. I digested quite a bit over on the other forum, particularly from username JGR, who builds under the name Reiner Amplification. His bass preamp has an inductor midrange, based on the Ampeg V9 topology, probably similar to the V4 going by your description. His earliest designs had lower and upper midrange controls using wah inductors! In the end up I decided to start with the B15n pre, simple as it may be, but add a sweep control to the tonestack, a la Arkham Zephyr [url="http://arkhamsound.com/zephyr.html"]http://arkhamsound.com/zephyr.html[/url] I can always revisit later and add an inductor midrange. I have a multi-tap carnhill inductor at the ready! [/quote] Yes, the V9 looks like the same midrange circuit I'm thinking about. I wasn't aware of the Carnhill inductors - having just googled them, that could be an option if I can't get a hand-wound inductor to work. I found this page which describes making a copy of the Ampeg multi-tapped inductor; [url="http://www.frontiernet.net/~jff/SonOfSVPCL/DIYSVTBassPreampInductor.html"]http://www.frontiern...mpInductor.html[/url] I have found a ferrite core of the same size with an AL value close to the one he used, I've calculated how many turns I should need, and now I just need to borrow an LCR meter to check that I'm in the ballpark of the right values. My build will essentially be a B15 preamp, followed by the midrange stage and an AC cathode follower on the output.

Would you consider a Hofner to be conventional? Some of those are crazily light.