Killed_by_Death

I took a break, & thought announcing my return seemed appropriate here, instead of starting a new thread.

Maybe the internet is not for an obsessive-compulsive person like me.

My goal was to be less obnoxious, but I think there's some sort of Conservation of Energy happening, because I've wanted to tell people to sod off in the most graphic ways since returning to the interwebz.

People are toxic!

4 hours ago, Hellzero said:

I'll take the cake and the party bag

You get the lifetime achievement award instead, after that 'curriculum vitae' of bass you gave us. You should make it your signature.

3 hours ago, Hellzero said:

you definitely have some reading problems. Maybe you should stop cross reading and simply take the time needed.

I have a *faulty memory & you didn't indicate which part you had measured, but thanks for that.

My first assumption was that you had measured the East treble-cut knob, but then I changed my mind, but should have known better, because Ibanez never uses a Capacitor of that high of a value.

*Thanks Desert Storm

The Black ThunderGuts are less 'sticky' than the White, but you still can't do bends or harmonics on them:

exclusive pick player for a couple of years now, I only need one:

I didn't like how the active/passive switch on my Premium Soundgear was ACTIVE when Up, so I switched it around, so it's in the Passive position when up.

Luckily Ibanez did the same thing, maybe from customer feedback, & my EHB came with the Passive position UP.

The East pre-amps are modular, from what I've seen, can't you position them wherever you like?

I'm noticing those long circuit-boards would probably get in the way & limit your choices, however.

I know the secret for Active mode, it's not Flat, unless you set it that way with the little jumpers. I play Passively 88% of the time, & would just be beaming if it could actually sound better.

I guess the next question is if anyone has tried dropping the 5-knob East set in an Ibanez EHB.

2 hours ago, funkypenguin said:

I have an East U-retro in my Warwick (it replaced the old MEC 2 band unit) and it sounds a lot better in both active and passive modes

I spent some time looking at Warwick schematics & can't see room for improvement, so I will have to concede that East is just doing something better. I assume the Passive sound being better than stock has something to do with the separate paths for the signal when Active or Passive, but there's the mystery. Can you drive back over there & ask him to explain it you? 🤣

In retrospect, I wish I'd stopped wondering how everything works & just played the damn thing, I recently questioned whether I even wanted to continue playing, but then I have a few good sessions that made me remember that I do enjoy playing.

Here's a visual of the difference between Instrument & Speaker wire:

However, this image is a lie, because the center-conductor of the Instrument wire is going to be much smaller-diameter than the speaker wires.

Wow, you folks just don't enjoy Polish jokes, do you?

10 hours ago, Dabbler said:

More applicable for guitar humbuckers, but I've always wondered what effect metal covers have on the magnetic fields of pickups?

It does affect it, but if it's the correct material it will have less effect, I think Nickel is the primary material, which is weird since our strings have Nickel & they're SUPPOSED to affect the magnetic field.

On 26/02/2021 at 14:11, owen said:

the artisan had used different coloured cables for the same job on 2 pickups

Many manufacturers do that, but it's about Polarity.

2 hours ago, Dood said:

to sum up, a better designed circuit will produce better results

That's the bit that's niggling at me, I wonder what East's 'trade secret' is, because a 500K Ohm pot is going to act like a 500K Ohm pot, unless it's really poorly constructed.

I realize the bespoke Ibanez pots from Alpha aren't top-of-the-line, but IME they do their job.

If I thought changing out the pots in my Ibanez basses would make a difference, I'd do it tomorrow, but when I did to two of them, there was no difference.

17 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

100 nanofarads with a 500K pot for the tone control. Just checked right now.

That might explain it, 100 nF is quite high!

At first I thought you meant you measured the East pre-amp, but then recalled you didn't change your stock EHB pre-amp.

I was about to take the back off mine to measure that.

I was noticing I can roll back for p-bass sound quite quickly w/o rolling it back very far, which just corroborates 100 nF.

Something may have been amiss with the wiring otherwise, like a less-than-perfect solder-joint.

I once had an instrument cable suffer from that, yes I made it myself, LOL!

Also, I did the same operation on a GSR100EX, but changed both pots for higher-quality Alphas, no discernible difference to me.

There should only be 3 components at play when it's set to Passive, the Volume, Balance, & passive Treble-cut, & it just occurred to me that East could be using a different value for the Capacitor, but that would almost make no difference with the Treble-cut fully clockwise.

1 MegOhm Volume & Balance controls would give it a tiny bit more clarity Passive.

With instrument wire, one side is connected to chassis Ground, the insulation between the center conductor & the outer conductor causes Capacitance in parallel with the signal from the pickups, which shunts some high-frequency signal to Ground.

In a speaker wire, there is no center conductors, you have a pair of wire with much larger equal diameters, & in today's modern Class D amps, neither is connected to chassis Ground.

Capacitance is not an issue to be concerned with when purchasing speaker wire.

I remember the rich kids with the graphite boards were extra careful about dings, apparently it was more difficult & costly to repair, in direct comparison to fibgerglass.

I would repair my own with a fiberglass agent made for Corvette body repairs, LOL!

I used to surf in Orange County, SouthEast of L.A. & right about that time graphite surfboards became a thing, they were easier to dent than figberglass boards.

Graphite is stiff, but SOFT.

They'd be better off using ABS plastic.

3 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

I didn’t realise I was that important.... 

It's just weird & kind of rude, like walking into a room of folks having a discussion & saying:

"I know something about the subject, but I'm just going to poke fun for a minute & then leave!"

I'd rather have someone stand over me figuratively than literally, that seems painful.

I've been trying. w/o fruition, to teach a young vocalist how to do this with mic. wire.

I honestly think it's just confirmation bias, no one wants to pay $250 USD for something & not get a dramatic improvement.

(but I was skeptical of that outcome when TWO folks claimed the same thing)