bloke_zero

How it sounds (for me) is more important than how it looks - I really like the LP filter per pickup approach as EQ can really mess up a sound in my opinion making it smeary where simply removing frequencies feels cleaner to me. For me the aim of the electronics would be to let the sound of the pickup/wood interaction sing through as much as possible. Personally I'd go with the lower dB per octave slopes as I think you might find that the steeper slopes really colour the sound - but who's to say that is a bad thing? Not me! The one I have tops out somewhere above 4K and I think that really works as you still geta lot of the snap and buzz from the string but not too much of the string noise from higher up. It's a tricky balance - thanks for the research and figures on the different versions - most enlightening! The only worry with this LP filter set up is that I can see some bad amp accidents happening with a big resonant peak smashed out at very low frequency - people never let you forget it if you blow their bass bins!

Congratulations! That looks great - lovely grain! The only thing ever wanted was to add a single coil option as the MFDs are so strong!

I put one in a bass - I really like it, but I'm not sure it'd get you where you want to go when you're talking mids as it's a pure lowpass with a switch to increase the resonant peak. Don't get me wrong - it's kind of perfect for me, but if I'm reading you right might not provide enough adjustment for you? Alan was saying here that he has some of his EQ-01 :

I’ve had a bit of an overdrive/distortion problem in the past. I really want to build the trans-drive!

Did you ever try the maestro bass fuzz? I'm not saying it'll be your perfect OD becasue it sounds so crazy, but it has a transformer and sounds pretty neat.

You're killing it with the overdrive pedals! I'm enjoying your work and wish I had your skills! I spent a lot of time building various overdrive/distortion pedals in a quest for the perfect (to me) 303 overdrive sound and they are all so different - a fascinating area.

Yeah, it's kind of as if instead of a delorean you used a model T to house the time machine!

I know - but it's super cool to see it in action! The closest I ever got was overdriving my bass out into a square wave and then using that to drive the sync input of a VCO - it worked but it wasn't pretty! It looks like a great system.

Amazing tracking - thanks for the video!

It's suprisingly un-technical underneath those pickups. Like Cuzzie says, just foam or springs - I'd guess that you have foam underneath and you'll just need to loosen off the strings unscrew the pickups and furtle around underneath until the foam is in a better postition. Once it's in place it doesn't really move around much.

That is beautiful! There is the prototype on there too - https://reverb.com/uk/item/1636165-travis-bean-tb2000-prototype-0-1974 14 pounds!

Hard to tell but might just be that the pickup has got caught on the threads of the screw and needs to be coaxed back into place - no big deal. looks like you might want to set the pickup height with a ruler when you get it.

I'd go for the status neck, it's really very easy to swap the necks if you're confident about setting action and intonation. I'd have thought you'd get good resale value for the neck if you went that way and didn't like it. Presumably you'll keep the fretted neck?

Nice - I have a couple of kits I've built with little transformers and they both sound great, a ringmod and clone of the Maestro bass fuzz and they both sound like nothing else - it feels like the transformer imparts quite specific tone!

Looks really nice - where is the PCB from?

Monty does great package: I've been recording the bass through it's various pickup/electronics so I'll post up the results. I think I can say that when people say that pickups make no real difference to the sound and you can get there with EQ... Well, lets just say I disagree 😉 Passive: Active: Need to tidy the wiring and revisit the shielding - single coil is pretty noisy on the P - I think I need to shield the top cavity. Waiting for an order of knobs that I placed in november - the post has gone totally to hell here! The LusitHand preamp is another post - I'm very happy with it.

Pretty amazing how radically it changes the sound - reverse P feels like the way forward!

G&L L-2000 = baseball bat. I didn't like it much - too thick front to back. Although I don't mind chunky front to back if the neck is a bit narrower. For me it was to wide and too deep, but only enough so that it didn't leap into the hand rather than hard to play. Sold it after about a year - I really tried hard to love it but it never jelled (year 2000 USA model). I replaced it with MM Sabre re-issue and I really like the neck a lot - feels more like a 70's stingray I tried once and loved - thinner front to back and really nicely radiused - I think it's a compound radius - you can get up into the dusty area with ease - I don't know what it is but it sort of invites you up there in a way that other basses say "well, if you must! But you won't like it!". Sounds great too - much more usable than the G&L in terms of tone - you just plug it in and it sounds great, where with the L2000 I was always searching for the right setting. Hope that helps - haven't tried the other two.

There is a blurry picture half way down here: https://walbasshistory.blogspot.com/2016/09/jg-special-pt-5-gallery-jg-basses-and.html I'd never seen him with anything but a precision before

LusitHand Devices? He is round the corner from me - I've just put one of his dual NFP's in a bass - sounds great!

I've got one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/yideng-Soldering-Helping-Flexible-Welding/dp/B08H543K43/ref=sr_1_16?dchild=1&keywords=3rd+hand+soldering&qid=1608111310&sr=8-16 Great for soldering cables together, holding PCBs etc

I fitted the LusitHand Devices Dual NFP and it's really nice. I think it does everything I want. It's clear and detailed, simple to use and the sound is right for me. I was worried that 4K would be a bit low for the lowpass, but it feels just right, and engaging the resonance (peak) boost with the filter full open gives a nice bit of crunch. Having the boost on at lower frequencies is a bit variable - good for dialling some specific tones, but can soon get overwhelming when out of the treble range. You can, as I hoped, dial in some filtered P sound to fill out the MM, the MM also really benefits from the resonance boost with the filter wide open. And the active buffer really adds a lot of clarity to the P-pickup (plus the ability to boost the volume to match the MM). I'm a happy camper! I have some before and after sound clips I'll try and edit together.

These are bright and have a lot of bottom still: https://www.warmanguitars.co.uk/product/p-bass-classic-pickup-8-56kohm-and-5-21-henries/ Any ceramic magnet pickup will be brighter - lots of the tone is also in the wind, but I tried a set of those and they are very full range.

http://www.acguitars.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ACG_EQ01.pdf Ok, cool - so treble is a high pass filter - makes a lot of sense to me Now I'm desperate to know what the "other" preset does: Filter resonance? Explodes the fabric of space time?

He's very approachable over email LusitHand Devices: [email protected] I'm hoping it'll get here for the weekend so I can install it then. I think the one that would really shine would be the multi-coil version. Is that available on it's own? It's also got EQ options. I guess you could always add some of John's EQ modules to the LusitHand filter if you wanted to go fully featured! https://www.east-uk.com/product/mid-sweep-01/