Al Heeley

Does that mean there is a potential then for overloading both cabs at high vols or is the 200/250W continuous power rating with ability to handle transient peaks much higher?

Does anyone know a uk source for carbon fibre stiffening rods for bass necks? [url="http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Truss_rods/Carbon_fiber/Carbon_Fiber_Neck_Rods.html"]http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Truss_rods/Car..._Neck_Rods.html[/url] I'd rather not have to go to Stew Mac to buy them, esp. with the weak £:$

They ha e a special offer on Kimber speaker cable at the moment, reduced to £1970, which I think is a bargain - get it while stocks last.

The signal from the pickups is AC cos the strings wobble both upwards and downwards. If they put a polarising cap in, half the signal would be blocked, you'd only get tone control working on 1/2 the amplitude, the rest would be cut off. Now while that might be a blessing at one of our gigs this would generally be seen as an undesirable circuit mod.

There is a definite improvement in tone/clarity when you switch from a crappy old lead to a good quality one, and the longer it is/was, the more the difference. Something to do with latent resistance and capacitance in the cable which can reduce volume and lose some treble. As with all things, the law of diminishing returns shows when you jump from a £4.99 lead to a £19 one the difference is pretty big, but going from £19 to £55 is more of a placebo/status/ego thing, I reckon, than any real, significant improvement in tone, though those convinced by the marketing hype will never allow themselves to be convinced otherwise. As long as you have the money and it makes you happy, then go for it.

This from a useful link on Project Guitar dot com. " The reason for having a resistor with the cap is as follows. The cap itself controls how much of the guitar's circuit puts highs to ground. The cap value also changes the frequencies to a small extent. Smaller caps allow more highs to remain in the circuit but makes the tone thinner as you roll off volume. If the cap value is too high, then as you roll down volume, you actually have a brighter tone lower on the volume than you did with the volume on 10. The trick is to use whatever cap value is transparent. My favorite values are 680pf, 820pf and .001 or 1000pf. I use these values in my Humbucker guitars with 500k pots. In my Strat's I Like using either Kinman's mod of using a 130k resistor in series with a .0012uF cap or Seymour Duncan's mod of using a 100k resistor in parallel with a .002uF cap. The resistor with the cap controls how fast the cap is allowed to either send or not send highs to ground. To some extent, the resistor also changes the pot taper and it's resistance. I'm also told that the series components have less effect on the taper of the pot and that the series resistor is a more gradual effect on the cap. You'll have to let your ears decide on this one. Both mods work great and are transparent though. Notice you'll always place the components on the 2 vol pot terminals away from the terminal that is grounded to the pot case for it to work. Make your connections tight and neat and use a heat sink while soldering and heat shrink tubing anywhere you feel you might have components touching places. I have the components placed purposely so you can see where they mount on the pot. The Tele had a .001 across it's volume control. Some Tele's actually used a 1 meg pot also. We are talking bright. On my Les Paul with Duncan Humbuckers in both neck and bridge positions I have found I like just a ceramic 820pf cap across the bridge volume control and a .001(1000pf) across the neck volume control. I Like .015 mfd caps across my tone pots and I use CTS 500K pots. I Only use this treble bleed mod on my 500k dual Humbucker Gibson guitars. " Here's the link to the full article: [url="http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/potm.htm"]http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/potm.htm[/url]

I put a small treble bleed cap on most of my electric guitars but have never tried it on the Bass, not sure if the same rules and cap values will apply to the different frequencies. But for the sake of a 25 pence capacitor and 5 minutes with the soldering iron its worth giving it a quick try, and if it screws up the tone or the mids you can always desolder it. Note: at max vol, the cap should be more or less bypassed so tone would not change, the cap should only start acting as a treble bleed when the vol pot resistance becomes big enough.

The recent Bass Guitar mag #40 has a review of the LD15, gives it 4.5 out of 5 for value-for-money, octaver and chorus modelling particularly impressive, overall a great buy for around-the-house if you accept the limitations of size/power.

Its a Mighty Mite neck from a US internet dealer, pretty good price 6 months ago when we still got a good exchange rate.

That just about wraps up this project. Wiring works a treat as per the schematic I posted above, particularly the neck and mid pup with the mid out of phase, a really nice powerful jangly rhythm sound and the mini bucker at the neck is a beauty - warm and thick for some tasty blues. The bridge pup is aggressive, loud and biting, just as it should be.

Just been working out the wiring, here's the plan. A 5-way strat type selector with the addition of a DPDT on-on mini toggle swsitch to reverse polarity of the mid pickup. A standard tele-type single master vol and single master tone pot set up completes the circuit. The idea is to get a versatile set of tones being able to use the mid pup in reverse polarity to get strat-type rhythm tones as well as full-on blends of mid with neck or bridge (as well as mid on its own).

Ordering in some of the hardware, here's a little mockup. Scratchplate needs cutting for a SD mini bucker in the neck and a hot rails in the centre position. Bridge will be an SD vintage stack tele pup. Still chasing round for a decent neck.

Some progress today. Belly cut carved into back, bridge pup and ctrl cavity routed.

Am I out of order adding this Tele to the build diary page? [size=1](-note- not a commercial project, Mike bought all the bits and i just put them all together for him.)[/size] This was the start of a new project, first lead guitar in a while. Scored a lovely piece of Ash off ebay, beautifully planed and jointed. This will be a custom 3 pickup tele for Mike, my fellow guitarist in our 2 bands. The plan is still forming: leaning towards Gibbo mini bucker in the neck, SD hotrails in the bridge, something nice in the middle that can be blended in/out with a third ctrl knob and phase switched. 5-way strat-type blade pup switch. Natural Satin tru-oil finish. Should be a very versatile guitar.

I think they make great little practice amps, good spec for the price, with all the effects features. You're not expecting knockout tone from a 15W 8" speaker, it does just what it says it will, for grooving along to and learning songs.

Thanks to all who provided views and info during my Christmas hunt for a new bass rig. I finally settled on the new marshall bass combo and cab as giving the best balance of flexibility, power and price. This is the MB4210 combo plus MBC115 extension cab that delivers 450W. I've yet to really try it in anger but I took the 4210 along on its own to a party last night and it performed very nicely against my mate's Les Paul and Mesa Boogie. What I really like about it is the versatility of tones. You can choose between a solid state or a valve pre-amp, with very different tone and dynamics. You can also choose to blend the two together to any extent. The valve pre-amp has 3 voicings to deliver different amounts of mid scoop, and you can blend in as much of this voicing as you need. The ss pre amp has a simple parametric with mid freq and boost/cut level as well as a compressor which seems to fire in pretty early (anything abouve 3.5 really). There's a CD/iPod input on the front as well as headphone socket. On the rear there's an FX loop send/return, 2 speaker output sockets, a DI plus pre.post switch and it comes with a 2-toggle footswitch to choose between valve or ss pre-amp, blend on/off. So all in all a good spec for not a lot of money - whole package came to about £450 inc. delivery. The 15 inch speaker cab has a tweeter you cn turn on/off as needed. Interesting to try the amp with just 1 x 15, then hear the difference with just the 2 x 10's, there is a lot of lower frequency reinforcement as you'd expect with the 1 x 15, but for small gigs the 2 x 10 has a lot of punch and presence and a great tone for the money, considering the 4210 can be bought for only £275 and pushes out 300W on its own. the cab also has a tweeter built in but its not switchable. Looking forward to first rehersals with it on Sunday.

[quote name='Musky' post='367612' date='Jan 1 2009, 11:58 AM']What changes are you considering for a second build?[/quote] I can get a much slimmer and better feeling neck profile now I've done a few, using sanding disks in an electric drill. The truss rod (I only used one plus 2 carbon fibre stiffening rods) could be seated flush up against the fretboard so the neck profile could be slimmer. The black finish was a pain without good spray equipment, I'd leave the next natural and build up some Tru-oil coats on it. Now I know exactly where to rout all the channels and cavities and how deep to go so the whole body build would be more straightforward. Thanks for all the comments, I'm really itching to do a mkII now...

Heh, thanks! It would be cheaper for you to get a 1/2 or 3/4 size Chinese bass and get the nut flipped round and restrung left-handed for him. Then if he doesn't get into it you can ebay it, should only be about £100 for a reasonable starter bass.

I made my son (7) a mini P-bass from bits left over from other projects, its zebrano with gold hardware, sapele back and a p-bass clone pickup. He loves showing it to his friends but is not yet that interested in learning it. Sorry but it's right handed, not a big job to swap the nut over for left-handed stringing.

Here's a good versatile amp for pub gigs: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=34623"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=34623[/url] In that price range I went thru the same problems over the past few weeks. It comes down to Ashdown MAG series, Gallien-Krueger solid state heads and cabs (1 x 15, 2 x 10, 4 x 10) Hartke (esp. the LH500 valve head) a snip at about £225 for 500W of valve power. The new Marshall MB4210 2 x 10 combo at 450W (thru 2 x 4 ohm cabs) very versatile tones and a lot of power for the money Peavey second hand stuff, have a look thru the classifieds on the forum here, some great bargains.