flyfisher

[url="http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11265"]http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11265[/url] 48V, 900mA, £16.38 Not sure about the plug polarity, but that would be easy to change. This was on the first page of a Google search, there are loads out there.

That's good to hear. Was it actually handed in or just found by the train staff? Either way, it shows that 'the public' are not all thieving bar stewards. I bet your friend won't have the nerve to ask to borrow it again!

[quote name='callingltu' post='1100720' date='Jan 24 2011, 01:04 PM']This amp is sucha attention whore. Why they didnt put digital fx proccesor and tuner and "valve" drive in it for same price? That would be even more hilarious[/quote] Does it come with a personalised plate as an option? Something like NUK3 600.

A pinstripe riot would be an interesting news report - perhaps we could throw bowler hats off tall buildings and set light to brollies. That would show them upper-class capitalist tory establishment scum. On second thoughts, I think I'll just have a nice cup of tea with a biscuit and a bit of a moan.

[quote name='ahpook' post='1100472' date='Jan 24 2011, 09:46 AM']i never wear jeans, as it happens[/quote] How can you project an image of rebellious individualism if you don't wear jeans like all the other individual rebels? (I never wear them either - what a pair of rebels we must be? )

[quote name='2008escottp' post='1100314' date='Jan 23 2011, 11:47 PM']Might be a stupid question but I'm a novice with this.[/quote] Not a stupid question if you don't know the answers. Unfortunately, as you can see from the above replies, it's all a little bit woolly when it comes to amps, speakers and watts. In general, if the speaker sounds good then things are OK. If it starts to sound bad (a bit "farty") then it's being over-driven by the amp and that's when damage can occur. If your normal playing levels are causing the speakers to "fart" then their wattage rating is probably too low. With a 500W amp, a couple of 250W speakers should be fine - but there are a lot of other variables that make it a bit of an inexact science. Basically, your ears should tell you if the amp and speakers are well-enough matched in terms of watts. The really important thing to be sure of is that you connect AT LEAST the MINIMUM number of ohms to your amp. This is not as woolly as watts. The amp rating will probaby be written somewhere near the speaker socket and it will probably be 4 ohms. If you connect a speaker load of less than 4 ohms then you seriously risk damaging the amp. More ohms will cause no damage, but the volume will be less. Since you want to connect two cabs, each one should be 8 ohms. This is pretty standard so you'll have lots of choice. The two speakers connected together will give an overall load to the amp of 4 ohms, so you'll get the maximum power from the amp.

In my list of "new topics" there are a few topic titles that are not fully capitalised . . . . "Looking for people from Edinburgh/Lothian/Glasgow" "Ernie Ball Musicman Gamechanger now a reality" . . . . being two of them, so it's either not fully automatic or it can be configured by each user.

[quote name='CXIII' post='1100268' date='Jan 23 2011, 11:04 PM']What tell tae signs should I be looking for on the pcb for blown components?[/quote] If it's an intermittent problem than I'd be surprised if it's a blown component. If a component dies it usually stays dead. But if you do suspect a blown component then looking for scorch marks on the PCB can be a tell-tale sign that a component has seriously overheated, which is generally not a good thing. Electrolytic capacitors (usually in aluminium cans) can fail and even "pop" sometimes, releasing a very distinctive smell that's almost impossible to describe and also impossible to forget. If you've narrowed things down to the input jack check that the jack is firmly fixed to the chassis of the amp. There's a lot of leverage on a jack socket and if it's not fixed securely to the chassis (usually by a retaining nut around the socket hole) then any stress and strain is transferred directly to the PCB (assuming it's constructed that way). This can lead to PCB track problems like the one I described in my Ampeg combo. If the jack is not mounted directly onto a PCB then it should be pretty easy to remove it and wire-in a new one.

A lot of good points there, [b]icastle[/b]. I guess my point about "common sense" was made in the hope that people should know their own limitations and that they shouldn't do anything they don't feel sure about. Opening up an amp and having a close and careful look around won't do any harm, but might reveal the problem - especially if it is mechanical. I understand the concern about not really knowing the experience of people seeking advice but my view is that if they are asking then it's up to them what they do with it. The alternative is to always recommend shipping the gear in question to a "qualified expert", in which case no one ever learns to fix anything - which does seem to be an increasing trend these days. A great shame in my opinion. I suppose it won't be long before someone is sued for giving advice over the web without highlighting a whole host of frankly obvious safety measures, just because some dimwit decided to open up an amp and stick their fingers in the power supply. On that note, my lawyer has advised that I should point out that using your tongue is not a safe substitute for a good multimeter when trying to measure potentially dangerous voltages inside electronic equipment. Just in case someone out there didn't realise.

[quote name='MikanHannille' post='1099167' date='Jan 22 2011, 10:58 PM']Arghh. Can't even think on how would you able to forget something that big on the train. ~.~[/quote] I've left a couple of things on trains in my time (not a bass though!) and both times they were things I wouldn't normally have with me. I suspect that's why so many umbrellas are left on trains. Most people don't carry them all the time, so when it's raining they grab the umbrella before leaving home then forget all about it on the train, even though they'd probably never forget their briefcase or handbag. I wouldn't write-off getting the bass back just yet. It's Monday tomorrow and the lost property offices will be looking through all the stuff from the weekend. I agree with the other comments about phoning as many people as you can think of - lost property, the station he got off at, the last station on the line, the train company etc etc. Best of luck - I really hope it turns up. This story has also made me realise that I don't have any contact details in my bass case. I'm now going to put my mobile number inside it . . . just in case!!

[quote name='icastle' post='1099680' date='Jan 23 2011, 02:44 PM']Intermittent faults are the absolute pits. [/quote] That's for sure. My old Ampeg combo started doing a similar thing a couple of months ago and gradually got so bad it was unuseable - which actually helped the diagnosis. I removed the amp and, by hanging a meter on the power rails quickly established that the fault was on the pre-amp board because the power rails would momentarily drop out, even though the power TO the pre-amp board (from the power amp board) was stable. The pre-amp board had some voltage reduction circuitry, which seems like a good place to start looking, particularly around the two large high-wattage resistors that were only soldered onto the board and not mechanically supported in any other way (they weren't even in contact with the board, so were just supported by their wires). In a high-vibration environment, such a construction is not ideal and when I wiggled the resistor it was not firmly held in place by the wire at one end. So, needing to look at the underside of the board, I removed it completely and discovered that the PCB pad around the resistor wire had come adrift from the board - probably, I guess, due to 35 years of heat from the resistor. This allowed the thin PCB copper trace to move with the vibration of the combo and ultimately break. The fault was intermittent because although the track was broken the two pieces were being held together by the stiffness of the resistor wire, but there was enough movement to allow the track to become disconnected intermittently. Heat from the resistor probably had an effect as well. So, I scraped off the solder resist from the PCB track (the green coating on the solder side of a PCB) and soldered a short piece of solid wire from the resistor leg to the newly exposed (and solidly stuck down) PCB copper track. I also did the same thing with the other high-power resistor legs just in case they were also about to fail in the same way. After reassembling it all, it has been working fine for the past couple of weeks. In my experience, intermittent faults are usually mechanical in nature, especially if the basic electronic design is good and there are no issues such as overheating etc. Components themselves are usually pretty reliable (again, good design can be a big factor in this) and therefore rarely fail, and almost nevert in an intermittent fashion. My combo is about 35 years old, so it had already stood the test of time, suggesting the design itself is good, which really only leaves a mechanical fault - as I discovered. The point of this ramble is to highlight that you don't always need to be an electronics expert to fix music gear. Because of the life our gear tends to lead, the majority of problems are mechanical - jack sockets, cables, and in this case a broken PCB track. A bit of careful examination and common sense, plus being a bit handy with a soldering iron, can work wonders.

Interesting. Thanks.

Do you find the Polytune easy to read on the floor? It's difficult to tell from the brochure but it looks a bit small to me for all the info it has to display. I like the idea though.

I don't have a rack-based head, but even so my feeling is that I'd prefer a floor-standing tuner so that I don't need to keep turning around.

I currently use a Korg small GA-40 tuner connected on a short cable to the tuner/line output of my amp. Functionally, this is fine for practice and rehearsals, but it's a bit fiddly for gigs. I have to turn around to check tuning between songs, which I don't really like, and there's no muting during tuning. So I'm thinking about a floor tuner. Our guitarist has a Boss (I think) chromatic unit which seems to work fine but I don't really like the small display. I don't know why I hadn't seen it before, but I've just come across the Ashdown BassOmeter: [url="http://www.dv247.com/guitars/ashdown-bass-ometer--73723"]http://www.dv247.com/guitars/ashdown-bass-ometer--73723[/url] This looks pretty rugged and has a nice big display. Has anyone used one of these units or have any alternative suggestions?

Get a MAG 210 to complement the 115? Plenty of change from £250. You'll gain the option to use one, or the other, or both.

Er, right, fair cop. I must've had a brain storm on that one. Still, it wouldn't have done any harm; 8+8 = 16 (internal) in parallel with an external 8 = 5.3 ohms, so pretty close. But, yes, I'd go with plan B as well.

It would certainly be fairly easy to add another speaker socket to any combo; the mechanics of it would likely be more fiddly than the electrical wiring. However, the real issue is to understand the minimum speaker impedance for your combo amp. I found a manual for the BA210SP and it states that the amp is 220W into 4 ohms. It also states it has 2 x 10-inch speakers, but doesn't give their impedance. My guess is that each speaker is 8 ohms and wired in parallel to give 4ohms, so that the combo already gives the maximum power. Having a look at the internal wiring would confirm this. If my guess is correct then you won't be able to add another speaker without wiring the existing ones. What you could do is re-wire the internal speakers so that they are in series. This would give an 8 ohm load. Then add another speaker socket (wired in parallel with the amp output) into which you could then plug an external 8 ohm speaker, giving an overall load of 4 ohms to the amp. Whether all this will make things sound better is anyone's guess, but it wouldn't be difficult to return the internal speaker wiring to its original state if necessary. It all depends how handy you are with woodwork and wiring.

Er, OK, maybe not [u]exactly[/u] the same.

[quote name='EssentialTension' post='1094263' date='Jan 18 2011, 07:25 PM']If it had strings, my old dad always called it a banjo.[/quote] My Grandfather was exactly the same.

[quote name='lojo' post='1094152' date='Jan 18 2011, 06:01 PM']Don't get offended when someone without much instrument knowledge just sees it as a "guitar", to them it is, so nothing wrong is meant by it If you didn't know your hammers, a hammer is a hammer, but a carpenter uses a claw hammer, a bricky a club hammer and so on Focus on the bit that says "hey NICE g.....r" , seems they are trying to compliment your instrument or playing, so I hope they don't find out you are calling them "idiots"[/quote] +1 I use a screwdriver but a gunsmith would use a turnscrew. Most craftsmen have quite specific names for the tools of their trade. I'd be quite upset if a craftsman called me an idiot just because I didn't happen to know the name of their specialist tools and would regard them as an ignorant moron with no interpersonal skills. A simple, polite , explanation works wonders. Besides, as a general description, it IS a guitar

Ah, I didn't read the OP as wanting to build a particularly lightweight cab, just that there was a plentiful supply of 9mm ply. Interesting idea about using a holesaw to make one layer light before glueing together. There could be all sorts of permutations for optimum stiffness whilst avoiding nasty resonances. Could be an interesting project for anyone into CAD modelling and simulation.

Glue it together to make 18mm ply.

Hoorah! Always good to hear about a happy ending . . . plus you've got yourself a mole-wrench - almost as indispensible as WD40.