rwillett

A friend went to one the Saturday clinics he runs and said he was great to work with. He didn't have a Shuker (which look utterly amazing, there's a black bass there that Hotblack Desiato would have) but it was no issue at all. Just my halfpenny worth. Rob

@LukeFRC Thats very kind of you.

Have ordered the Cioks DC7. I think it'll do everything I need. Hope so at the price 😁 I can't find those colour coordinated cables that @LukeFRC talks about so any pointers welcomed. Thanks Rob

I could print a miniature one I suppose...

They look great, but t'other half will probably rip my nuts off if I buy one

@LukeFRC I vaguely remember it. I recall I was more interested in your little effects box that made strange noises I looked at the things I have to do: Such as printing a few more guitars and basses. I want to go back and redo the crap job I did with some early ones and the next big one is a headless and active Thunderbird bass. Sorting out the pickup winder which is still sitting on my desk, powered up but needs significant code development. I might do that over the Xmas break. Learning how to use a router to make pickguards and importantly keep all my fingers. Setting up a few guitars I've already printed. Sorting out the pedal board and PSU and mixer. I still need to work all week to pay the household bills and keep my family, and especially my 18 year old daughter, in the manner they'd like to become accustomed to. So in the end I decided to just buy the Yamaha monitor and put this cabinet build on my backlog as I have no time left. If you come to the next bass bash in May 2025, please bring it again and I'll have a play. Hopefully by then I may have done the points 1-5. Thanks Rob

One Cioks DC7 3d printed, (may not be 100% working ) to see how it would fit under the pedalboard. It's in white PETG as that was on the printer. As the cables for the DC7 come out of the side, it needs quite a lot of space left to right. Looks like it would fit though. I would need to design a mounting bracket for it. the DC7 comes with a miserly two screw holes on one side only. It has an optional "grip" bracket but thats for Pedaltrain boards, clearly this is not. Easiest to make two simple U shaped brackets (a very rectangular U shape in reality) and screw into the extrusions. Thats the nice thing about extrusions, no drilling, no tapping, a simple M5 bolt and associated t-nut I still might look at the Harley Benton as that has the cables coming out the front as that might be neater. The Cioks does look very good kit. Rob

Thanks all, I'll check them out. Rob

Ah! It does sound like Cioks have this sort of thing worked out which is nice.

I like the idea of a matched jazz and precision basses. Didn;t think of it like that I'll ask her tonight. If I'm not on Basschat later, you'll know why. Might take you up on the Cioks offer. Let me dig more into them first though. Thanks very much. for the offer. Would they convert from -ve centre tip to +ve? Thanks Rob

Got all of that apart from the capacitor. In some respects Its easier to replace the lot than just the switch Thanks Rob

@LukeFRC I normally take that policy, buy once and cry at the price and never cry again vs keep buying cheaper ones and regret not buying the good quality one. I tried that technique on t'other half and suggested I buy a 59 Bassman and matching Precision. Oddly enough she didn't understand the logic. I think that you re right re the ISO 10 from Thomann. Whether I use the ISO10 or get a Cioks, I then need to work out a cable current doubler with +ve centre tip. Why is everything so similar yet so different 😢 Thanks Rob

Looked at Cioks and thought wow, thats expensive stuff. I can get away with 1A at 12V so that might make it easier. There's a reasonable amount of space under the pedalboard, not sure if I can split the power in that small a space. but that might work. Also cable doubling might work as well. I might give Cioks another look and see if looks like it might a solution, otherwise I'll probably go with the Vitoos Ad10s-sv4 (if I can find one). The view seems to be that the 450mA 12V ports aren't actually limited and so if you aren't drawing too much current, it can supply more. 12V is a pain for pedals Thanks for the input. Rob

You might actually be right. Rob

I thought this was quite a small amount of stuff. I honestly do Just to be clear I don't take any offence whatsoever with your comment. I have the Peterson tuner as I saw it and love the way it worked, not cheap but great. The Mod Dwarf takes the place of any number of pedals. I don't have a single dedicated pedal, though I do sometimes look enviously at some of the stuff people do have. The Mod Dwarf does do amps but I had a chance to get a ToneX pedal quite cheaply so I use that for amps. I look longingly at stuff like a Fender Bassman or even an old original Fender Champion, but if I did that I'd have a lot of amps and I'd use them sparingly. All the iPads and other stuff come along through work and are my equivalent of the tools of the trade. The Yamaha HS7 monitor is to remove the amps (see previous points). However on my bucket list is to play a set somewhere with a full Fender or Marshall stack (or better still two stacks) at full volume I do have a bass amp for playing but it's rarely used. I don't gig as I can't find a band to gig with. I live in the Yorkshire Dales and not seen a band looking for a bassist or guitar player for ages. I'd absolutely love to gig as it would force me to practise more. To find a blues or rock band to gig with would be Xmas come early. T'other half would also love me to gig as it stops me moping around the house. Even my daughters would love me to gig as thats cool. I'm not a fantastic player, but I can hold a rhythm down and I'm solid. I'm trying to do more recording as I am slowly working out some songs. I have no pretensions to becoming a rock star but I do enjoy playing. This is the whole of my home made pedal board Its not wired up as I'm trying to work out the power supply. Please note the space top right just waiting for a mixer or something to drop in. All the best Rob

After taking a walk with the dog, I thought about this a bit more and realised that the above diagram doesn't allow the iPad to send the output to anything without doing some more work, so wondered if this was a better solution. The mixer should allow me to take the iPad output AND the rest of the signal into the monitor.

Would something like this https://www.thomann.co.uk/palmer_ybox_guitar_splitter.htm from Thomman do the job? I have everything apart from the splitter. Thoughts welcomed Thanks Rob

It's easy to make a wide but shallow one with just two rails or three rails. If it's wider than say 700mm I'd probably print an extra support block underneath. Pretty simple stuff. If he does make one, tell him to get M5 10mm bolts not 8mm bolts. Ignore what the website says. 8mm is too short and it's a nightmare to work with. 10mm makes the job easy. Rob

Hi, I have the music setup below in my office for noodling around upon. I also have a Macbook with Logic Pro on BUT that's pretty much in constant use for paid non-music work. I have 2-3 iPads as well. I very occasionally think that what I'm noodling with sounds quite good and I'd like to record it, much as I'd write notes in a notebook. I know I can't remember everything and wanted to capture it, no doubt crudely, so I can look back on it and perhaps work it up more properly in Logic Pro. Moving the Macbook around is not an option, so I'm trying to work out how to use the iPad. I have GarageBand and am familiar with that, but I'm trying to work out what I need to do here. Should I put a small and cheap mini mixer between the ToneX and the Yamaha speaker? One output goes to the iPad through something like an iRig HD (which I have) to GarageBand? Could I look at taking a digital tap off the ToneX. The manual appears to have been written by someone whose first language wasn't English and was listening to the instructions through three intermediaries, none of whom spoke a single common language. My guess is that I need a Mixer and then feed one channel of the mixer to the iPad through iRig and the other channel to the monitor. However if there are better ways of doing this, I'm all ears. Thanks Rob

This sounds exactly like my Fender Mustang. Crap switch, I have the same switchcraft replacement waiting to be installed. I'll have a look at your thread and may well do just the same. In 50 years time, if you;re reading this, I'm sorry I through the original switch away as these are now unbelievably valuable, even more than a 52 Telecaster and if you only had the original switch, you could have brought France with the proceeds of selling the bass. Also is Trump still in prison and being kept alive for the entertainment of the masses? Thanks Rob

End caps and velcro came, I've glued the handles together and put velcro and end caps on and it all looks nice. The end caps are bit cheap, but not to worry. The pictures make the handles look like sh1t. They're not! The velcro blends in fine. I'll look for a PSU to put underneath in slow time. Am trying to find a 12V/500mA PSU with a +ve centre pole. Struggling a bit through old ones. Rob

People claim that you can power the Mod Dwarf at 450mA at 12V. I'll try and if that works, it opens up lots of options for PSU's. The Vitoos stuff doesn't seem to be in the UK now and the Fame isn't around either. There's no desperate rush, got the guitar to finish off first.

@SpondonBassed The name is just a coincidence. There is a "modular" aluminium extrusion system that comes in 10mm chunks. The 2020 aluminium is common in 3d printers, but you can get 10 x 10, 20 x 20, 30 x 30 and 40 x 4mm0 and various permutations. The general principle is that's easy to bolt together as the slots and depth are all the same size, lightweight and fairly rigid. The 2040 high temperature aluminium you referenced is a coincidence in name only. The aluminium is fairly soft (relatively speaking) and fairly cheap. There are T-Slot and V-Slot variants and that refers to the edge of the slot. The t-slot has a vertical edge and the V slot has an 45o angle to run a wheel in. Somebody tried to claim licensing rights for the v-slot design a few years and was run out of town. 2020 and 2040 are a bit like Lego bricks. Bolt them together in strange and unusual ways. T-Nuts are dirt cheap as are bolts. They are easily cut (I do not have a powered mitre saw so I don't cut), and people use them for market stalls, CNC machines, 3d printers, photography booths. Whatever you fancy I did look at anodising aluminium for the guitar, but thought that was a bit too much to take on. My Chemistry A Level is from before Newton so suspect things have changed a bit. The pedalboard looks good and took an hour to screw together and because I had a roll of filament spare and all the other stuff, it was just a case of costing the 2040 aluminium, the end caps and the velcro. £30 or so. It's a good and cheap way to have a pedalboard exactly the right size and if it needs to change, I'll simply print some more stuff and get some different extrusion and fit it together. I do need to sort out a single power supply for the pedals and thats vexing me, there's some eye wateringly expensive PSU's out there but they still don't do 12V 2A. I'll have to think about this a bit more Thanks Rob

I mentioned earlier I was building a pedalboard and in my arrogance I thought I'd make it without Velcro. Well after a couple of hours of trying to design a method of clamping pedals to the board, I have up and ordered Velcro. Oh well pride comes before a fall. Rather than clutter this thread up, see below.

Hi This isn't so much a build diary as its dead easy and quick, but it might help other people thinking of making their own pedalboard. I stumbled on this modular pedalboard. I think @SamIAm might have suggested it in another thread. https://github.com/indifferentengine/ModularPedalboard/blob/main/STL/Components/Handles/3 Rail Handle/Handle.stl I liked it and downloaded the STL and Fusion 360 and put a new roll of eSun Fire Engine Red PLA+ and printed it up. It took nearly 30 hours as the printed elements need to be strong and so had an infill of 60%. However I just left it on the printer for a day or so. I got some cheap aluminium 2040 (that's 20mm x 40mm) V-slot extrusion off Amazon and simply assembled it together using T-Nuts (supplied with the 2040 pieces) and some M5 8mm bolts. Top tip, 8mm bolts are not long enough despite what the website says. M5 10mm bolts are needed as you can only get perhaps half a turn on the T-nuts. I had M5 8mm on the shelf and stupidly assumed that the designers knew what they were talking about. I also printed two handles, they come in halves and need to be glued together, that's why there is a slight gap in the picture below as I hadn't glued them. That's a job for later today. It measures 400mm x 300mm so will fit into any number of 3rd party bags on Fleabay. This is what it looks like from the side. I have ordered some plastic end stops in black. I did print some but they were a nightmare to fit so decided to buy some to cover the ends up. This is it with the pedals I have. A Peterson tuner into a Mod Dwarf and then into a Tonex amp sim.I deliberately keep this minimal otherwise I'd end up with loads of pedals that I liked but don't really use. I have space for 2-3 more pedals (if I took the handles off). Not sure if I'm keeping the handles or not yet. # As the whole design is modular, I can change this as needed into something else.I could split the four rails into two small pedal boards. There are lots of other options on the website so I can't take any credit for any work here at all. The next problem I do have and would welcome input, is the PSU for this lot. There's quite a lot of space under the top and there are designs for a PSU. However the Mod Dwarf needs at least 1.5A at 12V and preferably 2A at 12V. I can't find a single pedalboard PSU that can put anything like this out. I was hoping if I mentioned @LukeFRC @LukeFRC @LukeFRC three times, he'd come in with some clever electric ideas Thanks Rob