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So has anyone cloned a Wal?


Ant_On_Bass

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  • 1 month later...
On 16/11/2020 at 10:03, bloke_zero said:

Please tell us more!

the Wal uses alnico 5 ferrous bar magnets which , when inserted across all 4 pole pieces, something funny happens & a layer of distortion is in play...at least in a traditional single coil . I use neodymium magnets which have a clearer output & use 1 magnet per coil = 8 altogether.  Iv'e been in touch with an electronics whizz from Portugal & between us, I think we have got pretty close & now have a 1 humbucker per string model making 3 types in total. There is nothing out there like a WAL though, it's a great piece of product design. But if it's the tone you are after.........

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11 minutes ago, customstocker said:

the Wal uses alnico 5 ferrous bar magnets which , when inserted across all 4 pole pieces, something funny happens & a layer of distortion is in play...at least in a traditional single coil . I use neodymium magnets which have a clearer output & use 1 magnet per coil = 8 altogether.  Iv'e been in touch with an electronics whizz from Portugal & between us, I think we have got pretty close & now have a 1 humbucker per string model making 3 types in total. There is nothing out there like a WAL though, it's a great piece of product design. But if it's the tone you are after.........

Hmmm, have you ever thought of making these pickups to order?
I'm sure there are enough fans of the Wal sound on here to be willing to buy from you....
You could colour me interested for that matter :) 

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5 hours ago, Dolis said:

I bought My Wal from Leigh Gorman of Bow Wow Wow back in the day... long since sold when i was skint, gutted i do'nt still have that bass

Was that the Custom he had? He told me he once had a Custom (seen at the side of the stage on some live footage) but didn’t like it as much as his passive Pro II so sold it; he said he prefers the growl of the passive ones, and of course the Pros sound a little different than the Customs anyway.   

Leigh’s my favourite Wal player. In fact he’s one of my favourite 3 players full stop. 

Strange fact, Leigh’s original cherry Wal Pro II was JG1126 IIRC. The cherry Pro II I had, IIRC, was 1162.
 

 

Edited by 4000
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On 29/09/2020 at 23:27, bloke_zero said:

Interesting - so Peavey bought the MIDI/fret system - I wonder what stopped production in 92?

Steve never sold the rights, just a license.  The license ran out.

BTW, a pickup maker in Finland has started offering reproductions of the Wal multicoil design in different configurations to suit a variety of humbucker equipped basses and string spacings (15-19mm): 
https://www.rautiaguitars.net/multi-coil-bass-pickups.html?fbclid=IwAR1lrAqnXDSXEV9oRuoWwuiYv9dHfBb02OQKQ1GmPSPJ_hAKCqXeBWxkn1s

He's been mentioned already but Lustihand Devices offer a Wal/Alembic style filter based preamp as well, low pass with shelving frequency boosts.  I'm going to let him know I've posted on here and maybe he can contribute.  He only has a FB page at the moment, no website as far as I can tell.  Information on the preamps is available from the pickup maker's website, PDFs on some of the products are below:

https://www.rautiaguitars.net/uploads/1/0/1/7/10174351/nfp_manual.pdf
https://www.rautiaguitars.net/uploads/1/0/1/7/10174351/double_nfp-special_4s_document_text__2_.pdf
https://www.rautiaguitars.net/uploads/1/0/1/7/10174351/double_nfp-special_56s_manual.pdf

There are sound clips as well.  

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13 hours ago, 4000 said:

Was that the Custom he had? He told me he once had a Custom (seen at the side of the stage on some live footage) but didn’t like it as much as his passive Pro II so sold it; he said he prefers the growl of the passive ones, and of course the Pros sound a little different than the Customs anyway.   

Leigh’s my favourite Wal player. In fact he’s one of my favourite 3 players full stop. 

Strange fact, Leigh’s original cherry Wal Pro II was JG1126 IIRC. The cherry Pro II I had, IIRC, was 1162.
 

 

That's the one!.. Wal custom active. Met him at a party at Unicorn studios in London and we started talking bass and he said he was selling that one so i had to have it!

Wow, that is a great fact :-). His playing was a big influence growing up, along with JJ Burnel., Leigh was  / is a top bass player and very underestimated in Bass circles probably because Bow Wow Wow weren't really taken seriously.

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20 minutes ago, Dolis said:

That's the one!.. Wal custom active. Met him at a party at Unicorn studios in London and we started talking bass and he said he was selling that one so i had to have it!

Wow, that is a great fact :-). His playing was a big influence growing up, along with JJ Burnel., Leigh was  / is a top bass player and very underestimated in Bass circles probably because Bow Wow Wow weren't really taken seriously.

He’s been a huge, huge influence on me. However whilst I loved the band from the outset, when I first went to see them live I kind of bought into the “not taking them seriously” thing and didn’t expect them to cut it live.  I was sooooo wrong; they were awesome

Here’s some further info Leigh supplied me with that I once posted on Talkbass: 

He bought his red Wal Pro 2 (passive, not active) in the late 70s from Rhodes Music in Denmark Street. It was used on everything Bow Wow Wow did except "Tv Savage" and "Golly Golly Go Buddy" -he used his backup bass, a Wal Custom (active) on those, but he preferred his red bass and eventually sold the Custom. A while back he got another Wal the same as the red one but in sunburst with a leather scratchplate. He uses Rotosound strings, standard/medium gauge. 
 

 

 

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  • 3 years later...

The preamp you have, is it designed for the 4 inputs?

The £235 per pickup doesn't sound bad (especially if you only want one) but then you have to have a preamp that can take those inputs (and maybe adjust their relative levels)

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25 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

The preamp you have, is it designed for the 4 inputs?

The £235 per pickup doesn't sound bad (especially if you only want one) but then you have to have a preamp that can take those inputs (and maybe adjust their relative levels)

Yeh underhill do a version for the multi coil pickups and for regular aswell 

 

and they do it in modular so you can get what you want for one pick up basses 

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I also had a go at a mk3 clone, but I was more interested in the shape than mimicking the true Wal sound. 
But saying that, I did use Walbuckers and Lusithand preamp just out of curiosity. It’s a truly powerful bass for sure with lots of tonal variation on tap IMG_1763.thumb.png.07308112020351209b43ea28ec94e6d7.png

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