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Active circuit conundrum


Reversebird
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Hi
I was looking to upgrade a spare Thunderbird bass I have with an active circuit. I just want to boost the tonal qualities and output signal of the pickups without using pedals etc. I tried a varitone and it was ok but it doesn't boost the output signal and was still a bit wishy washy.
Problem is I want it to look standard and don't really want to drill any extra holes or use stacked pots because I have witches hat knobs which I like.
There is plenty of room in the cavity for a circuit and battery so no mods needed there.
My first idea was find:
An active single tone control knob that had a large sweeping range of bass tone say from 50 to 4k. I haven't been able to find one yet ?
My second idea was:
Take a three band circuit (they are pretty cheap now) and use only one of the pots ? Problem is I assume that each pot has a set of parameters / band widths.
So I assume it's trial and error thing testing each pot with the TBird pickups to see which one is the most useful and gives the best dynamic range.

Any one else thought about this problem or got any suggestions ??

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I don't know exactly what you mean by "boost the tonal qualities"
- the large sweeping bass control from 50Hz to 4kHz - do you mean a suitable bandpass at a set gain? or a low pass filter to take to top off? (like a passive tone knob)

if it were me I would use the bass passive and then make or buy a floor mounted preamp to run first in your signal chain - I would probably make a clone of the stingray preamp, mainly as I've been wanting to make one for a while - the sadowsky preamp box is supposed to be pretty good too, something like that.

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I think what I'm looking for is an active tone control.
On an active circuit you can cut and boost curtain frequencies labelled Treble / Mid / Bass...obviously. Each must have its own frequency sweep range.
I want one knob that covers more than just a narrow band of the frequencies.....sort of. I believe the technology is available and possible to put on circuit board, but whether it's practical is another thing? EMG two band circuits have dip switches to select the frequencies to suit your style of playing and then you can cut and boost the bass and treble in those frequencies.
I don't think what I want exists. I think it's going to be compromise of butchering an active circuit and trying to work out which work better
with my style of play and the Tbird pickups.
Cheers


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I think you're looking for a filter-based preamp (like Wal and ACG electronics). There's something similar in my Westone Spectrum LX (and for that matter I think in the Westone Thunder IA) where you can have the bass in both passive and active modes. In passive mode only there's just a conventional treble cut tone control available but in active mode an additional tone pot becomes available where, as far as I can determine, a fixed amount of boost is introduced, sweepable through bass frequencies in one direction and treble frequencies in the other direction about a centre detente and this boost is superimposed over whatever the passive tone is set to.

Edited by HowieBass
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The EMG EXB simultaneously boosts bass and treble, while cutting mids @ 1kHz. So it is a variable vintage-to-modern or straight-to-slap contour circuit. I find it to be very useful, and I have one on my gig bass, so I'm not always fiddling with knobs. But it has a specific purpose. It is not a be-all end-all to eq.

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