Cactus Yamaha BB-G5A

[daveze]

My five string is cactus.

Well not completely but it doesn't work. I thought it was just a dirty jack, which I replaced quite nicely (I bought the same one I was talking about a few weeks ago, but not for the price I originally stated. Cheers to dpmasunder) but was very disappointed to find that it still doesn't work.

It was super quiet and distorted a lot, so I thought that it was just a poor solder on the connection between the battery and the jack (with the extra resistance on the battery making the amp see less voltage, killing the headroom, making it distort). Checked the joints on the jack and now its a bit quieter than when the trouble started and the volume pot doesn't do anything (which I'm not sure is new from before replacing the jack, just after replacing the jack or the recent re-checking of the joints).

The wiring in the cavity is pretty messy, there's grounds at all sorts of places, rather than a nice neat single ground, lots of dodgy joining of wires, and all-in-all pretty unimpressive.

So here's two questions:
- Is it likely to simply be the volume pot that is gone? If so, would it actually be a 20k linear pot? Bear in mind that its actually on the output of the active circuit, not before.
- If so, what problems would I have using a 25k (obviously minimal) or 50k (possibly some more)? 20k is just about impossible to find...

They're pretty tame questions, so here's one more: While I'm mucking around in there, should I:
- Simply replace the volume and blend pots with more quality items and neaten up the wiring in the process; or
- Put in a new preamp, the Audere 4-band (stacked EQ's) is currently toping the list, because I'd rather it use all 4 holes that are currently there and it has to be quite small to fit in the cavity.

[luknfur]

Originally Posted by daveze

My five string is cactus.

Well not completely but it doesn't work...cavity.

FWIW:

you can clean it up some with star grounding or throw copper shielding on to the control bay floor and eliminate the pot grounds altogether.

25k would work fine (assuming the current pot is 20K) and an easy find.

Obviously any work you've done is suspect.

I'd get the bass working properly before looking to swapping the guts - better you butcher it than the Audere.

[daveze]

Thats the thing, usually my work is pretty good...well definitely a heck of a lot better than when I first started out.

I wasn't the one that did the messy wiring, it was like that when I bought it. I did replace the pickups 12 months ago but that was done quite cleanly and only affected the blend pot, its everywhere else thats the mess.

One of the advantages I see in the Audere is that they seem dead easy to install, the only thing I have to do is rewire it for the barrel jack and battery box.

I'm thinking I will do a re-wire on it first...

Cheers

[luknfur]

Originally Posted by daveze

...I'm thinking I will do a re-wire on it first...

Cheers

I always underestimate my capacity to screw something up - mostly becuase I'm constantly surpassing my expectations.

When I first started transplants it was better in terms of being able to see but worse from experience/knowledge base standpoint.

You have an opportunity here to learn, do a repair, clean up a cavity, and see what the bass will sound like afterwards. Aside from the fact that you may be perfectly content with it with no more mod needed, there's no substitute for experience - and what you don't get here you will get elsewhere. Thing's that would never occur to you in the early going are taken for granted without a thought after some experience. In the early going, there's no such thing as a drop in.

I say the above becuase you wouldn't be asking about the 20/25K pot thing if you had much experience. It's basically splitting hairs between a 250 and 500K pot. Many 250K (whatever) pots will vary 5K from each other.

[daveze]

Just to clarify, I wasn't really concerned about the 20/25k pot difference, because its marginal, just a 25% increase. I'm more interested in the 20/50k difference (150%), and doubly so because it on the backend of the preamp, thats new to me.