Stingray aftermarket 2 band pre

[spideyjg]

Hey Moo,

Got a pic of that stompbox you made with this?

Jim

[Music Stuff]

Hey guys, If anyone has an issue with their preamp or feels the quality does not meet expectations feel free to send it back to me for an exchange. I don't want you to have anything that you feel uncertain about.

It's still not "pretty", but it is actually difficult

I can see that it would be. I measured out the size of each of those little solder dimples and they are around 1/16 of an inch in diameter or a little under 2mm each pretty small. He said it takes a good eye, steady hand I can see why.

Thank you and rock on!

[BassLife77]

Originally Posted by xaxxat

You happen to know what the DC resistance on your pup? I'm thinking about rewinding one. My clone pup is 2k per coil. I'm thinking of rewinding it with some 42 Formvar wire and Alnico V magnets. I think that's what Leo used originally. I hear resistance values from 2k to 5k are to be found.

The Rockfield MM5 says 4k. I don't have much knowledge about alnico vs ceramic or pickup wrapping. I'm still teaching myself, learning curve.

[BassLife77]

Originally Posted by RDW

What value pots did you use?

I've got a 25K for volume, Reverse 500K audio for treble (schematic calls for 1M RA), and 100K for bass.

I'm using 25k audio for Vol., 100k audio for bass, and 1M reverse audio for treble. I got all the pots at Mouser for only $1.50 each. The wiring diagram says to use 25k linear but I don't think it matters, I always leave the volume at 10.

[BassLife77]

Originally Posted by moobass

I've got two. One in an OLP and one in a stompbox. It sounds like a two band Stingray with a Stingray pickup. In the stompbox on other basses I've found it very useful for eq and getting more headroom out of lower watt tube amps.

a stompbox! darn, why didn't I think of that. curious on how it would sound with the fretless. I'm about to order the pots. already have a spare 9V adapter and battery clip

[Jerry J]

Originally Posted by Music Stuff

Hey guys, If anyone has an issue with their preamp or feels the quality does not meet expectations feel free to send it back to me for an exchange. I don't want you to have anything that you feel uncertain about.



I can see that it would be. I measured out the size of each of those little solder dimples and they are around 1/16 of an inch in diameter or a little under 2mm each pretty small. He said it takes a good eye, steady hand I can see why.

Thank you and rock on!

Music Stuff, I am certain with your positive feedback on Evilbay that these are just fine and reliability is not an issue. It is good that you do produce a viable product that fills a need.

It just struck several of us that have made our livelyhoods out building and repairing electronic circuits for many years as not at a level that would be expected in our jobs. I don't work on DOD projects but I do work on manufacturing equipment that is valued at $3.2M each. These are running product that is valued at around $2-5M per lot. So solder joints and wire crimps are extremely critical.

[Music Stuff]

Originally Posted by BassLife77

a stompbox! darn, why didn't I think of that. curious on how it would sound with the fretless. I'm about to order the pots. already have a spare 9V adapter and battery clip

I have a lot of customers that do this. One mod you could try is to bypass the volume tone of your bass with a toggle switch or a stereo jack into a metal enclosure with this preamp. A customer of mine did just that and it sounded like a cool mod.

Originally Posted by Jerry J

these are just fine and reliability is not an issue.

Till this week I have never heard a complaint. But I have contacted the gentlemen that makes these and asked if in the future he could make sure that the soldering is better and he said he will make sure of it.

Thank you for your support over the years guys!

[Coelho]

I want one. I contacted EBMM if they would sell me a 2 band pre to swap for my 3 band pre and they said no.

[bongomania]

Originally Posted by bongomania

It's still not "pretty", but it is actually difficult

Originally Posted by Music Stuff

I can see that it would be. I measured out the size of each of those little solder dimples and they are around 1/16 of an inch in diameter or a little under 2mm each pretty small. He said it takes a good eye, steady hand I can see why.

You "misunderstood" me, and I think it was intentional. I did not mean to say that doing this kind of soldering work was difficult--in fact I said the opposite, earlier in the thread. What I was describing in the bit you partially quoted was how difficult it is to make bad work look good. It is difficult to take amateurish, sloppy soldering and fix it to a point where it actually looks good, the way it should have at the beginning.

Your guy is taking you for a fool. He is telling you that his work is "the best", and you don't know what good soldering looks like, so you believe him. Don't take my word for it though, this is something you can check out for yourself. Google "soldering tutorial" or "how to solder". There are loads of soldering tutorials on the web, and most of them have good photos or diagrams depicting what good and bad soldering looks like. Read those tutorials--in fact, read a few different ones, just so you can be sure that you are getting unbiased information from a variety of expert sources; then come back here and look at the photos I have posted in this thread.

I look forward to hearing what you discover.

[Coelho]

Can anyone tell me if this will make my 2007 EBMM Stingray sound more like my 1983 Stingray? That's all I need to know.

[Music Stuff]

Originally Posted by bongomania

You "misunderstood" me

I wish you would have contacted me first about your issue I would have exchanged it for you no questions asked. Everyone who has ever done business with me will tell you that I'm very easy to work with. I have a 100% feedback on ebay doing business there for over a decade.

Originally Posted by Coelho

Can anyone tell me if this will make my 2007 EBMM Stingray sound more like my 1983 Stingray? That's all I need to know.

If your 2007 is a three band yes it will sound like the earlier two band versions.

[bongomania]

Originally Posted by Music Stuff

I wish you would have contacted me first about your issue I would have exchanged it for you no questions asked.

Please post a clear photo of the solder side of one or more of the other units you have, that you would have sent as an exchange. If you need help with posting a photo, you can use a site like "photobucket" and then copy the link for the picture on that hosting site, and paste it into a message here.

Also I was perfectly serious about you reading (or at least skimming) those tutorials.

[WarriorJoe7]

someone please post what good soldering looks like

[UncleFluffy]

To be honest, it's not terrible - I've seen both better and worse. It's a bit "blobby", mainly due to too much solder and could do with a quick solvent swab down to clean off the excess flux before shipping. Finer tip, thinner solder and it'd be fine.

[Burlington]

I'd just like to chime in and say that I have fixed circuits by redoing solder joints like this. Work like this would not fly at my job.

[Bassmingo]

question: i have both a 3eq MM ray 4 and a 3eq OLP levin 5, the preamp in the levin is lacking compared to the ray, and i'd like to give it a bit of oomph on the cheap. i dont mind making the levin 2eq with this preamp if it improves it, so my questions are:

will it improve it?

is there a 3eq version?

[mongo2]

One of my tasks at my day gig is to QC, test, and troubleshoot circuit boards and that soldering job would be immediately rejected. If there were repeated occurrences, management would be notified and the person who did the work would be removed from soldering tasks and retrained or replaced. If the board came from a vendor the effected boards would be returned and the customer would be notified of a possible schedule slippage due to the bad boards.

[MrTAteMyBalls]

I'm not a pro, but my handbuilt pedals have cleaner soldering than that. The last pedal I built, my local shop was out of thin solder, so I bought some thick stuff to get by, and the board looked more like this. I found it very hard to control and had way too much solder on the joints.....it still wasn't that bad, though and it works fine, although I worry about it's reliability. That being said, when I used to repair guitars for a living(when I was in college), I saw american fenders with really poor looking/globby soldering. That suprised me. But then, I dropped out of college so what do I know.

[Music Stuff]

The gentlemen who builds these wanted to respond to this

Originally Posted by UncleFluffy

To be honest, it's not terrible - I've seen both better and worse. It's a bit "blobby", mainly due to too much solder and could do with a quick solvent swab down to clean off the excess flux before shipping. Finer tip, thinner solder and it'd be fine.

"This is 100% correct. I use a wide Weller tip and Kester "44" premium solder. I do this because I mostly build amplifiers and pro audio equipment where thin tips do not apply enough distributed surface area heat to the get a good weld on larger point to point and PCB traces. Constantly changing out tips is a pain and I go through those little Weller tips like water because they don't make them like they used to. A smaller tip and thinner solder would indeed make a nicer looking solder joint on these tiny traces."


Thank you for your support over the years guys!

[xaxxat]

Originally Posted by Music Stuff

The gentlemen who builds these wanted to respond to this




"This is 100% correct. I use a wide Weller tip and Kester "44" premium solder. I do this because I mostly build amplifiers and pro audio equipment where thin tips do not apply enough distributed surface area heat to the get a good weld on larger point to point and PCB traces. Constantly changing out tips is a pain and I go through those little Weller tips like water because they don't make them like they used to. A smaller tip and thinner solder would indeed make a nicer looking solder joint on these tiny traces."


Thank you for your support over the years guys!

Tell him to invest in a good Hakko soldering station. The tips are easy to change and are cheap enough. Plus, they seem to last forever. When mine get too grungy, I polish them on a buffing wheel. My station is at least 15 years old and I'm sure some of my tips are 5 years old or more. Some Kester No-Clean solder would a big help too.