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Fender Pure Vintage 74 J-Bass PU Set

I realize this is a really old thread, but I have them in my squier 70s VM jazz bass with upgraded pots that has the normal jazz bass spacing and they sound great! IME, I found that they sound fatter and darker than the stock ones in my 2011 American Standard Jazz Bass which are definitely hotter and punchier.
Earlier this year I put a pair in my 2020 MIJ 70’s Heritage Jazz. Great jazz pickups.

A.M.P. amplified music products CLUB

Also, while I still own one of the 1X15 cabs I've NEVER seen the CX-260 Combo..... must be uber-rare.
I wish I didn't literally cut the head off the cab when I was young and super stupid,...but was smart enough to hold onto the head. Love it. Just bought it's big brother 420. As a cab combo with the empty stacking cab it was a ball buster at 71 lbs. to haul and really didn't sound that good, even in the lame wedding band at the time. It deserved and got a better bottom but in retrospect I would have preserved it in it's original form. Other than the brochure it's the only one I've ever seen.
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Shoutout to Fuzzrocious!

I just wanted to send a shoutout to Ryan and Fuzzrocious for some above and beyond customer service.

I bought a Grey Stache/Heliotropic pedal new, from a place here in Canada and had some issues getting the two sides to play well together. I made
a post about it on TB to see if anyone had encountered the same issue. Ryan responded quickly, and after sending him a video of the problem, he asked me to send it back to him directly.
He reimbursed me for my shipping and expenses, and had it sent back to me in a matter of days.

I got it back and it sounds amazing. Exactly what I had hoped for from the online videos I saw that convinced me to buy it in the first place. No going back and forth
through the seller, and at no cost to me.

I just wanted to let everyone know how great my experience was with Ryan and Fuzzrocious, besides just making a killer pedal.
Seeing some of the bigger companies (I'm looking at you, Fender) trying to stamp out smaller, independent businesses makes me want to ensure as much positive
feedback and word of mouth for the smaller companies, especially when they take personal pride in their product, and go above and beyond with customer service.

Thanks Ryan! The pedal is perfect!

Recommendations of placement tuners for G&L JB?

Well after changing the type of strings on my new G&L, a cloverleaf from a different tuner is rattling. I crimped it with the vice grips and after a couple crimps it was tight again.
However, I don’t want to deal with this all the time. I ordered a set of HipShot HB1’s to replace them.
I guess the Reliant built tuners just aren’t reliable! :banghead:
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Anyone else have experience with the Catalinbread SFT overdrive/ preamp pedal?

I had the previous version that didn't have stoner/stones switch but wasn't the very 1st versionI liked it isolation but not in the mix (two guitar instrumentals) of the band I playing with at the time, to be fair it could have been user error.

Ended up selling it to one of the guitar players, who loves it…it does sound for guitar

NBD Ibanez btb 606

Yes you are correct about the nut width, my mistake. Just put my calipers to the alpha 1's and they are EMG 45 size pups. So far as the length and width are concerned at least. My initial impressions so far are quite positive. The upper horn length keeps the neck dive in check. Not sure if the original owner had replaced the screws that hold the strap buttons in place, but the screw heads are to big to fit into the top recess of dunlop strap locks. As far as the pickups go they sound very nice IMO. I'm not sure what, if any coloration I'm getting from the on board preamp with EQ set flat. If your looking for an hot, aggressive pup that snarls and bites this ain't it. The alpha 1's have a very HiFi modern bass tone that is clean and polite. Haven't got to play many 6ers, but the B is as good if not better on the Ibby then the others I've played (SR600, schecter studio 6, SR206, and schecter SC). Was planning on upgrading the electronics when I first purchased the guitar but second guessing the move because it does sound good ATM. Is it going to sound better with a mike pope preamp and a set of nordys? I'm absolutely sure that it would. Is it going to sound 550$ better? I'm not so sure. Hope this helps. Cheers!
Thanks for that. I'm glad the A1 PUs are good and clean - my reason for being interested in if they're EMG sized is that I love EMGs and would like a BTB with a set of DCs, without having to rout the bass for them, though I'd do that id needed. There are a couple of other BTBs on my 'buy if one turns up at the right price and time' but they seldom show up The 606 is a modest price for what it is so makes a great mod platform.
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4 way rotary switch

I have done this exact thing with the exact pickup.

If you're like me, all you're gonna find is a 3P4T rotary from Alpha. I just bought 20 of them from Amplified Parts.
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This is the best price I've seen, frankly, thus my latest order. If you need one from me, don't hesitate to PM.

This is how you can wire it:
V1 is pretty traditional -
View attachment 7420816
View attachment 7420819

V2 was something I had to figure out for Roger's build and it did work. It was just harder to do.
View attachment 7420817

I'll make one note:
There are 2 types of switches here: MAKE BEFORE BREAK and BREAK BEFORE MAKE.
These cheaper ones are MAKE BEFORE BREAK.
Others have been pricier to use and harder to find these days.

The reason I make the note is, you'll get a slight "pop" if you are switching WHILE THERE IS SIGNAL/SOUND.
This happened with EITHER version of switch. I couldn't make it not do that.
But if you switch without sound/signal, you won't notice it.

If you need me to record something for samples, I can do that.
Hello Sir,

I am trying to do a similar mod but in my case I would like position 1 to be series position 2 to be parallel position 3 to be single coil and position 4 to be off.
I was wondering if this is the rotary knob I would need and if it would work I am doing this for a Warwick $$ Corvette that has Music Man style pickups.

Thank you in advance!
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Thomann fights back. New lawsuit against Fender.

Much like many other companies, they make basses and guitars that resemble the Fenders. Other than some of the “underground” builders in China that sell through Ali Express, etc., few of these basses annd guitars are exact copies.
This has been going on for over 50 years, so trying to enforce anything now is absurd.
FWIW, “”underground” builders in China” is a myth. Not only do they sell through Ali Express, etc., but there are dozens of live streaming sites on WeChat that sell Fender copies directly. There’s little to no underground about it. You can also buy authentic Fender products in China; Fender has a strong corporate relationship there.
In China, they don’t cut off their nose to spite their face.

Radial Highline vs. Radial JDI for Pedalboard XLR Out

OK, folks. Let someone who's designed pro audio circuitry shed a bit of light on this subject, for folks that come across this thread in the future.

Passive DI boxes are transformers in boxes. Transformers isolate (break ground loops ) and they can also change levels and impedances. A JDI (fairly standard passive DI) has a 12: 1 step down transformer - given that impedances go with the square of the turns ratio, that means it steps the impedance down a factor of 144. That means you can plug a bass or guitar into it, and with a mic input as a load, the input of the Di look high enough impedance that you don't load it too much - typically it's a bit more heavily loaded than a 1 Meg amp input, but it's usually OK.

Now, let's say you have a pedal (or an amp sim), or literally any thing that buffers the signal. A buffer has a lower impedance on it's output than it does on it's input - that means, if your source for the DI is a pedalboard, with at least one pedal on at all times, you don't really need as much step down as there is in a typical DI. I have a couple pedalboards that have Di's that I built. Oddly, there are transformers made for this application - 4:1 step down transformers - Jensen makes them as wel as Hammond. A 4 to 1 step down (being less of a step down) gives you about 10 dB more level than as 12: 1 step down, with the tradeoff being that the impedance stepdown is only 16:1 . In a lot of cases, that extra level means less gain is needed on the mixing board. My pedalboards run a fair amount of gain - roughly 20dB signal gain from the instrument to the input of the DI - I do this with a very quiet gain stage early, to keep the hiss down from later pedals in the chain. With a 4:1 step down Di, taking away about 12 dB, the level to the mixing board is about 8 dB hotter than the instrument alone, and compared with a bit over 20dB loss on a typical DI, that's a 28 dB hotter level. Curiously, this works every where I've played, and FOH folks are happy with more level.

A Radial Highline uses a 1:! transformer - it's a DI for a slightly different case. If it's feeding a typical mic input (which nowadays run a couple of kOhms), so long as the output impedance of whatever pedal is feeding it is well below that, it'll work just fine. You may not want to run much gain in the pedals before it - in my case so long as I run 8 dB or less, I shouldn't have issues. I have a set of pedals where the one driving the Highline has 100 ohms output impedance (that should work well), and they are quiet enough that they don't need as much gain in the chain. That pedalboard is up and running circuit wise, sith very good results.

There isn't anything magical about an "isolator" vs a "DI" - they are not as different as you'd think (they're both transformers in boxes), and so long as you understand what the limitations are, and you have gear that fits within those limits, you can use one in place of the other, and sometimes get performance advantages from using the "wrong" one.

NPUD - Fender Pure Vintage 63

Have you tried using a .068 capacitor? That is the common capacitor between the stock .047 and the .1 cap. Similar rolloff, with just a hair more definition with your settings compared to the .1 cap. Just a thought to try sometime. On one of my basses I have my tone control wired on a push-pull so I can have the typical .047 cap or pull to add a .022 guitar cap in parallel to get to the .068 (well, of course, .069, but if you can hear that difference I'll buy the beverages). You can do the same thing with a .068 on a push-pull with a .033 added in parallel to get your .1 when desired.
I actually tried several values, including that one. I kept the 0.1 in there because it was the best match to how I play, the music I play, and how the sound techs I worked with typically set (past tense) BG eq as their starting points.

NBD: Yamaha BB734A - Some Q's

A suggestion, if it really is a finish issue between the neck and fretboard wood, is to use the same method to deal with a slightly raised skunk stripe on a Fender.

Basically, you take a new razor blade and lightly drag it along the raised section and it will scrape off the raised section to level it out. On the bass I used this approach, it leveled out the raised area, and I could not see where it was done after I rubbed it down with 0000 steel wool.

This video, presented by Andy Brauer (he's an interesting guy), illustrates the method for addressing the skunk stripe starting at 23:52. Worked great for me.
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That would have to be a VERY heavily sprayed finish to add up to that many mils on either side. Skunk stripe is different too because you come to level on either side of the stripe. Not so in this situation.

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