Audere 3ZB and HAS Sound Reviews

This fall, I have found myself with a bug to tinker with my Spirit basses' electronics some more. So- I ordered the basic Audere 3ZB Z-mode preamp, as well as a custom circuit from HAS Sound. I've just recently completed installation of these harnesses in my Spirit XZ-25 basses. I did retain the stock EMG Select humbucker pickups on both basses.

The Audere 3ZB went into my XZ-25 fretless. The preamp was very nicely packaged, as any and all of you who've bought preamps from David can attest. It's the very basic model, with master volume, blend, and Z-mode switch - no tone controls. It came with all hardware needed to install. I had to enlarge the jack hole in the bass body so I could use the switching jack that came with the preamp. That was the hardest part and the most nerve-wracking. I didn't want to mess with a stereo barrel jack, as I haven't had good luck with those. Otherwise, the preamp was completely prewired. All I had to do was mount the controls, solder the pickup leads and grounds to the "black box" leads, mount the jack in the football plate, screw the plate to the body, and replace the cover. Voila!

The HAS Sound harness consists of a master volume with a push/pull mute, a five-way series/parallel pickup selector switch, and a bass Varitone control with the Orange Drop capacitors. It was a little more involved as I had to solder the pickup leads to small connectors on the pickup selector control. Then I mounted the jacks and soldered the output from the master volume to a Neutrik barrel jack that replaced the stock one.

Two very different takes on passive pickup tone circuits. I'm very pleased with the results in both cases.

I'll write more about the tones and the operation of these new circuits later.

Okay, I find myself at home on T-giving morning, with a pretty bad head cold. The cold is knocking me out from heading to the parents', so I'm putzing around here. Time for a follow-up on the new electronics!

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed] goes first.

As I mentioned in the original post, I figured that I didn't need tons of EQ for the XZ-25 fretless. It has a good solid maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, with a polyurethane coating, and a beautiful swamp ash body. With Status flatwounds, it doesn't need a lot of EQ to sound sweet. I never used the passive tone control, always leaving it on full treble.

Therefore, after talking on the phone with David Meadows at Audere, we concluded that the basic 3ZB was the way to go for the absolute best purity of sound. He built me a 3ZB with master volume, blend, and the three-way Z-mode switch.

It arrived in beautiful packaging, which included everything that I could possibly use to do the install, with parts left over. Lots of shrink wrap in several diameters. A micro-screwdriver for adjusting the preamp. A Duracell 9-volt. All the controls were prewired to the 'black box' containing the circuitry.

As I noted earlier, I did choose to drill out a larger jack hole so I could use the switching jack supplied with the Audere, instead of staying with a barrel jack. I came up with a 'football' jack plate to use.

After connecting everything, and finishing the reassembly, I fired up the bass. Here are my comments on the results:

Several other Talkbassers have commented on the subtlety of the Audere design. David said the idea of the Audere is not to color the sound of one's bass, but to allow the real tone of the wood and the pickups to emerge. After hearing the bass, I agree, and this is what is happening.

The basic change I did hear was a removing of a 'veil' from the tone of the XZ-25. There was more clarity in the notes. Also, I hear more responsiveness to my playing technique- more subtle details are emerging from the amp.

I don't hear a big change from the sound I was getting from the bass previously. What I am hearing is a fuller realization of the instrument's tone.

I can achieve a very useful set of variations simply by changing the pickup blend.

The three Z-modes all sound good. The first position, Hi-Z, sounds VERY acoustic on this bass. It is possible to get a upright pizz tone easily with just a bit of bass boost on the amp. It's open and woody sounding. According to the Audere website, this is the tubiest setting. I haven't changed the capacitance setting yet, will try that next week. So far, I like the blend toward the bridge pickup with Hi-Z.

The second mode, Mid-Z (center position) is similar to the first but with more barkiness, sounding like a bit more midrange emphasis. It is less flat than the Hi-Z setting, according to the website. Mid-Z sounds good with the neck pickup up.

The third mode is the vaunted fundamental emphasis setting, Lo-Z. It kicks out a ton of lows, especially getting down on the B-string low notes. It fills out the sound in any register, though. I have to lower my pregain settings on the amp as a lot more gain is produced. I definitely need to adjust the gain down to match the other two Z's. This one is very nice with more bridge pickup.

In summary, I am really impressed with [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. It's pricy, but it is well conceived, assembled, packaged, and it brings out the true character of the bass. Thank you, David, for this design, and for spending the time on the phone to help me choose the right configuration. Also, thank you for the time you put into each preamp and the packaging. I am definitely enjoying the bass with this preamp.

I'm currently using the XZ-25 in an area musical theatre production, and it's doing a fine job of creating pizz tone bass. Later today, I'll be getting suitably 'drugged up' to be able to handle my cold tonight at the 8 PM performance!

Okay, time to write up the HAS Sound harness. I may split this off into its own thread.

The HAS Sound harness is radically different from the Audere 3ZB. I'm glad I got one of each, as they each suit the bass I installed them on.

Where the 3ZB's subtlety and rich natural tonality suited the fretless, the HAS controls essentially turned the fretted bass into a tone monster.

Stan Hinesley of HAS Sound is gaining in fame as a pickup builder and a supplier of standard and custom wiring harnesses. All I can say is, if players who are buying his handiwork are as impressed as I am, he's not going to be 'underground' for long!

A while back, while perusing the many controls available through HAS Sound, it occurred to me that I should lay out the absolute optimum passive control set using the three existing control holes in the XZ-25. Looking through the options, I came up with:

1) master volume with mute
2) five-way pickup selector, and
3) bass Varitone

Well, I placed my order with Stan, and he had it built and in my hands in less than a week. Pretty impressive turnaround.

The controls were soldered together and ready to go. All that was required was mounting the pots, soldering the pickup leads to the pickup selector, and soldering black and white leads from the volume control to the output jack. Easily accomplished!

I substituted a high quality Neutrik barrel jack for the Spirit factory jack.

Plugged it in, and WOW! Expecting merely an improved version of volume/blend/tone, I was truly floored.

For setup background, the XZ-25 is strung with Status Graphite halfrounds, EADGC, and it has the stock EMG select passive humbuckers

It's nice to have a built-in mute. Stan used a pull-mute, press-on switch built into the master volume.

There are just too many variations of tone available with this setup to be able to describe them individually. With six Varitone settings for each of five pickup selector settings, you have 30 tones to choose from.

Stan did a great job selecting the capacitor values for the Varitone. Of course, it is made with Sprague Orange Drop capacitors. I have never heard such a clear tone control, having always used passive controls with run of the mill capacitors. All six settings are usable, and run the gamut from dark and earthy to twangy and sizzling.

I like being able to set the chicken head knob (supplied with the Varitone) to a setting that I like, instead of wondering "how much".

The pickup selector is wired:
Position 1- Neck
Position 2- Bridge + Neck, Series
Position 3- Bridge + Neck, Parallel
Position 4- Bridge + Neck, Series, Out of Phase
Position 5- Bridge

So once again, instead of wondering "how much" on a blend control, I can instantly get full on neck or bridge, or both (parallel).

Since I do a lot of tonal variation by positioning my right hand, blend or volume/volume controls are somewhat superfluous. It's nice to set it to neck, bridge, or both, and then vary with right hand.

Positions 2 and 4 are both very interesting flavors. The series setting is very bright and twangy and reduces the bass considerably over the parallel setting. I get some beautiful tones with position 2, playing upper register chords and melodies, since this bass is strung EADGC.

Position 4 is great! If you've never played a bass with two pickups out of phase with each other, it is sort of a envelope filter effect. I find that the lower I go on the neck, the more pronounced the nasality becomes. The range of the effect can be shifted by changing the Varitone setting. These are fun, and useful, tones.

Stan uses high quality parts. I had previously wired in CTS pots to replace the cheap stock ones in this bass, but even so, I could hear an improvement in the clarity. This is probably due in large part to the Sprague capacitors.

The straight ahead settings, of neck pickup only and the darker settings of the Varitone, are growly and rich. The bridge pickup settings are clear as a bell, and have a high fi sheen that I would not have thought possible from the EMG Selects.

I can't say enough about the difference Stan's harness has made in this bass. I put it in thinking it'd be just another experiment with the Spirit, but I've found the lifelong set up for this bass. I can use this bass for any number of styles and tones - it is VERY versatile.

Thanksgiving thanks go to Stan for a remarkable upgrade to one of my favorite basses!

Last week, I got around to adjusting the settings on the Audere preamp. I was able to reduce the output of the Lo-Z setting to match the other two. I had a hard time setting the Hi-Z impedence for the bridge and neck pickups to come up with a clearly different tone from Mid-Z. I finally did get it to sound subtly different, at least. I hear most of the difference as I vary my right hand attack, not so much by just regular finger work.

It might be that, with different passive pickups, the High-Z to Mid-Z difference might be accentuated. But- I really don't want to drop the $$$ for new pickups anytime soon, so that may be a 2007 project.

Having said all that, I really like the sound of the XZ-25 fretless with black nylon strings and the Audere preamp.

Thanks, bassman!

I give praise both to Gibson/MusicYo/Steinberger for the the excellent, underrated Spirit bass line, and to both Stan Hinesley and David Meadows for their fabulous passive pickup electronic harnesses.

I wish that all you players out there could play these two Spirit basses - they are simply amazing.

MV

Just getting back to this thread. I can take a couple pics, sure- did you want to see the control cavity?

I was considering pulling the HAS Sound harness out of the XZ-25 and putting it into an OLP MM-3.

I was having problems with the cord plug fitting securely in the output jack.

Before I did the swap, though, I tried one last thing. I took out the barrel jack and reinstalled the Spirit factory jack, cheap though as it might be.

I also checked the wiring connections to make sure nothing was amiss.

I plugged the bass in and POW! The factory jack made a lot of difference.

I'm not sure what happened to the Neutrik jack. It wasn't old- this was the first time I'd installed it. For some reason, the 1/4 plug into the jack was not making very good contact at all. It was intermittent, and the cord plug would pull out of the jack very easily. I tried it with different cords, but it didn't make a difference. I'm thinking that the jack must have been defective from the factory.

Anyway, having said all that, I am even more impressed with the HAS Sound harness. The sound has improved over what it was when first installed, and I was crowing over it (see earlier posts).

I can get a variety of nice tones from the stock EMG Select passives in the XZ-25, from bright and modern to very tubey and vintage, and one of the Varitone settings gives a bit of overdriven grit. Stan told me that this isn't the way he builds the Varitones, but I'm not complaining, because it's a usuable tone, for whatever reason it's occurring.

So.. I'm skipping buying an MM-3 and going to keep playing the XZ-25. It really sounds good. I went over it and nailed down the action and intonation, and it's a dream to play.

This particular harness WOULD work well in an OLP MM bass, though. You OLP'ers need to check into this.

MichaelVee said:

I can get a variety of nice tones from the stock EMG Select passives in the XZ-25, from bright and modern to very tubey and vintage, and one of the Varitone settings gives a bit of overdriven grit. Stan told me that this isn't the way he builds the Varitones, but I'm not complaining, because it's a usuable tone, for whatever reason it's occurring.

Click to expand...

I needed to update this thread to correct this statement I made last year. Stan DOES build the Bass Varitones with one position that is intended to produce an overdrive-type sound.

And a 12/08 bump to see what surfaces.. heh.