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Ampeg B100R tweeks or upgrades

#3
sleepytime said:
The mod I would like to see is how to hook up the headphone jack as a line in.
Click to expand...

Well. The Headphone jack is putting out a signal to drive headphones.

A Line in is where a signal can be input.

There is a big difference.

And that would not be cost effective nor easy. :)


This amp is entirely Solid State, and PCB mounted, so There aren't too many "mod's" that you could make to this amp.

That said, i'd love to see any other ideas/pictures! :D
 
#4
KramerBassFan said:
Well. The Headphone jack is putting out a signal to drive headphones.

A Line in is where a signal can be input.

There is a big difference.

And that would not be cost effective nor easy. :)
Click to expand...

I'm not that big an idiot. I just want to use the existing jack for a different purpose, to avoid drilling the panel for a new one.

Do you know it would be expensive and difficult, or are you guessing? If it is just a matter of fabricating an op amp circuit or something, that's not a big deal.
 
#5
My apologies.

You never can tell what peoples knowledge on here is, so better safe than sorry.

Now, just tapping the circuit somewhere?

If you know what your doing, then it's not that hard to "find" where the pre amp signal is about to go into the power amp. Get yourself a $30 Balanced out Transformer, and your good to go.
Then mount the Transformer on a free spot in the chassis, pull the headphones jack, insert switchcraft, and there ya go.
:bassist:

A pain if you dont know your way around a schematic, or with a soldering iron, but not all that hard for somebody who knows what they are doing.

And again, sorry for the be-littling comment.
 
#6
No offense taken, I know exactly what you're saying.

I used to be an electronics tech, but that was 25 years ago. Wish I'd had the sense to become expert with guitar amps. I'll have to make this some sort of back burner project. I'd like to stack 2 b100r's. (200W 2x15, but I especially like the redundancy feature too.)

Realistically, I suppose it would be a lot easier to split the input to the two amps.
 
#8
http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/

You could try making one of those with two Outputs.

Not sure how well it would work, though.

I tried making a "splitter box" that was more or less 3 Female jacks, wired up into a Y position. Yes, it "worked", when i plugged one bass into two amps.

But when i turned one amp down, the other appeared to "loose" volume too.

Eventually, I realized, since electricity flows in the path of least resistance... having one of the amps inputs more to ground, meant that the signal intended for the other amp got kind of "drained" by the amp who's volume was less.

Still looking for ways of running numerous amps at once.... and I think an Audio Distribution amp is the key.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=audio+distribution+amp

Most of those have RCA inputs and outputs, so you'd need adaptors.. but that Would work.


Heck, even a fancy pedal with mono input, stereo output would suit you. Just turn the pedals effects off.
 
#10
KramerBassFan said:
http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/

You could try making one of those with two Outputs.

Not sure how well it would work, though.

I tried making a "splitter box" that was more or less 3 Female jacks, wired up into a Y position. Yes, it "worked", when i plugged one bass into two amps.

But when i turned one amp down, the other appeared to "loose" volume too.

Eventually, I realized, since electricity flows in the path of least resistance... having one of the amps inputs more to ground, meant that the signal intended for the other amp got kind of "drained" by the amp who's volume was less.

Still looking for ways of running numerous amps at once.... and I think an Audio Distribution amp is the key.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=audio+distribution+amp

Most of those have RCA inputs and outputs, so you'd need adaptors.. but that Would work.


Heck, even a fancy pedal with mono input, stereo output would suit you. Just turn the pedals effects off.
Click to expand...

Yes, you need isolation to work right.

I don't want to mess with RCA jacks, I wonder if there's a 1/4" splitter like that to be had.

There was a day I was looking at this Invalid Link Removed for another application, but it costs almost as much as a used b100r. :scowl:

I do have a SABDDI. That would work I guess. I was thinking that would give me a dry out and a tone-shaped out, but I just realized I could turn the pedal off and have two dry signals.

It's just not as clean (esthetics-wise) as using 1 preamp and two power amps.
 
#11
I bought my B100R nicely (meaning, you know, "heavily") used from my local shop. So my "upgrade" was to clean the snot out of it :hiding:

I have been thinking about some casters for it, but I'm still on the fence. I have a 2 year old, and it it's on casters, he'll probably push the thing all over. With it sitting on the bumpers, it doesn't move.
 
#12
I always wanted to take the head out of the cabinet, and add a Diamond Blue covered base board to it with feet, so it could be used like a head. Then, I thought of adding some Ampeg suitcase latches to the sides of the cabinet so the head could be unlatched and relatched back into the same cavity. Basically making this like almost like a fliptop B15T. You'd have to modify the speaker connector, changing the hardwire over to a 1/4" jack configuration. Doesn't really seem practical if you are only using one B-100R, but if you had two and were stacking them, it might make accessing the controls on the top one easier.
 
#14
RCCollins said:
how much deeper does the hartke EQ do down to? the B100R's low stack is centered at 70hz, and the ultrabass switch boosts at 40hz...
Click to expand...

I don't know what the eq points are, but the Hartke has a shelving bass control and it is voiced pretty deep (deeper than the BDDI). Plus, you can use the shape to mold the depth further. I don't use the distortion since I like the cleaner tone of the B100r (not totally clean though). The deep button seems to be just that frequency on the amp and in my experience muddies the tone at band levels. The extra gain and depth from the Hartke pedal in front of it really helps the B100r out in a band situation. I wish I tried it before recently.
 

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