Gig nightmare - bass drops out

[DonaldR]

Whoa! That’s very close to what I imagined. A TRS cable to send both power and sound. Thanks.

I might try to built a small TRS-in/TS-out box with 9v DC (instead of 9v battery), just for fun and will cost $20. But I have active guitars/basses for 40 years and changing a battery each 1-2 years is totally a no-brainer.

 

[jeffbrown]

Alkaline in my two active basses. Just because of, you know.

Funny story - went to a gig, the guit player puts on his guit, and no sound. Yep, his batt was DEAD. Took him a few minutes to figure it out. I, of course, had a spare, so he got it. In more ways than one, hehe.

You are not alone.

 

[Major Seven]

Alkaline in my two active basses. Just because of, you know.

Funny story - went to a gig, the guit player puts on his guit, and no sound. Yep, his batt was DEAD. Took him a few minutes to figure it out. I, of course, had a spare, so he got it. In more ways than one, hehe.

You are not alone.

I had a professor try and try and try again to make an overhead projector work one day.
Until I plugged it in.

 

[FC Bass]

Do Series I and II basses come with one? At $35K and up, they should!!!

Yep, it's included in the base price for Series electronics
My theory is they really only want to make cables to be included with the instruments they sell, hence the price. You can get them elsewhere (or make them yourself) with the same components for a fraction of that price.

 

[FC Bass]

Alembics had (have?) a separate power supply for the bass. That XLR-looking port on the Alembic basses is actually a 5-pin DIN port for the power. There were a number of different power boxen made for the basses. There was a rackmount, a 2-port, and a single.

They also made some (very few) battery powered ones, as used by Mark King and Jason Newsted. The only ones I know of are from the late 80's/early 90's
Currently they only offer the blue box as shown above. (though I got two black ones with my basses, little surprise from Mica)
With the battery powered one, you can use a wireless system (or two wireless systems, like Newsted did) and have the side LEDs light up + not worry too much about battery life. (takes four 9V batteries)
I got this one after years of herassing the previous owner

 

[FC Bass]

But is it really practical? It's cool and unique, but Alembic's preamp system needed that kind of setup.... it's a bit overkill for the average working bassist's setup. That means the amplifier would have to be specifically wired with an XLR input jack to power the bass and extract audio from it, and no amp that I know of does that out of the box. Didn't the Alembic have a separate box it had to plug into before heading to an amp, like it's own power supply (i.e. like many tube mics require)? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity, because I don't know how that works with Alembics. Seems like a 'breakout box' like that would be the only practical way to make it work, and I can't see bass makers switching to that design by default.

The Alembic Series basses can also used with the 1/4 jack, if you use them that way the electronics are powered with two internal batteries.
Older ones had a "stereo" 1/4 output jack, so you had to use a special cable, modern ones have a "mono" output so you can use a standard cable.
Old ones can easily be modified to mono: https://club.alembicguitars.com/index.php?topic=270.0

Downside is: They eat through batteries (somewhere between 10-20 hours) and if the instrument (they also make guitars) has side LEDs they won't be lit up.

This is the cavity for the two internal batteries, I've put tape on the connectors because I never use that option (I only use the normal and battery powered ps as shown in my previous post)

 

[FC Bass]

Ah! Vintage Alembic basses could use an XLR-like cable for power and audio. This would be a cool hack on a modern bass:

View attachment 7464417

Like this one? (they still make them)