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The Official MTD USA Thread
- Thread starter johnpaulbass
- Start date
What are the pickups? I don't remember seeing that design before
Btw hope things settle down in HK and a peaceful resolution is brokered.
Yea.. it seems only a few were built and mostly go to Bobby Lewis himself..
These two sounds very woody and versatility
Mark@bassdirect Uk has one on discount with some good options only one concern is ..I don't play 35"
The bass is a Saratoga Jack5
(Andy Irvine has a black one with rw board)
It was build around early 16 w
nj5+bigsplit man +obp3
Not sure why it was sitting in the factory
untill 18 summer namm and being upgraded with big j blade+blade man and Nordstrand pre.
Appreciate for the concern
The situation is kind of bad here
When the government has collisions with the triad society..and the police use excessive violence with no sanctions..we can only stand up and fight for freedom till our last breath
I’ve had 2 and have a Super 6 in the works. There great basses. The pickups are a dual coil and splittable. I’m more a jazz bass fan then P and that’s why I’m so attracted to them.
KoaFodera
Commercial User
I have a Super 5, there's a pic on page 541. Buckeye burl over ash body, birdseye maple over ash neck.
It's absolutely incredible. Growl and punch like all the best parts of a Thumb and Stingray combined into one masterfully crafted bass. The highs are so clear and defined. It would be such a great bass for intricate solo work by a player more talented than me
. Switching to single coil mode tames it a bit and lets you get more traditional tones. If I ever have a fretless MTD, it will be a Super as well.
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I don't know if you do social media, but the MTD account on Instagram posts lots of new builds and there are plenty of Supers coming out of the shop.
Bubby's have wider string spacing than the standard models.
I do follow on IG
From 2018 till now
There are only 10-12 Super5/6 being posted
amount 200+ mtd basses/guitars
not much on YouTube as well
Any record of yours?
The bass is a Saratoga Jack5
(Andy Irvine has a black one with rw board)
It was build around early 16 w
nj5+bigsplit man +obp3
Not sure why it was sitting in the factory
untill 18 summer namm and being upgraded with big j blade+blade man and Nordstrand pre.
Appreciate for the concern
The situation is kind of bad here
When the government has collisions with the triad society..and the police use excessive violence with no sanctions..we can only stand up and fight for freedom till our last breath
Yea that's the reason I want one too
Just slightly concern if the treble side will sound very glassy and close to Ken smith as of the pickup position looks similar
Unfortunately I'm an amateur musician with no recording equipment. The second video clip you posted above is very accurate, the top one seems like he dialed back the aggresive characteristics a bit.I do follow on IG
From 2018 till now
There are only 10-12 Super5/6 being posted
amount 200+ mtd basses/guitars
not much on YouTube as well
Any record of yours?
Had to update the avatar after selling my 535, so here's my temporarily reduced MTD family.
I'm visiting the shop on Tuesday to spec a four-string (435 or Saratoga) and am almost sick over having to choose just one top and possibly stain. How do you choose when you don't have one wood picked out in your mind already?
Tell mike the tone you are going for. He will guide you along the way. It’s like talk to the Yoda of bass. He will show you the way of the tone wood.
- Oct 23, 2005
- 1,439
- 1,378
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: MTD Basses, Bartolini, Genzler Amplification, GHS, Tsunami Cables, Sonic Nuance
What up folks? Messed around with my 535 today after doing lots of planning and thinking, and modded for a true passive tone and hardwired passive bypass. I had to ditch the active blend to do this, which is a feature I think is really great and works well, but the blend pot I used in place of the factory one works very well for a traditional, passive blend pot.
I'm still using the buffer, but only 1 channel of it now, and only to raise the gain prior to the preamp and after the blend control rather than for active mixing.
So now the signal path goes: pickups to the blend section of an MEC 250k blend/500k vol pot with dpdt switch, output of blend goes to a 250k passive tone control, to the switch, and also in parallel into one channel of the buffer via another terminal on the switch. The buffer's two outputs both tie to the preamp's input, the out goes to the switch, which switches either the pre out or the blend pot's out to the vol pot and on to the jack.
So the passive tone functions in both active and passive modes, which is what I was looking for in order to reduce some of the ultra high end, without reducing the overall volume as much as the preamp's treble control seems to and in a steeper way, while still being able to add a little peak at 6.5kHz with the treble control without adding supersonic upper octave harshness.
Seems to work, looking forward to gaining some experience with this scenario. Passive mode is definitely much quieter, as expected since the buffer significantly raises the level of the signal to the pre. But, in an emergency or to test other outboard pre's...
I'm still using the buffer, but only 1 channel of it now, and only to raise the gain prior to the preamp and after the blend control rather than for active mixing.
So now the signal path goes: pickups to the blend section of an MEC 250k blend/500k vol pot with dpdt switch, output of blend goes to a 250k passive tone control, to the switch, and also in parallel into one channel of the buffer via another terminal on the switch. The buffer's two outputs both tie to the preamp's input, the out goes to the switch, which switches either the pre out or the blend pot's out to the vol pot and on to the jack.
So the passive tone functions in both active and passive modes, which is what I was looking for in order to reduce some of the ultra high end, without reducing the overall volume as much as the preamp's treble control seems to and in a steeper way, while still being able to add a little peak at 6.5kHz with the treble control without adding supersonic upper octave harshness.
Seems to work, looking forward to gaining some experience with this scenario. Passive mode is definitely much quieter, as expected since the buffer significantly raises the level of the signal to the pre. But, in an emergency or to test other outboard pre's...
- Oct 23, 2005
- 1,439
- 1,378
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: MTD Basses, Bartolini, Genzler Amplification, GHS, Tsunami Cables, Sonic Nuance
On a related note, I've come to believe the stock, low wound, super wide frequency spectrum MTD USA Bartolini pickups are excellent contenders for being paired with a low pass filter based preamp, a la ACG/East, Wal, and Alembic. I'd love to hear from anyone who has experimented with that. These pickups seems to be exactly what's best for starting with a relatively blank slate (small and very high resonant peak, pretty even response) and dialing in the right resonant frequency and peak at that frequency with a LPF and resonance control. I've looked into that myself but havent found just the right thing - to my mind, at the moment, an LPF add on circuit to a more complete preamp (stock or otherwise) with adjustable resonance on the same stacked pot, to replace the treble control. A dude named Boogieman makes somewhat affordable Alembic clones that seem about right and sells them on Ebay, but no specs. One of the filters from an ACG would be cool too, but they don't seem to be sold individually.
- Apr 3, 2003
- 35,515
- 19,943
- Disclosures
- Editor-in-Chief, Bass Gear Magazine
The filter-based preamps are definitely cool, but one issue I find is that there is no way (or at least no intuitive way) to add a slight bit of bass boost, without changing up the balance of the pickups. Granted, I don't often do this, but sometimes, a very slight bass boost is desirable, and IME/IMHO, it is hard to dial this in with the filter-based preamps. YMMV, though.
The "flat, wide frequency response" approach is exactly what Alembic was going for when developing their Series electronics and pickups (which I believe have much lower impedance and output than the typical passive pickup).
Yep, that was the one downside I found with the Wal and ACG preamps, as well.
- Oct 23, 2005
- 1,439
- 1,378
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: MTD Basses, Bartolini, Genzler Amplification, GHS, Tsunami Cables, Sonic Nuance
True! That'd be a deal breaker for me. That's why I was thinking of adding an LPF/Res control to an otherwise normal bass pre, just in place of the treble control. If anyone knows Charlie Escher, a great guy somewhat local to me who goes by Passinwind, he has a big thread here on just such an open source preamp with bass/mid/filter/resonance, but for a few reasons it's not quite what I'm looking for. If a single, stacked knob lpf circuit could be attained though, I'd think it could be incorporated into just about any preamp.
But, with what I was describing in my post above that one, I've been able to achieve a good amount of the filtering vibe by adding a true passive tone that interacts with the pickup coils, in addition to the active treble and at the cost of the active blend. So I can kind of tune the pickups' treble responses pre-preamp, then adjust onboard EQ to suit. And if wanted, do a true passive, preamp and buffer bypass - but to be honest, while others seem to be really into that idea, I almost really never use. It can be handy though for auditioning other preamps in pedal form.
Fairly certain I mentioned this years ago to Alan at ACG....maybe it was just a discussion with Brian Ristola when I first tried the ACG....regardless, it lasted maybe a month at best in my bass because what I mainly use is a slight bass boost. To me, as you said, that's the only thing missing from the filter preamps.
