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Thunderbird Club

#306,561
dagrev said:
You do have a very very wide range in your musical likes. I'm impressed by that. I like what I like, be it classical, blues, rock, bluegrass--but there's a lot I can't stand in all of those categories. Punk and dark metal are things that never had any appeal for me, however.
Click to expand...
With you on dark metal. I hope to be in a punk band though.
 
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#306,562
greggory garner said:
Cool, I have a Greco rick copy that I’m going to put a t bird pickup in the neck, I have a spare epiphone 760 pickup from of the the new thunderbirds, but wondering if I should go with the Gibson pickup instead
Click to expand...
If you want to sell the 760 Probucker I'd definitely be interested. 😁
 
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#306,564
GBassNorth said:
I don’t typically use connectors for my bass wiring unless the parts I buy come with a pre wired harness (i.e. EMG). Nothing against them, I just never really went down that path. I suppose they work just fine, but I like the peace of mind that a hard solder offers vs a connector that could possibly jiggle loose or cause intermittent problems.

On my bass builds I use a small plank of thin wood with holes drilled in it that match the control layout. I wire and solder everything up external to the bass (except output jack, bridge ground, caps and pickups). Then I alligator clip the pickups and jack leads in place and test the tone with a range of caps to see what works best for that bass. Once I find what I like I install the controls in the bass and solder the caps in place along with the pickups, bridge ground wire and output jack.

I’ve found over time that I have very few pickups that I’m using that sound good with 1meg or 250K volume pots (Stingray and Jazz pickups kind of fall in those ranges but I use very very few of those). As for tone pots, it’s a toss up on 500k and 250k, I almost always use one or the other on my builds, don’t think I’ve ever found a need to use a 1meg pot for tone. Caps are where all the trial and error occurs for me, so I rarely ever solder those in place without playing “what if” with about a dozen different caps.

At one point I considered building a switchboard that I could clamp my pickup leads into and then switch between three or four different volume pot values, and three or four different tone pot values for each pickup and four or five different tone caps. It’s pretty easy to do, but as Chuck noted, what happens when you’ve switched thru the options to find what you want only to find out it sounds different when you wire it all up and install it in the bass. There’s a lot of tolerance on each pot and cap that can all add up, and that alone could make the difference between a ho-hum sound and a stellar sound. So I always install the actual pots and caps I’ve tested in the bass.

Speaking of tolerances, Note the as tested values on these Alpha pots…
View attachment 7084219
View attachment 7084218
There’s almost a 20% difference in the high and low volume pots even though they are rated at 500k ohms. Thats some pretty hefty slop.
Click to expand...
Someone was using connectors at least on a test basis; I thought that was you.
Yeah, pots tend to have 20% tolerance unless you pay the big bucks.
 
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#306,565
Miles_ONeal said:
Someone was using connectors at least on a test basis; I thought that was you.
Yeah, pots tend to have 20% tolerance unless you pay the big bucks.
Click to expand...
I put connectors in my Orville last year. No issues:
IMG_1958.jpeg
 
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#306,568
Finally have my stereo Ashly SC-40 set-up all rigged up. After months of only using the one I picked up from @JJR58 I've finally put together a recording desk, and decided to take another look at the other SC-40 that I hadn't managed to get working. In setting up my recording rig, I picked up a early Blueface Ashly SC-50 compressor, and the person who shipped it described it as all working. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I wasn't getting much compression, and a hell of a lot of buzzing. So after some searching online, I found mention of someone else doing a repair, where in the Ashlys the company original put in Zero Ohm resistors in place of jumpers. Well, apparently, some of the Zero ohm resistors they used were especially susceptible to corrosion when they foam lining deteriorated, specifically the ones with a single green band. And what was the SC-50 full of? Green band zero ohm resistors. I touched one and it pretty much disintegrated. So I pulled all of them, replaced them with jumper cables, replaced some of the electrolytics and added a 3-prong and sure enough, SC-50 working perfectly. In the non-op SC-40, I'd replaced all the op-amps with OPA2134s, just to make sure none of the original op-amps hadn't gone south, but still hadn't been able to get it to work. So I decided to look in that one for these green band zero ohm resistors, and sure enough, the SC-40 had a few of them too, along side the black band zero ohm resistors that held up just fine. So, pulled all the bad ones, replaced them with jumpers, replaced some of the electrolytics, and the SC-40 fired right up. Bit of hum, but I still need to swap the caps in the power supply that I didn't have on hand. Which is good I got that one going because I went to test the set-up out and...my main SC-40 had stopped working. I literally recorded with it 3 days earlier on a session, but now I was getting zero output, just hum. So I checked for zero ohm resistors, all black band, all good. Swapped all the electrolytics I had on hand, no change. Couldn't for the life of me get it running. Took it in to a local shop, turns out the power supply had developed issues, specifically the voltage regulators. So a bit of a pricey repair, but not something I would have thought to check. And now, finally, I have my Ashly recording set-up. Top SC-40 has OPA2134s, the bottom has stock RC4558s and a toggle to turn on the diode clipping mod on the effects send, per the recommendation from the original Ashly manual (when I first received it from Jeff, the switch was used to switch between the two inputs for some reason, and send them straight to the PA Line out to bypass the preamp, so I used the existing hole to wire in a switch for the mod instead of having to reach around back to plug a socket into or out of the effects send).

IMG_7275.jpeg


Still have a few empty slots, which will be filled with a stereo DI I'm building, the 360+ preamp, and then I'm eyeing either another SC-50 or maybe a mic pre, either an API (from CAPI), or a homebrewed Helios.

Or maybe, since I'm now digging in, I thought about modifying an old Dynaco PAM-1 as a recording preamp, have a little tube pre in the set-up.
 
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#306,578
Gaolee said:
View attachment 7084461

We do this for fun.
Click to expand...
I keep forgetting you have a Transit Connect. Mine's the passenger version[windows all around], but the third row seats are folded down and so is the left middle row seat. I don't carry an upright, but I often have to carry my PA. Roomy little mothers.
IMG_0482.jpg

Tarp goes over everything(discourages 'peepers'), PA* in middle^, amp to the right, bass goes on left side. Folding cart and stool lay across center seats.
(Pic is of old/wrecked TC, but 'new' one one loads the same; has darker tinted windows)

*PA=JBL EON ONE. I use a Yamaha-ha-ha powered mixer (it's loaded in front of the JBL) to input 4 mics through 'line out' to the JBL. PA sits between me and the drummer. We hear the PA's output, no need for monitors. We don't run instruments through the PA. We can-and have-but there's no need to for the places we play.

1732451978830.png
1732452055312.png
 
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#306,579
MCF said:
What is the price difference between Alphas for example and “big buck” pots? I can’t imagine it being that great in the overall cost of a bass.
Click to expand...
I don’t know any more. ~15 years ago I think it was a factor of 10 or more. So if a cheap pot cost Gibson a dollar, figure at last $10 for the higher end pot, so $30 in their cost or at least $60 extra to list price.
 
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#306,580
D.M.N. said:
Finally have my stereo Ashly SC-40 set-up all rigged up. After months of only using the one I picked up from @JJR58 I've finally put together a recording desk, and decided to take another look at the other SC-40 that I hadn't managed to get working. In setting up my recording rig, I picked up a early Blueface Ashly SC-50 compressor, and the person who shipped it described it as all working. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I wasn't getting much compression, and a hell of a lot of buzzing. So after some searching online, I found mention of someone else doing a repair, where in the Ashlys the company original put in Zero Ohm resistors in place of jumpers. Well, apparently, some of the Zero ohm resistors they used were especially susceptible to corrosion when they foam lining deteriorated, specifically the ones with a single green band. And what was the SC-50 full of? Green band zero ohm resistors. I touched one and it pretty much disintegrated. So I pulled all of them, replaced them with jumper cables, replaced some of the electrolytics and added a 3-prong and sure enough, SC-50 working perfectly. In the non-op SC-40, I'd replaced all the op-amps with OPA2134s, just to make sure none of the original op-amps hadn't gone south, but still hadn't been able to get it to work. So I decided to look in that one for these green band zero ohm resistors, and sure enough, the SC-40 had a few of them too, along side the black band zero ohm resistors that held up just fine. So, pulled all the bad ones, replaced them with jumpers, replaced some of the electrolytics, and the SC-40 fired right up. Bit of hum, but I still need to swap the caps in the power supply that I didn't have on hand. Which is good I got that one going because I went to test the set-up out and...my main SC-40 had stopped working. I literally recorded with it 3 days earlier on a session, but now I was getting zero output, just hum. So I checked for zero ohm resistors, all black band, all good. Swapped all the electrolytics I had on hand, no change. Couldn't for the life of me get it running. Took it in to a local shop, turns out the power supply had developed issues, specifically the voltage regulators. So a bit of a pricey repair, but not something I would have thought to check. And now, finally, I have my Ashly recording set-up. Top SC-40 has OPA2134s, the bottom has stock RC4558s and a toggle to turn on the diode clipping mod on the effects send, per the recommendation from the original Ashly manual (when I first received it from Jeff, the switch was used to switch between the two inputs for some reason, and send them straight to the PA Line out to bypass the preamp, so I used the existing hole to wire in a switch for the mod instead of having to reach around back to plug a socket into or out of the effects send).

View attachment 7084443

Still have a few empty slots, which will be filled with a stereo DI I'm building, the 360+ preamp, and then I'm eyeing either another SC-50 or maybe a mic pre, either an API (from CAPI), or a homebrewed Helios.

Or maybe, since I'm now digging in, I thought about modifying an old Dynaco PAM-1 as a recording preamp, have a little tube pre in the set-up.
Click to expand...
Wow Dylan!!! Good job man!
 
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