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Warrior Club Part 2
- Thread starter Bryan R. Tyler
- Start date
-
- Tags
- club
- Sep 20, 2008
- 3,369
- 38
- Disclosures
- Jim Dunlop USA, King Kong Cases, Golden Eagle Energy Drink
Back to Zon? Can i inquire why? Or should I PM you? That warrior you just got is probably my dream bass!
Mostly GAS, but that is starting to subside and the more I play this particular bass the more I realize just how nice this one is. Probably the best of the 10 that I've owned. Really close to closing the FT thread and hanging on to this beauty. I made some preamp adjustments last night and I had it sounding down right vicious. Not shortage of bottom in this little guy. It is a little darker than I thought it would be, but I guess maybe that the wenge neck. I can still dial in plenty of snap when I need it.
Just reminded me that I finished my promised experiment of de-sparkling one of my warriors. I just need to export the sound clips and upload them somewhere. Expect a full write up and sound clips in the coming days.
I got practice tonight but I think I'll be free to do this tomorrow night.
I got practice tonight but I think I'll be free to do this tomorrow night.
- Sep 20, 2008
- 3,369
- 38
- Disclosures
- Jim Dunlop USA, King Kong Cases, Golden Eagle Energy Drink
I haven't de-sparkled yet, but I probably will eventually. Getting rid of it had nothing to do with the tone, but more about being frustrated with the process. I'm over that now, and glad I didn't move it. It's a VERY nice bass; sounds, plays, and feels great. This is the first one I've had with the new 2012 preamp, and it has more bottom and smoother mids. It's darker than the walnut signature I sold to nobes with more punch and aggression. Has some snap, but in a different way. I think the neck/board have a lot to do with it.
Dude...
1.) Record
2.) De-sparkle
3.) Record
Please.
I think you'll find the high end opens up very nicely. It's not gonna' change it to be something it's not, but I think it'll even out the upper profile to be much more to your liking.
Just a prediction... maybe I'll be wrong... save the circuit just in case... but if I'm right... burn it and celebrate its demise over a pint of your favorite whatever.
So I finally finished the sparkle circuit experiment I promised a while ago. I'll save my opinions on the sparkle circuit and let the sound clips speak for themselves but the change wasn't as drastic as I expected after reading all the posts on this thread.
First things first, I have never posted a picture to this thread so here are my two warriors:
Both were purchased here on talkbass. The bottom one is LSU's old bass and should be no stranger to this thread but for this experiment I used the top one. It is not a typical Warrior pickup configuration but I figured it wouldn't mater since I am posting before and after sound clips. I would have used the bottom one but I was in the middle of a recording session when I started this experiment and I didn't want to mess with that bass since since I was using it for some songs.
History of the test subject:
The bass is a warrior 5 string standard made in 1998. I got this about 2 years ago. It had a SD basslines MM pickup and a seymour duncan preamp. When I first got it, it was in pretty poor shape. The frets were very unlevel to the point that it was pretty much unplayable with a med to low action. I didn't have it long at all before I sent it back to JD at warrior for some "warrior care". He also convinced me to upgrade to the new (at the time) 2010 version of his preamp. I got the bass back playing beautifully like a warrior should and I was overall happy with the preamp upgrade as well. The SD preamp was ok but was very noisy when you boosted the highs. The new bart/warrior pre was dead quiet and I felt the frequency points of the tone knobs where a lot more musical and usable then in the SD preamp.
With the old preamp there was a switch to change the pickup from dual to single coil mode. I didn't like that JD removed this in order to put in the mid frequency switch but overall I was very happy with the bass.
So now to the experiment.
Here is the 2010 preamp before I made any modifications:
.
The stock bart wiring diagram has three wires (Green, blue and grey) going to a 1.5K resistor and 5K trim pot for the gain. In the warrior version they had the blue and grey wires going to a 50k trim pot. The green wire was cut short and left floating (luckily there was just enough wire sticking out for me to solder a wire to). The sparkle part of circuit was coming off of the output of the gain pot(the grey wire). It consists of 10K resistor connected to a 100k trim pot connected to a capacitor to ground.
I wish I knew more about the inside of the Bart pre to see what this green wire does and figure out why the warrior version left it out. It seems the sparkle circuit is a low pass filter in the gain stage of the preamp.
The sparkle circuit is not the only difference from the stock Bart wiring diagram. Warrior also adds resistors to the eq pots to change the position of the center detent so the "flat" setting is not really flat. Looks like they boast the mids and cut the lows and highs. I decided to leave these and just focus on the sparkle circuit so I never removed the heat shrink to measure the resistors to see exactly how much.
Here the preamp after the change. I left the sparkle circuit intact in case I wanted to put it back in the future.
The bass came with the sparkle circuit turned all the down. Before I started this I had never actually played with it before. Just turning it up made a big difference and I might have stopped right there if I hadn't promised this test to the thread. It could have just been my ears playing tricks on me but I felt the gain pot affected the tone as well. If I was leaving the sparkle circuit in, I would have settled on the both the gain and sparkle pots all the way up. When I first recorded the before clips and went to change the preamp to bart stock, the 5k trim that I swore I had lying around was nowhere to be found. I had to order new ones to proceed. So just for full disclosure the before and after clips where recorded several weeks apart.
Now on to the clips. All sound clips were recorded with the eq set "flat" (at the center detent anyway). I plugged the bass directly into a presonus Firepod interface and recorded using cakewalk sonar. No compression or eq of any kind was added. I only adjusted the volume to try and match the different clips. They were done quickly in one take so please excuse my mistakes and/or poor playing. Also I just left them as waves so sorry to people with slow internet connections
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To show how the change works in more of a band setting here are the same clips in a mix. This a short section of one of my bands songs. Note that there is still no compression or eq on the bass. If this was an actual mix I would have used both.
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Since I had posted this much already I might show some comparisons to the original SD pre. I had recorded a few clips before I sent the bass to warrior just have as a comparison sake. Keep in mind I recorded the first clips about 2 years ago while the bass was still in bad shape (unlevel frets). I tried to match what I had played originally the best I could.
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This ended up being a much longer post then I had planned but hopefully it can help all the warrior bass owners contemplating de-sparkling.
First things first, I have never posted a picture to this thread so here are my two warriors:
Both were purchased here on talkbass. The bottom one is LSU's old bass and should be no stranger to this thread but for this experiment I used the top one. It is not a typical Warrior pickup configuration but I figured it wouldn't mater since I am posting before and after sound clips. I would have used the bottom one but I was in the middle of a recording session when I started this experiment and I didn't want to mess with that bass since since I was using it for some songs.
History of the test subject:
The bass is a warrior 5 string standard made in 1998. I got this about 2 years ago. It had a SD basslines MM pickup and a seymour duncan preamp. When I first got it, it was in pretty poor shape. The frets were very unlevel to the point that it was pretty much unplayable with a med to low action. I didn't have it long at all before I sent it back to JD at warrior for some "warrior care". He also convinced me to upgrade to the new (at the time) 2010 version of his preamp. I got the bass back playing beautifully like a warrior should and I was overall happy with the preamp upgrade as well. The SD preamp was ok but was very noisy when you boosted the highs. The new bart/warrior pre was dead quiet and I felt the frequency points of the tone knobs where a lot more musical and usable then in the SD preamp.
With the old preamp there was a switch to change the pickup from dual to single coil mode. I didn't like that JD removed this in order to put in the mid frequency switch but overall I was very happy with the bass.
So now to the experiment.
Here is the 2010 preamp before I made any modifications:
The stock bart wiring diagram has three wires (Green, blue and grey) going to a 1.5K resistor and 5K trim pot for the gain. In the warrior version they had the blue and grey wires going to a 50k trim pot. The green wire was cut short and left floating (luckily there was just enough wire sticking out for me to solder a wire to). The sparkle part of circuit was coming off of the output of the gain pot(the grey wire). It consists of 10K resistor connected to a 100k trim pot connected to a capacitor to ground.
I wish I knew more about the inside of the Bart pre to see what this green wire does and figure out why the warrior version left it out. It seems the sparkle circuit is a low pass filter in the gain stage of the preamp.
The sparkle circuit is not the only difference from the stock Bart wiring diagram. Warrior also adds resistors to the eq pots to change the position of the center detent so the "flat" setting is not really flat. Looks like they boast the mids and cut the lows and highs. I decided to leave these and just focus on the sparkle circuit so I never removed the heat shrink to measure the resistors to see exactly how much.
Here the preamp after the change. I left the sparkle circuit intact in case I wanted to put it back in the future.
The bass came with the sparkle circuit turned all the down. Before I started this I had never actually played with it before. Just turning it up made a big difference and I might have stopped right there if I hadn't promised this test to the thread. It could have just been my ears playing tricks on me but I felt the gain pot affected the tone as well. If I was leaving the sparkle circuit in, I would have settled on the both the gain and sparkle pots all the way up. When I first recorded the before clips and went to change the preamp to bart stock, the 5k trim that I swore I had lying around was nowhere to be found. I had to order new ones to proceed. So just for full disclosure the before and after clips where recorded several weeks apart.
Now on to the clips. All sound clips were recorded with the eq set "flat" (at the center detent anyway). I plugged the bass directly into a presonus Firepod interface and recorded using cakewalk sonar. No compression or eq of any kind was added. I only adjusted the volume to try and match the different clips. They were done quickly in one take so please excuse my mistakes and/or poor playing. Also I just left them as waves so sorry to people with slow internet connections
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To show how the change works in more of a band setting here are the same clips in a mix. This a short section of one of my bands songs. Note that there is still no compression or eq on the bass. If this was an actual mix I would have used both.
Link Removed
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Since I had posted this much already I might show some comparisons to the original SD pre. I had recorded a few clips before I sent the bass to warrior just have as a comparison sake. Keep in mind I recorded the first clips about 2 years ago while the bass was still in bad shape (unlevel frets). I tried to match what I had played originally the best I could.
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This ended up being a much longer post then I had planned but hopefully it can help all the warrior bass owners contemplating de-sparkling.
Ok, so I have a couple comments, because I also expected a bigger difference, but I think there's a bit of confusion here... maybe on my part.
I considered ALL the "mods" JD applied to be part of the Sparkle circuit, not just the high end portion of it. So while I have used the term "remove the Sparkle circuit", I've also used the phrase "just wire it back to stock Bart", and I guess I really should have always said both, because my focus was to remove all of the stuff JD does to alter the tone of the Bart.
The other thing is, I think those MM style pickups make it harder to hear the diff that is there, because they natively have such a massively "goosed" sound anyway, but that's just MHO.
Thing is, in your "Bart" recordings, I agree the lows and highs seem choked and the mids boosted, which is probably the biggest problem I have with the sum total of JD's changes. Definitely doesn't sound as even and open as mine did compared to when it had JD's mods in it, but again, kinda' hard to compare with such radically different pickup sounds, and since you didn't go all the way back to stock like I did.
Here's the thing...
When you're dealing with stuff like this, changes are very rarely "atomic". I would be concerned that whatever JD did to achieve one goal, also affected the tone/behavior in other ways, and while I can't back it up with tech (Bart doesn't provide this info, as you said), I'm assuming what JD is doing with the preamp is not something it was originally designed for, which means something's a little out of whack compared to the original operating configuration of the preamp. This bothers me too. I think you're right about the gain affecting tone, which could be an indicator of this, as well, since his gain is hooked in completely differently from stock.
So I guess for whatever it's worth, I'd still really recommend you yank the rest out, but of course it's your call, and I wouldn't blame you if you were sick of messin' with it.
Don't get me wrong tho, regardless of if you do more or call it a day, what you've done so far is super cool, and I'm glad you did it and posted about it. Thanks!!
Vic,
I agree that the MM pickup could be making it harder to hear the differences. Not only the pickup but the placement as well. This bass has the pickup a little over an inch closer to the bridge then the the typical sweetspot MM placement. It is definitely going to have that strong 'goosed' (i hate using words to describe tone but I guess this works) sound no matter what. The tone is good for some cases but that is why I ultimately bought the second warrior in order to have more versatility.
I tried to keep my opinions out of my first post but now I will say I felt that removing the sparkle thing did open up and smooth out the high mids a little bit. The change wasn't drastic but I'm glad I did it and will leave the sparkle circuit out.
As for the resistors on the tone pots, they probably have a bigger affect on the 'flat' tone but taking them out is the same result of just turning the knobs so that is why I didn't bother. Remember you don't have to play with the eq "flat". I left it at the center detents for the recordings in order to have a controlled consistency, to make sure the settings where the same for the before and after. When I actually play the bass (which has been very rarely since I bought LSUs bass) I usually have the bass boosted quite a bit and the mids cut a small amount. I guess I was kind of reversing JDs mods with out realizing it.
That sparkle thing and the way he has the gain pot wired are the much more peculiar mods. That is why I focused on them. There is definitely some weird stuff going on but like I said its hard to figure exactly what it is doing (intended or not) with out knowing the inside of the bart preamp. Of course just perceived volume could have just been the issue but I really did feel like the gain pot affected the tone. The sound opened up just by turning up the gain pot. A sign of some funny stuff going on.
The next time I decide to work on this bass will be to add a push/pull on the volume pot for single / dual coil mode.
I am not going to bother with the resistors on the tone knobs for now.
-----
It is a real easy mod to remove the sparkle thing and rewire the gain to bart specs just as long as (and this is BIG if) the green wire they cut has enough sticking out to grab on to. I took longer this time causes I was measuring things and trying to figure out not what they did but why they did it. It would probably only take my about 10 minutes to do again so I may do the same thing to my other warrior just to see if the difference is greater with the x55 pickups. If I do I will share clips again.
I agree that the MM pickup could be making it harder to hear the differences. Not only the pickup but the placement as well. This bass has the pickup a little over an inch closer to the bridge then the the typical sweetspot MM placement. It is definitely going to have that strong 'goosed' (i hate using words to describe tone but I guess this works) sound no matter what. The tone is good for some cases but that is why I ultimately bought the second warrior in order to have more versatility.
I tried to keep my opinions out of my first post but now I will say I felt that removing the sparkle thing did open up and smooth out the high mids a little bit. The change wasn't drastic but I'm glad I did it and will leave the sparkle circuit out.
As for the resistors on the tone pots, they probably have a bigger affect on the 'flat' tone but taking them out is the same result of just turning the knobs so that is why I didn't bother. Remember you don't have to play with the eq "flat". I left it at the center detents for the recordings in order to have a controlled consistency, to make sure the settings where the same for the before and after. When I actually play the bass (which has been very rarely since I bought LSUs bass) I usually have the bass boosted quite a bit and the mids cut a small amount. I guess I was kind of reversing JDs mods with out realizing it.
That sparkle thing and the way he has the gain pot wired are the much more peculiar mods. That is why I focused on them. There is definitely some weird stuff going on but like I said its hard to figure exactly what it is doing (intended or not) with out knowing the inside of the bart preamp. Of course just perceived volume could have just been the issue but I really did feel like the gain pot affected the tone. The sound opened up just by turning up the gain pot. A sign of some funny stuff going on.
The next time I decide to work on this bass will be to add a push/pull on the volume pot for single / dual coil mode.
I am not going to bother with the resistors on the tone knobs for now.
-----
It is a real easy mod to remove the sparkle thing and rewire the gain to bart specs just as long as (and this is BIG if) the green wire they cut has enough sticking out to grab on to. I took longer this time causes I was measuring things and trying to figure out not what they did but why they did it. It would probably only take my about 10 minutes to do again so I may do the same thing to my other warrior just to see if the difference is greater with the x55 pickups. If I do I will share clips again.
This is the part I'm not sure I buy. If you know this for a fact somehow through research or direct Bart tech info, I bow to your experience and knowledge, but... and again, maybe it has more to do with our different pickups, listening to your sound clips definitely doesn't display as big of a change as I heard on my bass.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like huge/massive change, but it was pretty significant... at least IMHO.
And yeah, I know, I'm not at all afraid to twist EQ. That's not where I was coming from.
Yeah, I have no idea why JD cuts that wire off so short, but all the Warriors I've seen have just enough that you can strip enough to solder to, but it may be a one time thing, so that one solder job might be good to add wire if future alterations were to be considered.
I'd be very interested in this if you'd be willing to do it... especially if you'd be ok with removing the other mods too and going full stock Bart.
I can't say this as fact without knowing what what is going on inside the Bart pre. Lets call it an educated guess, but I could be wrong. It has happened before.
And yeah, I know, I'm not at all afraid to twist EQ. That's not where I was coming from.
I apologize if I came off as accusing you of anything. That was not my intention. I just meant it as a point of discussion not a statement directed at you, so sorry if it came across badly. No harm meant.
I had a fretless Warrior from the same era (mine was a 1997)
It too had the Basslines pickups and pre originally. And I totally agree, the sound was very noisy and the highs were brittle. I too had Warrior swap out the pickups and pre for Barts and we experimented some with keeping the coil split in place. Which was around 2001 or so, Before they came up with the "sparkle circuit" idea. To be honest, the Bart MM pickup is very anemic in single coil, IMO. I actually feel the same about their soapbars too. I had a Roscoe with a coil taps on it and single coil was just empty sounding. Go ahead and experiment, if you like. But, I think you will find that you will just end up using it as is. Just don't drill that extra hole until you are sure you want it! LOL
True story. I've been doing the web forum (and before that dial-up BBS) thing for a LONG time. You can't survive on these boards if you have thin skin and are hyper-sensitive about the possibility somebody might be inferring something.You're gonna have to work a lot harder if you want to offend Vic.
You're gonna have to work a lot harder if you want to offend Vic.
That sounds like a challenge.
I guess I better don the flack jacket then...That sounds like a challenge.
Or maybe just hide behind a wall for a while...
Hey guys, posted a while back about my Warrior that I had just gotten. I have realized that it's not for me Although It probably is the easiest bass to play EVER. It's up for trade now for a J style bass +/- cash as needed. Check out my sig if your interested.....If this is in any way not following a forum rule please let me know. Thanks!
