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Won the Wal pickup on ebay!!!

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#161
I'm planning on an exposed adjustable pole model that will be closest to the original, and then a covered pole model that will use blade poles. Blades are useable with any string spacing unlike exposed poles.
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Do you think that Even with That Particular wal-lish layout
the Sound/tone would be the same ,between Blade and Poles Style?

(Also,as a minor note i assume adjustable poles work just to follow the radius of the strings,not changing tonally "a-la"-q-tuner ).
 
#162
alexlotta said:
Do you think that Even with That Particular wal-lish layout the Sound/tone would be the same ,between Blade and Poles Style?
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The tone should be fairly close. The blades would add some inductance, but the coils would still have the small round cores.

On my regular dual coil humbuckers, when I went from P bass style poles on the prototypes to blades, I didn't hear any difference in the tone.


(Also,as a minor note i assume adjustable poles work just to follow the radius of the strings,not changing tonally "a-la"-q-tuner ).
Click to expand...

Yes, just to allow level compensation for the strings. I don't find adjustable poles all that useful, but I'm attempting to stay close to the original, at least for the prototypes.

The poles on Q tuners change the tone because you have three rows of them, so they go South/North/South. It makes the aperture of the pickup wider or narrower depending on how the poles are set.
 
#169
Metropolis_488 said:
David - evidence that the custom Wal pickups were wired with each string having it's own output - so different than the pickup you have. Hope this helps. Still waiting to get one of your recreations.

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That's interesting. It does have a 5 pin connector, which would mean the coils share a common ground, which is also the shield. The pickup I have has five wires, but it's wired up differently. The DC resistance he shows is the same.

Note that he says "it has a bit more punch than with the original electronics" which shows that even though the pickup has an output for each string, it does not have a separate buffer for each string. It has more punch because it probably has more high end that way.

It would be easy enough to do though, and I think I like that idea more. Since I don't have the circuit for the current Wal preamp I'm designing my own, so I'll make sure it sounds good instead of just being accurate.

Thanks!
 
#171
That's true, but he also showed they were louder and had more low end straight to the amp. However from what I've seen about the newer electronics they have a master gain and low end control. So I don't know if it's a case about not having the trims set right, or whatever. The low pass filters would have an upper limit but not a lower cutoff limit, as far as passing the low frequencies.

The newer electronics don't have a trim for each string, but that's not to say they couldn't be using a summing amp. The new preamp uses op amps, while the old one uses JFETS, and I don't think there are enough op amps to have a separate buffer for each string.

That's neither here nor there though since at this point I'm designing he preamp from the ground up, just incorporating some key features of the Pro preamp, which are missing from the newer preamp.

On another note when I briefly tried out the pickup with everything in series, it sounded like a Wal. It had a big thick tone with crisp top end.

First I'll have the pickup finished (it was supposed to be finished this week but I've come down with some awful respiratory thing). After that I'll try out various wirings. Seems silly to hard wire it all in series.

The preamp prototypes will come after that.
 
#173
SGD Lutherie said:
That's true, but he also showed they were louder and had more low end straight to the amp. However from what I've seen about the newer electronics they have a master gain and low end control. So I don't know if it's a case about not having the trims set right, or whatever. The low pass filters would have an upper limit but not a lower cutoff limit, as far as passing the low frequencies.

The newer electronics don't have a trim for each string, but that's not to say they couldn't be using a summing amp. The new preamp uses op amps, while the old one uses JFETS, and I don't think there are enough op amps to have a separate buffer for each string.

That's neither here nor there though since at this point I'm designing he preamp from the ground up, just incorporating some key features of the Pro preamp, which are missing from the newer preamp.

On another note when I briefly tried out the pickup with everything in series, it sounded like a Wal. It had a big thick tone with crisp top end.

First I'll have the pickup finished (it was supposed to be finished this week but I've come down with some awful respiratory thing). After that I'll try out various wirings. Seems silly to hard wire it all in series.

The preamp prototypes will come after that.
Click to expand...

It should still work fine in passive, correct?
 
#174
I think he already said "yes" to the passive question, in a sense...

I see advantages to having separate, adjustible buffers to even out string response. This can be accomplished with a single quad op-amp. From there, the 4 signals can easily be summed & then filtered (tone controls) with a more "conventional" type preamp.

If you want to go "whole hog" you could feed the buffered, summed signal into one of those schmancy ACG preamps that are made for Alan by John East (or design your own, of course)

That said, by offering 5 wires from the pickup, anyone can hook up, pretty much anyway they want... e.g. all series, all parallel (weak?), two parallel/two parallel/series (1and1 + 1and1), or two series/two series/parallel (1+1 and 1+1)...you get the idea :)
 
#176
PilbaraBass said:
I think he already said "yes" to the passive question, in a sense...

I see advantages to having separate, adjustible buffers to even out string response. This can be accomplished with a single quad op-amp. From there, the 4 signals can easily be summed & then filtered (tone controls) with a more "conventional" type preamp.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

If you want to go "whole hog" you could feed the buffered, summed signal into one of those schmancy ACG preamps that are made for Alan by John East (or design your own, of course)

That said, by offering 5 wires from the pickup, anyone can hook up, pretty much anyway they want... e.g. all series, all parallel (weak?), two parallel/two parallel/series (1and1 + 1and1), or two series/two series/parallel (1+1 and 1+1)...you get the idea :)
Click to expand...

One thing I would like it to able to do is switch to either alternate coils, or a split coil arrangement. I think that would be useful.

Some of the series/parallel combinations might make certain strings louder than the others.

The basic topography of my preamp will be input buffers to the twin-T filters in the original Wal preamp (low and high mid boost depending on the pickup) then to a low pass filter with variable Q for each pickup, then to an active mixing section, and then to the output which may have the pick attack switch, depending on how useable it is.

Once I have it bread boarded I'll see what works and what doesn't.
 
#177
Subscribed! :)

Very cool, and interesting stuff.

I had custom MM-sized Bartolini CB pickups made for my last Hanewinckel, and later added an ACG preamp (the 01, with filters for each pickup). It has a mahogany body, bolt-on maple neck, and the pickups are pretty much the same aperture and at the same locations as a Wal. It sounds very good, but not really anything like a Wal. Go figure.

Well, I shouldn't say it doesn't sound at all like a Wal. It can get fairly close at some Wal sounds (and it does an absolute ton of other sounds, because both pickups have left/right/both coil switching).
 
#178
geshel said:
Subscribed! :)

Very cool, and interesting stuff.

I had custom MM-sized Bartolini CB pickups made for my last Hanewinckel, and later added an ACG preamp (the 01, with filters for each pickup). It has a mahogany body, bolt-on maple neck, and the pickups are pretty much the same aperture and at the same locations as a Wal. It sounds very good, but not really anything like a Wal. Go figure.

Well, I shouldn't say it doesn't sound at all like a Wal. It can get fairly close at some Wal sounds (and it does an absolute ton of other sounds, because both pickups have left/right/both coil switching).
Click to expand...

The Bart Classic Bass MM pickups are great. I have one in a Warmoth that I slapped together and it sounds great.
 
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