an important musical lesson i have learned

Baliset

Baliset

guitar deity
Jul 31, 2002
7,498
5
38
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New England
www.maudlinofthewell.com
when you were like a kid like me you got attracted to the cool looking guitars and all the neat gadgets with like a gazillion buttons and it was always more, more, MORE. louder, faster, more distortion!

but now i am learning it is the subtle things that help make you sound great. the wood in the guitar, the way to fret notes and when it comes to gadgets you don't need a gazillion buttons.

for example Sam just built me a booster pedal. it has one button and one knob and yet it has turned everything around for me tonally. it has given me a component for my sound that i have been looking for and when i am listening back to the solos i recorded in the studio on friday with it i am honestly floored at how amazing it sounds.

thanks sam!

i will resume anatagonizing sam in t minus five minutes.
 
Just give give me knobs for bass, mid, and treble, and I'm set. Oh yeah, and maybe volume. :)
 
I am a very new musicians but when I shopped around for my bass I found that basses with a lot of features are basically there to compensate for the lack of wood tone in them. They just feel dry, while the bass with good wood and lot of body tone just have this warmth and booming sound that it just great. That is exactly why I chose the bass that I did, even though it is not that expensive it just resonates when you play with it. Gadgets will never replace good wood and good construction.
 
What kind of bass did you get, Mindspell?

I shunned even active electronics until I got my Ernie Ball Sterling, but they give me just the tweaking I need, and they don't sound like shite.
 
I still love my Bich 10-string with the active electronics even though it's totally over the top.

really all I need is an SG or a LP with a humbucker in the bridge and a volume knob and I'm good.
 
single coils definitely have their place, but I'm more of a rhythm player so I need the lowend and body. or p90s work too.

being said, I still loved my telecaster when combined with an Orange amp. it got a great weezer tone.
 
I have a Godin BG-5, it is a nice compromise between the expensive bass (1500$+) and the cheap one (<500$). Bolt-on all canadian maple, with rock maple center (sounds trivial but makes a lot of difference). Active electronics, seymore duncan custom bassline pickups (meaning that they are manufactured by SD specifically for this bass). The neck is unfinished and silky smooth and plays great. I play basically flat on my preamp and amp because I just get great sound out of it.

gtrbg.jpg
 
Falsetodd, I am looking at building myself a compressor ( I do have electronics experience but haven't looked at the electronics of a guitar or bass yet) and one thing I wondered is if the inputs/outputs were all that different for a bass compared to a guitar. I see a lot of schematics for guitar compressors but almost none for bass so I wondered if it would work just to build a guitar one for my needs. I don't see why it wouldn't work because with a compressor/sustainer your are not really modifying your output grid or am I talking smack?
 
The only issue I can think of off the top of my head is that the various tone-shaping caps might need adjustment to better fit the freq. range of the bass. This is somethign you can just play with either while breadboarding the thing (if you plan to do that, might be a good idea if you're not sure how well it will work). It might also be worth looking into the typical output (voltage wise) of a bass versus a guitar, and also the relative output impedances of each. In general, though, I suspect that aside from some frequency range issues, you'll be fine. I imagine you'll want to lay the compression on a little thicker for a bass than a guitar, but this should be easily adjustable by trimpots or panel controls....
 
I was looking at sites like www.generalguitargadgets.com for ideas and such and saw that they actually sell PCBs of the projects they do. I think I am going to buy one of those and try it since it is really cheap. I'll play around with that and we'll see how it goes. I imagine this should work pretty well. During my reasearch I saw a bunch of pedals that were made both for bass and guitar and didn't seem to have anything particular for switching from one to the other. I imagine that the voltage and impedance issue might be moot if you use your effect loops on your amp? Am I wrong again...

I will definitly breadboard it beforehand, I'll play around and see how it goes...

Thanks
 
re: effects loops - no you're not wrong, unless the amp is really sketchy I would imagine the impedences of the effects loop will work fine.

Which GGG compressor are you going to go for? I've built the Orange Squeezer - I like it, but it does not have the type of compression control you'd want on a panel mount. This might work fine for you, just set the compression level and volume on the trimmers and leave it that way forever...Check out tonepad.com for some other options, there's also the Ross Compressor which I've heard good things about...

GGG is great, though, if you just want to get something built pretty quickly. The layouts are extremely easy to read, and the PCBs are not too densely packed, so you don't have to be as careful about your soldering.
 
They have Orange Squeezer, Ross and Dynacomp compressor boards (actually, the Dynacomp and Ross are exactly the same board, just slightly different component and wiring). The squeezer seems really simple stuff and by the same token does not have much options to work with. The Ross and Dynacomp has a compression level and Sustain level control so I imagine it is a bit more versatile than the Squeezer. I might start with the Squeezer as a practice and the go on for the Ross as a more intermediate project.

I will check tonepad to see what I can find there.
 
I forgot that GGG now has Ross / Dynacomp projects. I don't think tonepad has any other compressors of note besides those. That would rule if you bought boards from JD (GGG) - he provides a great service and is a nice and helpful guy. Same deal with Francisco from Tonepad (who also sells PCBs by the way...)
 
About pedal-constructerating in general... How hard would they be to make for someone like me that only has a very basic knowledge of electronics? Basic as in, I took an electronics class in high school but dropped out after a couple weeks that year (cuz im 2 kool 4 skool lolol) and I sorta forgot what I learned (but I could easily relearn).
 
i started a year ago with no knowledge of electronics whatsoever, and dmy knowledge now is still very sketchy in many areas. Go to www.generalguitargadgets.com and www.diystompboxes.com to get started. It's not too tough to get into, but you have to be super patient cause you'll fuck up a lot and shit won't work and you won't know why at first...Also, it's not a cheap hobby generally speaking, although there are people who do it on the cheap by salvaging and improvising things that are normally expensive...
 
Cool, thankee.

About how much does it cost to make an average pedal, not counting any fuckups? I'm not looking for a major hobby, per se, but I just want to make maybe a few cool effects and a few basic pedals (distortion, compression, etc).
 
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