September and the gear hunt continues

so this month I have NOT bought a new guitar ( can you believe it )?

in fact I just sold off 5 of them to fund car repairs and another spare mackie 1400i amp so I can retire the SHS in my rack to my basement.


the only "NEW" thing I have this month of Sept is I now have a pair of mackie 1400's, and I finished the mods on my lefty Charvel.

before (stock):


during:


FINISHED now has the j2000 pre in the thing

I added the blend knob instead of the Gibson switch instead because I had a couple stacked 250k pots laying around......


stay tuned because September is still not over...lol

ok new toy.....

I took a chance for 15 bucks shipped on a Chinese 2 band preamp to put into my donor bass since I ripped everything out to put in the lefty.

well I honestly thought I would install this thing and just laugh and throw it away....NOPE!!! works perfectly, and I did a A/B compare with my other bass, the tone is so close, a little EQ tweeking is all it took, no more buzz than before, and I am so delighted, that I asked the seller to sell me 2 more. I got his last one in stock, so I told him I would either wait till he tells me he has more, or just buy them, and w.a.i.t for them to come off backorder.

more to come

Groovy!

groovy?...perhaps, but I'm ALWAYS looking for cheap substitutes for things that are generally very expensive. Sure a 200.00 pre may be better/quieter/last longer, but for what I do...hahaha I'd rather go with c.h.e.a.p

Cheap? Oh yeah. That's how I roll!

Speaking of being cheap (meaning me), ever find any old humbuckers laying around, Mike?

theres only 2 things i dont like about that preamp ........

that 1/4" jack (in the box). i hate those things. not that they are bad or dont work ... they work fine for me. replacing them is difficult ... and they take up valuable space sometimes. furreal ... what was wrong with the good old 1/4" standard with the friction tab for the positive? that what i use. i guess if i had this preamp and was so compelled ... iddid take me 5 minutes to solder on.

it sez right on it made in china. theres some dude overseas pumping out 500 of these a day while the american craftsman equivalent is waiting in line for unemployment compensation proclaiming, "they took my job!" .... ("doo, doo - dooh!", funny southpark voice).

truth is, the instrument market is flooded with products from asia ... even from the american companies. nothing wrong with that stuff except for it showing that americans need to step it up a bit.

I will agree with everything Mike but that same POS pre would be 50.00 here if it said USA for the same board epoxied in the same housing with the same soldering job and pots....I won't go into the debate about USA-vs-China in labor and wages because we all know that the US will never be able to keep up to Korea/Japan/China in that respect but maybe it would have the better jack or CTS pots

made in usa would have only meant the same thing with a different worker assembling it, and 6x the price

and I bought 2 more...the last 2 he said he had for a couple months beyond the ones already on ebay still for sale.
the seller IS Chinese, as I could tell by our texts back and forth when I was asking about more...hahahaha

one of the scary things he said was he already sold at least 500 of those things to buyers.......
HMM???? that sounds like a lot of basses somewhere OEM'ed with that pre.

He also sells the 3band version for under 20 bucks!!

the jackholes in my charvels are HUGE and the box slid in there with a nice gap so it had no size issue going in the hole.

well ... heres the rub about manufactured in the u.s.a.

it needs to be better, quality, durable, handcrafted workmansip. americans desire (require) a better rate of pay. if the product is gonna cost more ... it has to be better than the cheap stuff thats manufactured in china. its been my experience in the last 10 - 15 years that americans have gotten a bit lazy in their quality (esp in their musical instrument manufacturing). there are still the boutique and custom shops that put out beautiful products (ken smith, MTB, warmoth and a whole buncha garage shops that no one has heard of) but you'de better be ready to be able to pay for it.

the products i manufacture at my company cost 3X more than foreign companies products ... and our customers demand the quality and custom options that we give them.

not that cheap stuff thats manufactured in china is a bad thing. preamp for $20 - $30 ... awesome! if you dont require boutique, custom or vintage stuff or cant afford it ... go china! this makes stuff affordable to so many more people. truth is with electronics ... if just one part is vintage and the rest of the chain is sub par, the complete package is sub par.

cheap stuff thats made in china that has an american name brand on it and its trying to be sold at its american handmade equivalent cost ... i got a big problem with that. korea fender jazz basses are nice ... but not $700 nice. i hate when i have to buy from american companies and get shoddy product or bad customer service ... for the price i'm paying, theres no excuse.

let's say this Mike, Cheap Chinese or Expensive Agulera (sp?) it works

I took the Chinese pre out of the donor bass on Friday and put it in the lefty and used it Sat night at the show because on Friday as I was wrapping everything up, the jackson pre was really scratchy on the vol pot. ( naturally the one soldered to the board ) and I said nope no good and swapped it out. Honestly I could not tell you if I could hear any difference in tone between the 2 out of the same bass because of my rig setup and EQ settings. Sounded the same to me

here's a pic of me using the new toy under gigging conditions:



let me tell you about the rigs the other bands used.....so you can have a good Monday laugh.

first band the guy used a carvin power amp thru a couple pedals thru an old 2x15 ampeg cab like I have ( his was missing the front grill but was... the same as mine ) and a green fender p-bass -- sounded great but that's why I stopped using mine...too heavy as I watched 2 people struggle bringing it inside and on stage.

second band was a ampeg v4 or whatever common head that is and a 8x10 ampeg cab and a squier junk-bass..total mud and crummy ( well you add up a squire no pedals and an ampeg head and you got nothing to begin with ).

3rd band was us, and I had a lot of people asking me what the hell I was using because of the tone..I used the 4x10 and the mackie. sounded great to me and to the audience thru the PA subs...I was actually told to turn down after our first song because it was very loud and I didn't realize I was drowning out the guitars.

last band was the headliner called Z02 from N.Y.C. he had a nice green spectorNT and a hartke amp and 4x10 and 1x15 hartke cabs with the silver cones like my transporter..sounded great and very midrangy like spectors are famous for and as a special bonus he let me jam on it for 5 minutes while everything was at a pause at the show before we broke our stuff down and they went on stage. GOD I WISHED I HAD A LOT MORE MONEY to spend on NICE $$$ basses sometimes

and the cool thing was he also said how nice mine sounded, and I let him strap it on flipped and because the E was now on top, he was just laughing his butt off because he never could do that before and jammed on it thru his rig while I was tearing down the rest of my stuff....

ampeg ... i dont get it. i've played a few ampegs and even went out and bought one of those v4's (or whatever they are). the majority of them have that rubber bandey mid tone punching thru or are so much low end tone its all muddied up. i've played a few that sounded great ... like the 20W b-10 combo thingey i was using at the audition last week (it was like 250 years old!) but most of them i dont like the tone. i just want the tone sharper and brighter. i think people either like that tone, dont know or just buy the name.

yes ... 2X15's are heavy. i love the low end i get outta the one i built, as well as the ability to not loose low end with distortion at high levels. i am gonna build another one with neo's and MDF / thinner plywood / weight cutting materials so that will be easier to get around, but unless its necessary (large venue) the heavy beast will stay in the basement.

i'm glad the chiggidy chong the chinee chicken preamp works well for you ... good find!

I should get the other 2 I ordered in a couple weeks....you wanna try one out if you have a spare bass to mess with?

if you like it and want to buy it cool, if not you can unsolder it and send it back.

if you liked it and just wanted to keep it I would just charge you what I paid ...10 bucks and ship to me was basically 15 bucks.
I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but I would value your "opinion" of the ching-chong pre in a totally different bass, different pickups, different playing style etc because what works for me may not work for anyone else...

think about it

EricHaven wrote:

Cheap? Oh yeah. That's how I roll!

Speaking of being cheap (meaning me), ever find any old humbuckers laying around, Mike?

yes in fact I even found an old white covered EMG with a broken side tab guitar pickup. the tab is there I just didn't glue it on.

tonight I'll take some pics of the black passive and that white emg and you can let me know what you want to do after you see them.

now here's an area where i lack knowledge .........

passive vs. active pickups with a pre amp.

all the basses i have right now are passive.

the p bass has a dimarzio split p and an economy humbucker at the bridge. the split p is 19.16K and sez it has an "output" of 250 (i dont know what that value is ... dimarzio's maybe?). the economy is 16.5K.

the tarus has washburn passive jazz pickups. i love how this bass sounds and dont think i'de wanna change any of the electronics except maybe upgrade to q tuners in the future.

the washburn b-10 has a dimarzio split p. if i put this preamp in something iddid be this.

active pickups have a lower resistance.

if i drop a preamp in a bass with a high resistance pickup (like the split p) would it be too much output for my amp? (like +40dB ... kerpow!)

also ... if you'de sell me one of these cheap chuggidy chong preamps to mess around with ... do you want a bartolini one? http://www.bartolini.net/information/harnesses/hr_5_2.htm i've had it in two separate basses with ibanez pickups and semour duncans and didnt like either ... went the passive road ... now i got no use for it.

the jackson p's all are 11.5k and the jackson HB's are 19.5 both coils engaged....I dunno, I've yet to overload the signal chain....
the things are so easy to swap in and out, when it comes to playing with things that you can put back to OEM without damage or frustration I say sure....
that bart pre has 5 knobs because of the mid control...my Chinese Warrior bass is not important, and on that one I could drill 2 more holes and mount it.
this is all an "experiment", and what works will work, what won't, won't As soon as I get the next batch, I'll get your addy.

yeah ... your right. swapping stuff in and out is easy ... so its its not worth not giving it a shot.

lemme know and we'll have an electronic swap out fest.

well the backorder on the preamps has been removed and they shipped them to me yesterday. since they are in HongKong, it should be another 10-15 days before I see them, but at least they are on the way now

when I get it Mike, I'll ship you one to try out for sure, cause the other one is gonna go into my pink lefty which is also going to the luthier in JohnstownPA to have the HB put into it ( no Kahler on this one ).

unless YOU have the time to rout out the j hole for the HB? if you do I'll give you the cash instead.

i mean ... i guess i could do it. i dont think its so much the time iddid take me to do it, but how long it would take to get it across PA and back. the rout would take me ... eh ... two nights tops.

and we are gonna be in the burg oct 21st - 23rd. (still looking for interesting stuff to do)

that is true in 2 weeks and if I can swing it I could give you everything, including the preamp if i get them by then and a box to send it back in and whatever the total costs was i'd paypal it. I am getting very used to the different p/hb compared to the p/j and really like the difference so the pink one deserves the spare hb now and i'll throw the Chinese pre in it and finally use it in DGCF and leave the white one in EADG because the kahler sucks for 10 second re-tuning, as I was just going to have the hb put in my black and maple righty and sell it as a custom.


I emailed a guy who has a green sunburst carvin lb75 lefty for 200, and hopefully he will email me back this weekend and tell me he has it.

hopefully I'll be available those days and the weather will be good so we could check out something at the alterBar or the hardRock. ( ha no, not an all nighter ) if you were coming the last weekend of the month my band would be playing and you could come check us out, but our next show is the 30th at a private haloween party at a moose club paying 600, and I would give you tickets for the thing


uh, yep....with a new guitarplayer -- ya the lefty guitarist quit, and we don't hate him, we saw his situation. We only canceled one gig, and this one on the 30th is sill 3 weeks away, and we have a friend who wanted to be in the band in the first place giving it a shot on sunday and are busting our butts trying to find someone that knows a lot of our stuff already to jump in and go so we dont lose on the 600.

yes, i really like the range of a split p and HB set up too ... but i'm discovering the limitations and noise from a passive set up. the blend cut drives me nutz. the pre amp set up is the way to go.

yo! that carvin is a sweet bass!



$200? how come i dont find stuff like that? i hope you get it. i've been looking at carvin basses lately (again). i've been looking at new custom shop ones cuz i doubt I'd be able to find a used one with the options that I'd want. the new ones are quite expensive. then again ... i got tools and skills.

yeah ... we'll exchange #'s and set up a meet-up time and place.

see what i mean mike? where am i gonna find this?!?!?!



doing some research is fun sometimes.

yes, carvin did offer basses with kahler trems stock back in the day.

YA HE ALREADY SOLD IT BUT HERE IT "WAS"

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/msg/1992838031.html