Wishbass assembled

Can’t say finished, as the finish is my job, but here it is:

Bridges need sinking or something as they are too tall for the through neck. Might replace with my Hipshot fancy jobs.

Another Sound City

Haven’t bought one for over a month, needed rectifying.

Different to the 120s, yay. also, being a bass amp, dual bass controls:

Back info and quad of GEC KT88

Serious iron:

Tidy gubbins:

Sparse preamp board and dual gang volume:

Gotta do all the cleaning stuff tomorrow, then fire it up, is apparently working, but doesn’t look like it has been cleaned in a while.

Not music gear, but still important

Latest restoration job. My throne. Needs a bit of woodwork and a re-upholstering. I’m covering the wood side, Lovely Jess is doing the upholstery. Hit me up if you want upholstery done and I’ll pass details on. Plan is wipe down with white spirit then danish oil, might figure some dye into the oil to darken it more.

Other carlsbro working

Got totally fed up of the PA 60, been told is is probably the plate resistors that need sorting, but having screwed it all back together, can’t face having it out again, so I boxed it and will take it up later.

Used the new workbench space to sort out my other Carlsbro, 100 watter that has been overhauled by Chambonino and Mammothsounds. They sent it back with the duff valves I sent it with, cause I was too tight to pay for new ones, and I had a go using it with them in and blew the fuse. So it got put back on the broken pile. Then I scored 8 of these for £15 on ebay:

Unknown maker really, but big bottle 6CA7 x 8 for £15, hard to go wrong, they were used, so I got my mate at Heron Music to test them, couple were duff, but enough to load up an amp left, so I jammed them in, being big they were a bit close together in the Carlsbro, and I forgot to take pics, but it fired up right and sounds great:

Shielding cavities

 

Found a roll of slug tape in the garage, which happens to be idea for shielding instrument cavities. I haven’t taken apart my first bass, the subject of many experiments, for a long time, so it was overdue. I also ground down a high fret and oiled the board again, getting nice and dark now. I ordered some heavy elixir strings but a medium set turned up, pretty frustrating, sent back and waiting on a replacement.

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The important thing around this stage is to remember where all the holes for the wires and screws are, otherwise it is really difficult to get it all back together again. Obviously I didn’t do this and has to poke about a bunch.

If this was someone else’s I’d use a bit more tape and make it all neater and more even, but it don’t function any different an this bass is pretty ugly after years of being carved up. Hope it still works once I plug it in.

Caps in the Carlsbro

Due to procrastinating loads on this, lost track of whether I’d bought the right cap and lost it or just forgot to order one, so had to Maplins it. Really need to find another components store, they are useless.

Anyway, here it is with new caps in, don’t like working with pcb, much stressier than turrets, with the flipping over to see if its the right thing, an poking the track off when you put the components legs through:

Now I look at the photo, its under the wire, but the top right orange cap, they are kind of oversize, so has to be a bit aware of shorting against other components, it looks really close to the wire attached to the board, and thus dodge, but they are actually connected underneath.

Cab fixed

Just fired it up. Initially the low driver basically making everything in my house vibrate made it hard to tell, but switching to using the sansamp paradriver with its more EQ options says the mid sounds much healthier now.

Eminence mid cone repair… hopefully

Left my BFM cab at the practice space, snug in its cover a while back. Turned up for a jam to find the cover missing. Plugged in to find it farted out loads. Scooping the mids sorted the fart, so it was the midrange gone. Was a while before I coul get it home, when I did, this is what I found:

 

Doesn’t look like a problem caused just by some idiot at the practice space, the speaker is far too deep in the cab to get a poking. I reckon it was there and closed up, and an idiot pushed it and it opened up again. Bit of a look round the net for fixy solutions, not big loss here if I fuck it, can score them for around £25. Silicone and tissue, leaving me with this:

Can see my mp3 player with bared ends headphone cable I used to test the drivers, safer for the midrange than my usual wire a bass amp up to things.

Tomorrow is bolt it back in and crank it up to check it is sorted. Neighbours are gonna love it.

I got my knot hole and bark inclusion