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Hamer Bass Head

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Everything posted by Hamer Bass Head

  1. I'm not going to argue with you, apparently I didn't adequately describe what I had in mind in my first post. My reasoning for having 2 pa-2's (or whatever buffer/preamp you build or decide to use in it's place) was to allow a standard 4 knob layout; similar to a les paul or something along that line. The emg pickups require 25k pots. so on the active neck you would have 2 volumes and 2 tones..... Now in order to get around adding 4 more pots for the same functionality on the passive neck, I suggested using 4 25k ganged pots like emg provides for panning. If you remove the little wire jumper from the top to the bottom sections of the pots, it leaves you with 2 ganged volume controls if you wire them correctly. That leaves changing the impedance of the passive pickups. That's where the pa-2's or whatever you use in their place comes in. If you use a switch after a single pa-2 you won't be able to have the separate volume and tone controls for each pickup on the passive side. In retrospect I now realize that the 3 toggles would probably be a good idea anyway, as guitarists like to flip the switch and go while my bass-sided mind doesn't mind using the volume controls to alter my pickup selection. But I would wire the first switch to select between the passives (using the output of the corresponding half of the ganged tone controls and then repeat with the other half to the pickup selector for the active pickups. Adding the third switch from the outputs of the first two allows selection of either active neck, passive neck or both. OK you might be able to rig something cheaper or maybe something completely different but I fail to see how it could be done without a whole lot more controls or losing the volume/tone control functionality for each pickup. Oh btw...I was reading the whole thread from the beginning and realized the guy wants another pa-2 on the emg side for a booster....maybe he can get a volume discount?
  2. The key to what pickups to use is in what you are willing to do to accomodate them: In metal; strats, les pauls sgs and lord knows what else are popular. And to complicate things the gibson side of the house can have humbuckers, mini humbuckers or p-90's. All are great pickups but you can't plug a p-90 equipped guitar into a amp set up for a great humbucker sound and expect it to sound great. At the risk of being lynched for heresy something with programmable presets like a vetta or a mesa triaxis would make quick work of this problem but it doesn't come cheap and there are compromises involved. I like to think of guitars (and basses) as golf clubs... there are different variations for different situations. Personally if I had a lot of emg equipped guitars I would go completely in the opposite direction and go with mini or p-90's just for the sake of variety. Of course if you don't want variety; put the same pickups you have in the other guitars.
  3. Good shot, but off the mark. Pay attention, so I don't have to repeat myself - Page drank Jack Daniels, I'm a single malt man and whatever you've been indulging in has given you delusions of grandeur. A dual concentric control is the same as 2 pots, from every standpoint except the number of holes in the guitar top - if you're obsessed with a "cleaner" control layout, that's fine, but it's your obsession, and while your solution may be "pretty", it's far from simple. It's still not necessary to use 2 PA-2s, since you can use one single preamp after the passive pickups' volume pot(s) for the same results. Beyond that, the only differences between what I proposed and your "superior design is that you specified dual concentrics and neglected to include a neck selector switch (which was , incidently, specified in the original poster's spec). As for switch popping, a simple 10Meg pulldown resistor on the PA-2's input will eliminate that problem, if it is indeed a problem, without any audible tone loss. Since except for your misplaced (and redundant) PA-2 and the omitted neck selector switch, both solutions are virtually electrically and sonically identical, I maintain that my circuit is simpler. As for the issue of dual concentrics vs two discrete pots, that's a strictly cosmetic issue and a purely personal choice, so it doesn't interest me at all. As one gigging bass player (and a husband, and a grandfather) to another, you obviously know more than a little about how this stuff works, and it's always good to have another qualified solderhead around, but you might want to ramp the attitude down just a little, since it's not winning you any new friends around here. But that's just me, and I can be safely ignored, so long as you don't break the rules, so consider it a suggestion. I am sorry if my attitude offends anyone... but first off I never said my way was the only way; and secondly as someone new here how am I supposed to react to your first reply to my first post? I thought it was a little more than condescending in tone. My suggestion to use the pa-2 came partly because I am familiar with the product and partly because I assume someone who is asking how to wire this guitar up in the first place probably has no shot of building the circuit needed himself. Something "off the shelf and readily available seems to me to be the ticket. As far as my suggestion of concentric pots..... In the 7 basses and 2 guitars I presently own there's one on a fretless jazz for active bass and treble but that's it. I don't like them myself, but given the choice of using those or making extra holes in the top of a nice axe (I'm guessing the beast in question is a labor of love) I would use them at least until I decided I needed something else. It's a lot easier to drill a hole through a top than it is to hide an unwanted one. I am not here to break yours or anyone elses balls, but I thought the beauty of this type of forum was the exchange of ideas.... My "delusions of grandeur" nonwithstanding; I think we have differing points of view and rather than banging heads we can probably provide a number of good opinions on the topics we respond to. Perhaps we can all provide answers without snide comments or smugness and help each other as well as anyone else here out with ideas... I
  4. looking back at this maybe you're right; but to get the volume/tone control flexibility that Jimmy Page has on his you would need: 2 each 500k for volume for the passives 2 each 500k for the tone controls of the passives 2 each 25k for the emg volumes 2 each for the emg tone controls 3 toggle switches.... and the pa-2 k.i.s.s. indeed.......... but you're right...do whatever you want. maybe you should lay off his jack daniels when designing guitar circuits!
  5. I agree completely...and the only thing that sounds worse than unwanted string noise is unwanted string noise transposed an octave up.
  6. 3 selector switches? + 4 pots?!!! this thing will look like an aircraft cockpit when we're done! I am looking at this from a couple of perspectives: as a musician who gigs, and doesn't want to cut holes all over an instrument... especially considering the time and/or money I've already invested (hardware alone for a doubleneck isn't cheap!) as a father and husband with a job who doesn't have unlimited time to complete a project (hence using emg pre-made stuff rather than etching my own board, hunting for components, trying to make it as silent as possible....you get the idea.). Anyway here's the simple and relatively pretty solution Wire the emg's, 1 to each of the upper portions of 2 concentric 25k volume controls. Next wire the passives each to the 2 emg pa-2 preamps. wire the output of each of those to the lower corresponding part of each concentric volume control. I assume you want tonal flexibility so connect the outputs of the passive's and active's volumes to the corresponding connections on a third concentric control (active upper, passive lower) and add the capacitor you want to use for each. Wire the output of the tone controls to 1 three-way switch, then onto the output jack.... 4 holes only, if you want to change something you won't have unsightly "ventilation-holes" all over the top of your guitar...and you can go to the store, get the parts you need and put this together and test it in an afternoon. Oh and by the way it works. I own a doubleneck hamer bass and although it's running full active now, in the past the 8-string neck was passive , and several of my other basses are hybrid passive/active circuits like this. Good Luck, Bill
  7. read my reply again... you need 2 pa-2's; not 1 for the active and one for the passive side.... the active's are already active. you need 1 for each passive pickup to be able to bring them to the correct output and impedance to use them in the rest of the guitar's circuit, using the standard emg-ready 25k pots. also by doing it this way you won' get a nasty pop when switching between the pickups as the preamps are before any switching.
  8. if you use the emg pa-2 preamp on the output of each passive pickup, you can then wire the rest the same as if they were all active. you can even hardwire them to on instead of having the switch taking up space in your control cavity. If it was me, I like control of the mix between neck and bridge pickups so I'd do that, and then use the emg (or similar) 25k pan pots as the volume controls disassemble them and file the nub for the center detent off. from there to the tone controls ( you may want to repeat the previous step for those as well and finally onto the neck selection switch. The pickup selector you are referring to isn't up to the job, you'd need more or less a dual switch (double sets of poles) and I have no idea where you'd get them. maybe you could use 2 minis?
  9. hi I'm new here... I remember reading somewhere that you can get a linear taper pot to act like an audio taper by adding a resistor across 2 of the lugs..... years ago I was sharp and probably figured this out for myself. anyone have any clues?
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