Custom electronic design?

[Paul Winkler]

I know that "back in the day", studios had most (all?) of their gear
custom-built, and guitar stomp-boxes of the mid-60s were sometimes
custom jobs. Those days seem to be long gone. Too bad, because I could
use one of those mad tinkerer types. Can anybody help me out with
this?

I'm a bassist. I live in brooklyn, NY. I've been looking for YEARS
for a compact (i.e. not a humongous heavy tube amp) way to get some
"tube-amp-like" overdrive into my sound. I've tried every "bass
overdrive" unit I could find and none of them do what I want. I've
tried most of the guitar units too, and still nothing is quite right.
I've owned at least 9 different stomp boxes (some for a day, some for
years) and all of them are/were problematic. The RAT is close in some
ways but it sucks out the bottom octave :-(

Many of these circuits are simple enough that with my very limited
knowledge I can *almost* understand them. But I just don't know nearly
enough to know how to realize the sound I hear in my head.

Any advice? e.g. do any of the "boutique" stomp-box shops do custom
work?

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

Paul Winkler > wrote:

> I know that "back in the day", studios had most (all?) of their gear
> custom-built, and guitar stomp-boxes of the mid-60s were sometimes
> custom jobs. Those days seem to be long gone. Too bad, because I could
> use one of those mad tinkerer types. Can anybody help me out with
> this?
>
> I'm a bassist. I live in brooklyn, NY. I've been looking for YEARS
> for a compact (i.e. not a humongous heavy tube amp) way to get some
> "tube-amp-like" overdrive into my sound. I've tried every "bass
> overdrive" unit I could find and none of them do what I want. I've
> tried most of the guitar units too, and still nothing is quite right.
> I've owned at least 9 different stomp boxes (some for a day, some for
> years) and all of them are/were problematic. The RAT is close in some
> ways but it sucks out the bottom octave :-(
>
> Many of these circuits are simple enough that with my very limited
> knowledge I can *almost* understand them. But I just don't know nearly
> enough to know how to realize the sound I hear in my head.
>
> Any advice? e.g. do any of the "boutique" stomp-box shops do custom
> work?


There are still some guys around who do custom work. I think the
problem is that you probably won't get the sound you want from a custom
job either. I mean, all the companies selling little boxes are trying
their best to get "big tube amp sound" in a smaller package. If you
don't like their results, who's to say you'll like the results of your
custom job? If it's possible, then it probably already exists. My
advice would be to get a tube bass preamp (Maybe an Ampeg SVP, though I
don't have any experience with it) and if it doesn't sound like you
want, then have it modified until it does. If you want the sound of
tube overdrive, use tubes. Though there's a good chane that what you
really want is the sound of an output transformer, or overdriven power
tubes, or a big speaker being driven hard, or a combination of all
these things. Some of them can be faked inside a small box, and some
can't. It takes a lot of experimenting with existing devices before
you can really know what you need in a new device.

ulysses

[area242]

"Paul Winkler" > wrote in message
om...
> I know that "back in the day", studios had most (all?) of their gear
> custom-built, and guitar stomp-boxes of the mid-60s were sometimes
> custom jobs. Those days seem to be long gone. Too bad, because I could
> use one of those mad tinkerer types. Can anybody help me out with
> this?
>
> I'm a bassist. I live in brooklyn, NY. I've been looking for YEARS
> for a compact (i.e. not a humongous heavy tube amp) way to get some
> "tube-amp-like" overdrive into my sound. I've tried every "bass
> overdrive" unit I could find and none of them do what I want. I've
> tried most of the guitar units too, and still nothing is quite right.
> I've owned at least 9 different stomp boxes (some for a day, some for
> years) and all of them are/were problematic. The RAT is close in some
> ways but it sucks out the bottom octave :-(
>
> Many of these circuits are simple enough that with my very limited
> knowledge I can *almost* understand them. But I just don't know nearly
> enough to know how to realize the sound I hear in my head.
>
> Any advice? e.g. do any of the "boutique" stomp-box shops do custom
> work?

I heard a guy using the Bass Pod and it actually sounded really good! Of
course, I don't know what else he had going on...but it's atleast worth a
shot. Go check one out at your local music store and see what you think.

[LeBaron & Alrich]

Paul Winkler > wrote:

> The RAT is close in some
> ways but it sucks out the bottom octave :-(

Tried any of Roger Mayer's stuff? How about Michael Fuller's Fulltone
stuff?

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

[P Stamler]

Find a Fender Deluxe amp, go through the straight channel rather than the
tremolo channel, unplug the Deluxe's own speaker and plug a bass speaker (8 or
16 ohms only) into it. Be surprised how good it sounds.

Needless to say, don't try this with the Fender's own speaker; it'll blow up.

Failing this, several years ago I reviewed a Sony multi-effects unit, two RU
high, four channels, I forget the model number (it was the $500 one, not the
multi-thousand one). It did a decent job of simulating the sound of a real bass
amp, somewhat overdriven. And it had a lot of tweaks to mess with.

Peace,
Paul

[Paul Winkler]

Justin Ulysses Morse > wrote in message >...
> There are still some guys around who do custom work. I think the
> problem is that you probably won't get the sound you want from a custom
> job either.

Thanks for the perspective. You make a convincing argument.

> I mean, all the companies selling little boxes are trying
> their best to get "big tube amp sound" in a smaller package. If you
> don't like their results, who's to say you'll like the results of your
> custom job? If it's possible, then it probably already exists. My
> advice would be to get a tube bass preamp (Maybe an Ampeg SVP, though I
> don't have any experience with it)

it's okay, but not really there ...

> and if it doesn't sound like you want, then have it modified until it does.

Ahhh, I should have thought of that. Thanks!
Maybe I should re-survey the existing preamp options and see if one
seems
likely to be a good platform for modding.


> If you want the sound of tube overdrive, use tubes. Though there's
> a good chane that what you
> really want is the sound of an output transformer, or overdriven power
> tubes, or a big speaker being driven hard, or a combination of all
> these things. Some of them can be faked inside a small box, and some
> can't.

Yeah, I know. I don't really care if it's "authentic tube sound", I
just
care if I like it. The solution might be tube-based or not, I'm
keeping an
open mind about that.

It takes a lot of experimenting with existing devices before
> you can really know what you need in a new device.

Yeah. I should sit down with some boxes whose saturation character I
like
and fiddle with pre and post EQ, which I've noticed has a *big*
effect. My intuition is that I might get closer
that way, and at least refine my idea of what it is that I want.


--PW

[Paul Winkler]

(LeBaron & Alrich) wrote in message >...
> Paul Winkler > wrote:
>
> > The RAT is close in some
> > ways but it sucks out the bottom octave :-(
>
> Tried any of Roger Mayer's stuff? How about Michael Fuller's Fulltone
> stuff?

Neither. Thanks Hank, I'll investigate those!

[Douglas Findley]

> >> Tried any of Roger Mayer's stuff? How about Michael Fuller's Fulltone
> >> stuff?

I have the Fulltone Bass Drive for use with my SWR Workingmans-15. I think
it's great. It doesn't suck the low end out. You can go to searing
tube-ish distortion. But best of all, you can also go from mild warmth to
slight crunch without destroying your sound. And you can also defeat it's
compression, so it's versatile for a stomp and sounds great.

Doug