Messages

I think too much.

Any opinions are welcome.

I'm looking at a bass on reverb. It is a Fender American Standard Jazz bass. I was about to pull the trigger on it and suddenly the seller ends the listing. So I sent him a message, and it turns out he had decided he was going to remove the neck and save it for a later project and sell the body only. He had already removed the neck, but he offered to reinstall the neck, or another neck if I desired, and to relist the bass so I could buy it.

I am looking for an all original bass, and he said the neck is original to this bass. When he offered other necks and told me he had removed the neck, I mentioned I was a little dismayed, and he replied:

"Ok, no problem. To be honest not sure why that would bug you, they're made to be taken apart and assembled, hence the bolt-on design. I can't imagine you'd find any Fender bass that hasn't been taken apart. In fact, any good luthier will do that for a setup. At any rate, keep me posted!"

Now I feel uncomfortable with this whole situation. First, that comes across a little bit condescending. Second, I think that most fender basses won't have had the neck removed unless it was damaged or needed major repair. Third, there is no reason to take the neck off for a setup and a luthier will agree.

I really wanted it originally, but this seems dodgy. I understand customizing your gear and I've taken guitars apart, but I don't know anything about this guy or his luthier skill. He just decided to remove a perfectly good neck off a perfectly good bass and sell it separately? Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Am I crazy? If I really like the bass, should I just blow off his BS and buy it? Should all this neck-removing business not bother me?

If anyone was curious how this resolved...
It turns out the enclosure lid was pressing down on the electrolytic on the edge of the board, which was causing it to make various kinds of crazy noise. It was kind of fun to play around with, honestly. I replaced it with a low profile capacitor and rearranged the guts a little to ease the pressure on the board and now it works fine.

Let me first say that I've been reading up on this topic for a couple days now, and yes, it is a common problem for fuzz face circuits to hum and play the radio when the guitar volume is down. My problem may be a more extreme symptom of the same problem, but I'm bringing it up here anyway.

A friend asked me to look at his fuzz pedal because he said it recently started making lots of wild noise when he turned his guitar volume off. Knowing that this was common with some fuzz circuits, I said I would look at it.

A bit of history on the pedal itself... It was built in 1997, by a local Austin amp guru named John Bessent. This was long before most of us were building pedals and way before you could have the parts delivered to your door. It was built on perf and appears to have had a jack replaced along the way and some wear and tear. It's not the neatest build I've seen, and until recently it was functioning just fine.

After giving it a good look, I concluded it is a very basic fuzz face clone, and actually has fewer components than any of the
layouts I've seen online. Upon testing the pedal myself... Wow, this really makes some noise. It goes in to full on oscillation, pitch shifting synth like madness when the guitar is off. It makes different sounds depending on pickup selection. Once it starts making noise, you can manipulate the pitch and/or frequency with the fuzz knob. It sounds more like a Machete than a fuzz face.

So, can I tame this thing and if so, how? Have the transistors gone out of spec or something?

Here's a pic and parts list:
Caps: 22uF, 2.2uF, 10n, 4.7nF
Resistors: 330R, 33K, 100K, 8.2k
Transistors: C1815 (NPN)

What sort of op amp are you using?

TL072
7660SCPA
Using all usual component values, no substitutions.

A little over 15 days.
I've been aloof lately.

I figured it was a perfect storm of mismatched tolerances or something like that.
It's not a big deal. I don't play at that setting, but I just stumbled across it and wondered what caused it.

At full gain, using neck pick up, my klone build is going into oscillation on some notes. Sounds fine on lower gain settings. This is not a setting I regularly use, but I still want to eliminate the problem.

Any thoughts?

It doesn't matter which pedal. I also have a chorus, flanger, and overdrives on my switcher. The overdrives make a very slight difference, but I can't hear the other stuff at all thru my AC30CC2.
What's blowing my mind is none of that should matter. The input signal to both amps is the same.

The thing that comes most immediately to mind is that maybe the Marshall has an input cap and the Vox doesn't. Really not much else can be different between the output of a pedal and the amplifier. So I'd check the output of the last pedal in your chain and make sure nothing has gone wrong, like a shorted output cap or something, because then you'd have DC on the grid of a tube, which would be one possible explanation of silence.

My output is coming from a pedal switcher, not from a pedal.

Now that's really weird.... sorry I don't have any straight ideas for this. I'm curious now what comes out of it.
Have you powered down both amps and pedal board and powered up again to see if any different. not that that assumption makes direct sense to me.
It's just what I do to my computer when something plays up, shut everything down including modem and power it up again.
I know I know, not the same thing, but maybe it helps...

I know, right?
What could possibly be different about my Vox? Could it be a ground issue somehow? Something with the input wiring? Some kind of phase cancelling? I am totally baffled.

I was running through my pedal board into my Marshall combo, all pedals working fine. I unplug my cable from the Marshall, plug it into the input on my Vox, and suddenly no more effect is heard on my signal. It is not a problem with the pedals, or pedalboard, or their power supply. It is not a cable. It's something weird with my Vox.
Anybody know what gives?

Here's a video:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/kpevVWymTRprtQhU8

Would trade parts or other pedal work for help. I have tons of pcb's, enclosures, IC's, etc.

So, my MF delay stopped delaying. After a conversation with the tech support at Moog, I know what needs to be replaced. It's a common problem, apparently, related to the power supply used. This pedal is very finicky about the power supply, and often craps out if you use a one spot type power supply. I actually sold it on Reverb to a guy who, upon receiving it, contacted me and said it didn't work. I know it worked when I sent it. Anyway, I need a resistor and maybe a capacitor replaced. I just don't have the tools or SMD experience to do it.

If anyone can help me out, shoot me a PM.

Just wanted to hear a member's thoughts on the pedal. I went to order one, but didn't know they stopped production already.
I really want to build one just to check it out. The demos I have seen sound pretty decent, but I doubt the circuit is anything ground breaking or unique.