Stingray preamp veroboard

[royster]

Does anyone know of a veroboard layout for a Musicman Stingray Bass Preamp. I found one but it doesn't look right. There seems to be some links missing

[col]

I asked this a while ago as well but got no answers directly. If you get one please will you post?

Col

[slacker]

Give us a link to the schematic and I'll have a crack at it.

[col]

I don't believe it! I couldn't find this last time I looked but here is a link to the scematic. Nothing difficult here to put on stripboard or vero. Probably more difficult to fit it into the guitar with the battery without re-routing. (I assume you're using it for an OLP like mine which BTW sounds great as it is).

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa211/bajaman002/BajaMusicmanStingrayBasspreamp.png

[slacker]

Here you go



The board's a bit smaller than a 9 volt battery, hopefully that's small enough to fit inside a bass somewhere.

[col]

I finally got to build this although I'm still waiting for the correct op-amp so I socketed a TL071, I also used a standard log pot rather than the reverse log one. Only tested outaide the bass so far. First impressions are that it has only around unity gain, I'll have to see if the proper op-amp makes any difference. With the wrong taper pot the treble control is very sensitive and it's all in the last few degrees.
;DWith everything on full, or perhaps with the treble slightly down it really transforms the sound of my passive OLP stingray and that trademark deep growl is there with the cutting treble and using the dpdt on my test rig to switch between plain and pre-amped it shows just how much difference it makes. I need to try this with by Ibanez Blazer too!

Well worth doing! I just need to fit it in the bass with the battery etc.

[urchin]

Definitely worth doing. I have a Sterling Ray34 which comes with the same 3EQ preamp as some Stingrays, but this preamp really brings it alive. The 3EQ always sounded too "modern" to me and lacks the grit of the 2EQ.

I used Alpha pots with correct values, but they (i.e. that damned rev log treble pot) were only available as mini PCB mount pots, which means they are much smaller than the holes in the control plate. They also have 6.3mm shafts, so I had to file them down to 6mm to get the old knobs to fit. The PCB is also a few mm too wide to fit snugly (it will only go in at an angle rather than flat) but now I have an excuse to build another

Sounds great though!

[myramyd]

Hey Guys,

How is the noise on this project? I have a Fender Marcus Miller Jazz Bass with pretty noisy electronics (Bass & Treble). Thought this might be an interesting project to swap in there.

J

[urchin]

Going only by ear, I can say that my home-brewed one doesn't seem to be any noisier than the factory one it replaced.

There's thousands of happy Stingray owners out there already using this preamp

[myramyd]

Cool man, thanks. I'll have to try it out. I have a dozen blank veroboards waiting for projects so this looks like a good one!

J

[slacker]

Just realised I didn't put the pot values on the layout, I'll fix that.

[col]

Just an update for anyone thinking about this. I replaced the TL071 with the correct opamp and it was slightly louder, unity plus around 10 to 15% (by ear). Still vastly improves the sound of my OLP. There are 1 or 2 fixes on line to increase the volume so I guess that this is down to the design of the circuit.
However, have also tried it with my old Ibanez Blazer and my Wife's Aria Pro 2 Magna and there isn't as much difference in the sound but there was still a slight overall improvement. It worked well with an Epi SG 6 string too!

[Jberg]

I've was wondering is the tl071, a tl071cn, tl071in, or tl071ap.  Also, if I wanted to change it to a bass boost/cut and a mid boost/cut instead of treble what parts would I change?  I know it's a capacitor but, which one? and would I have to change the pot too?

[Jberg]

Also what type of capacitors are those?

[Rob Strand]

The original circuit is treble boost/cut and bass flat boost.  It doesn't have the mid control.  The Stingray preamp with the mid-control is a completely different circuit.   (You might be able to wedge a mid control in there but you have to change the structure of the circuit - maybe something like the bartolini preamp with an inductor?)

On the early models the 1n8 and the 47n are polyester caps "green caps".   On later models these were changed to ceramics.  Incidentally many preamp samples have 2n2 and 100p instead of 1n8 and 120p.

If you change opamps you should pull the 1.5M resistor to pin 8 - this resistor serves a particular function on the LM4250 opamp and has no place being there if you use "normal" opamps like the TL071.