Thursday 25 October 2012

Quickie - Harley Benton HBB200 (?)

Said to a work colleague I'd check out and fix her daughter's bass which I think is a Harley Benton HBB200 (active small body P & J)... odd beastie in that it seems to have passive controls and active pickups (there's a battery in the control compartment, but the pots and stuff are just regular pots and stuff and there's no PCB. If anyone can shed some light on this I'd be grateful).

Anyhoo, the problem was simply that the bass 'had stopped working one day', which sounded like would be either a bad solder joint or a bad pot. Got the bass home (and lost several doom points for carrying a hardcase covered in Spongebob Squarepants and Kerrang! stickers from Cardiff to Swindon) and plugged it in, no signal... twiddled the knobs and suddenly there was noise. Still not sure at this stage what the controls actually are so off comes the back and into the cavity. Pretty basic set up with two volume and two tone pots, along with the aforesaid battery... and at this point I realise the problem. The battery is mounted to a metal clip which is screwed to the side of the shielded cavity, and the tone pot for the P pickup has come slightly loose and turned so one of the contacts touches the battery clip presumably (happy to be corrected if wrong) meaning when the tone is on full the signal is being shorted to ground.

Tightened the nut on the pot, and moved the battery clip so if the pot comes loose again the only thing it can come into contact with is the insulated connector.

Job done.

Monday 8 October 2012

Fixing Eric the Destroyer

Took my Peavey Road Master Vintage Tube Series over to Mr. Foxen's to get a service.

First of his blog entries about it is here.

ION I'll post the final part of Fun With Scammers tomorrow.