My Spector Project

UPDATE:

My EMG Tech was sick or on vacation or something since Thursday. He's sending the part to me free of charge.

He mentioned on the phone that they have one specifically designed for the X series pickups I have that is made without a buffer. I'm hoping I get that one!

nice! this project is finally turning around for you... how did your brass nut turn out?

The nut is okay... for $17 bucks. They got the measurements correct except for the gauges I told them to put in. They put small gauge string slots so I've been using stainless steel bass strings like a wire saw and widening them a bit. The nut was rushed. Could be good or bad. They had my ordered shipping within a couple of hours but the job was not as round and beautiful as it was on their demo picture.

Got it from here.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/350464172459?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

The nut is okay... for $17 bucks. They got the measurements correct except for the gauges I told them to put in. They put small gauge string slots so I've been using stainless steel bass strings like a wire saw and widening them a bit. The nut was rushed. Could be good or bad. They had my ordered shipping within a couple of hours but the job was not as round and beautiful as it was on their demo picture.

I thought you gave it to that tool at GC to widen the slots?

No. Just the bass. He wanted to charge me 80 bucks to file them and I knew I could do it for free with old SS Strings.

Alright. It is finished. It's not perfect, but it's still awesome.

Once I got the correct part in from EMG, it only took a day for the Luthier to get it all installed.

Once home, I discovered that the company on eBay I bought the brass nut from did NOT follow my measurement. The nut was not long enough, it was too wide, and of course the gauges were too small. I took a variety of sandpapers to the nut and custom fit it to my neck.

The tone is amazing. It's the one for me. Powerful, burpy, and distinct. It's attack is so high. Every note, no matter how low, is crisp and individualized. The BQC Preamp has some small things about it I dislike. The volume control is weird. The volume is WAY low until you get it to about 6 or 7, then it gets really loud. Otherwise, I enjoy it. The 40dcX pickups steal the show. Most of the sound is coming from them.

The unique Spector growl has changed. Where it was 70% of the tone before, the other 30% being a clean tone, it is now only 40% of it's tone. You can still hear it in the background but the super driven pickups are forefront. I love this. I feel like no one else has this tone and it's all mine. The overall tone at very low levels sounds a lot like it's being played through a really large system at a stadium.

My luthier was not able to fit 2 batteries in the control port. I told him in a few months Im going to pay him to make me an 18v box/section because I really want to hear just how powerful this thing can be.

The pickup padding needs to be redone on the neck pickup. It's sitting at an angle because of the wiring. Slants towards the neck a little. One of the screws is stripped so, I will wait until we add the 18v box before I mess with it.

The brass nut is amazing. Helps the overpowered tone of the pickups and the growl of the Spector to sound like a natural, massive instrument. It sounds close to a large grand piano hitting a note. Its awesome. Totally want brass frets some day so this sound is match all over the fret board.

While working the brass nut, I ended up pulling up some paint near the truss-rod cover. No biggie though.

Would I do this again to another Spector? Probably not. I now want a high end Spector for sure, but my next one needs to be the pure Spector sound.

One con to the pickups... they are so hot, they pick up a lot of string noise. I'm having to use my fingers to mute all the strings. I usually don't have to do that on every string transition.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151017_141306.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_132521.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_141720.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151018_132551.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151019_155424.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/KaiNHooD/20151019_155506.jpg

I started playing around with the bass today and discovered some things.

1. The pickups still blow me away. This whole time I've been impressed with the sound of the bass o'naturale. I decided to plug it into my SansAmp combo and man did it sound like ass. The bass on it's own with a flat EQ does the work of rack preamps. This preamp/pup combo is amazing. There are 2 switches inside the control on one of the chips. These effect the frequency somehow. It's above my head, but I played with them and found out the both switches turned on make the bass sound the way it does. Both switches down make it sound like a jazz bass. It's crazy. I may want to figure out a way to have the control panel come off without the need of a screwdriver. Maybe a clip-on panel.

2. The action is too high. I've been playing with truss rod and the bridge the last couple of days and I just cannot find a good medium. I suspect that it is due to the height of the brass nut. I also suspect that I'm losing a tiny bit of sustain by not having the nut glued to the structure and just being held in place by the string tension. More stuff to fix.

To any bassists reading this. I highly advocate getting the BQC System and the 40dcX pickups. If you have a bass company that has a distinct sound you like, it play blend that tone into the EMG tone nicely. This is supposed to be ran at 18 volts and I'm running it at 9. Sounds amazing. I can honestly say it sounds like one of the best basses I've ever heard in my life. Top 5 for sure. The other 4 are all $4,000 - $9,000 basses. Seeing how this whole project cost me about $850, it's a steal. It does for the most part what I wanted it to do. I wanted Alex Webster's $4000 tone. I got his tone in but only about 20%. It DOES however still sound like a very high end bass.

On my thoughts of not doing this again... I take it back. I wouldn't do this with a Spector again probably as I also want the true Spector tone as well, but this combination of BQC and 40DCX I would do again, maybe on Fender Jazz to beef it up a little.

I decided to plug it into my SansAmp combo and man did it sound like ass.

I'm sorry, but I need to clarify whether you were complimenting or insulting the SansAmp, because the latter seems unlikely given how good a SansAmp is.

In comparison to the bass by itself, the sansamp combo was trash. No where near the range that the EMG setup has. I run an RBI and an RPM together in my rack at the same time. I used to like the options available but this Spector sounds so good on it's own I think I'm going to try and sell them soon.

The best SansAmp product I own is the Bass Driver DI pedal, the pedal version of the RBI. Sounds better than the rack version somehow.

In comparison to the bass by itself, the sansamp combo was trash. No where near the range that the EMG setup has. I run an RBI and an RPM together in my rack at the same time. I used to like the options available but this Spector sounds so good on it's own I think I'm going to try and sell them soon.

The best SansAmp product I own is the Bass Driver DI pedal, the pedal version of the RBI. Sounds better than the rack version somehow.

I am not a fan of a lot of bass processing if you have a great, active bass. Maybe just some gentle peak limiting if you are playing through a solid state system or if you have an ampeg or vintage fender tube amp, just pushing the amp for natural compression and maybe a little grit when you dig in. Anything else really takes away from the power of quality active electronics like EMG and Alembic. I don't think guitars benefit from these type of ickup systems, but basses definitely do and they are especially beneficial in heavy music and funk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBxmMWdZ_iQ

someone needs to create active bass electronics that run on phantom power...

You know I never understood completely what you meant about the knobs on the BQC system, but now that I see it, I wonder, couldn't you replace the knows or are they attached directly to the pots?

Also, sorry about the nut. You plan on leaving it like that?

You know I never understood completely what you meant about the knobs on the BQC system, but now that I see it, I wonder, couldn't you replace the knows or are they attached directly to the pots?

Also, sorry about the nut. You plan on leaving it like that?

I could buy some other knobs to replace them with, but since I tend to "set it and forget it" my basses, I don't mess with them enough to look for something that would match the Spector.

The nut I was planning to use student loans to have one made or perhaps buy one from Spector if I can. It works fine for now though so I may not mess with it. Adds to the memory of shaping it myself for a couple of hours. I'm getting penalized severely this year for taxes so I may not have much cash to spend for a while.

Have a kid and get divorced. Tax breaks abound LOL

yeah, but then there are the whole "paying for a kid" and "paying alimony" things. Forget that.

we don't have alimony in PA... there's something called spousal support but its very limited in % of income and duration... it doesn't even effect me right now since the divorce is up in the air a couple weeks ago I won a contempt hearing and have full physical custody of my son pending a final court decision on all this stuff... I am used to looking after myself and 1 dependent, so it ain't no thang, dawg

its really more fun than you would think paying and caring for a kid... for years I liked being completely unattached so I could have my bohemian, working musician's lifestyle, but its not as rewarding as being Dad

YMMV