Fender STR-VC BTP

I still believe it’s better to judge the finish and construction quality of any guitar model on case by case basis. By that I mean the core parts which are the body and the neck (where it presents them). Exclude the electronics and hardware as those are normally source external or from a diff dept. of the company.

I noticed every Japanese Strat I've setup from past to present has one noticeable thing in common. All their necks are superbly constructed. I am not talking about the neck profile, just the way they feel on hand and visual. They are stiff straight without hump or bump.

I beginning to suspect that the Japanese knows more than anyone else about refined drying woods method of neck production. We all aware the Japanese has a well-known discipline culture.

 This Nippon Gakki built axe is called the STR-VC. Before I pursue to write about the work, I have to confess that I didn’t know Japanese Strat has many variety. I had all this while suspected that Corona Boss had suppressed all out of the box idea from their Japanese counterpart. Perhaps it’s applicable to the hardware’s not the finish offerings. “VC” stands for Vari-Colour?

 This STR-VC came in with some electronics issues. The volume, first tone and 5 way switch has some crackle. I could clean them but recommended replace instead. The owner foresees this, agreed to it. I told him that I would do a setup but he was uncomfortable with that.

He said that he had set the guitar his himself and was happy with it. I was stump by his remark. Never in my tech life has anyone dares to stop me doing what I’ve been doing. That even made my anger light turned yellow from green. I left the setup subject aside and focus to explain the parts I’m going put in.

When the owner left, I immediately replace the faulty components. I couldn’t wait to string it up, I was curious about his setup. To my surprise, his setup is in fact better than what I have in mind. This is the first time a customer had one up me. I couldn’t re do what’s been done by him. For a few minutes I felt I was the customer and he’s the tech. Hehe.

When the owner came to collect his guitar, I compliment him and told I didn’t change anything he had tweak prior. Thumbs bro but please don’t quit your day job or else I’ll be working for you. Hehe.

Stump

yustech

Fender P Bass 1978

Another bass,another job. Day by day, month by month. I'll fix every instrument in this country as best as I could.
This vintage 1978 P Bass had suffered a butthurt syndrome for an unknown while. The neck angle is quiet off making the saddle un adjustable. I noticed it had a fretwork work done to it, fairly recent I believe.

The fretwork is excellent in fact better than mine if I may say. Thumbs up. The truss rod nut had max out denying anymore movement. The neck is quite ridiculously bowed. I wonder why this was not a priority before the refret work commenced. In my opinion a refret is considered redundant if the neck straightness issue is not resolve. What ever setup work came after would be merely guesswork and unsatisfactory to the paying customer.

I disassemble the bass and found some shim in the neck pocket. First of all, there's nothing wrong with putting shim in there to correct a neck to the right angle. It's perfect normal and applies when there's a need to do so. However, on this bass the targeted elevation was done in reverse as though it was done to clear many bad fret buzz after 12th frets onward.

To resolve the butthurt syndrome which the main cause of this mess, I applied the same solution like I done to another bass in the past. Some of you may remember that post not many moons ago. After that the neck were straight enough to allow predicted comfort play. As I anticipated, there were many bad fret buzz that needed fret leveling.

The pickguard looks DIY. I filed a semi circled clearance near the truss rod nut so I/anyone don't need to take out the neck to apply any adjustment at the truss rod nut. My work does look crude but it serves the purpose. This bass now plays well and will love anyone for long time.

I cannot tell you much about the pickup. It says Dimarzio on the cover but from the inside I don't believe it is. But that's just my hunch. I guess that ends this repair journal for today.

Thank you
yustech

Jay Turser JT-410

I remember this brand and model. We used to sell a bunch 12 years back. I think the selling price at that time was MYR250 or so. Yes, I did in many occasion, purposely miss pronounced it as 'Jay Turner'. My apology to Jay Turser company. To be honest, personally, Turner sounded better than Turser. Turser sounds jewellery related. Turner sounds quick, articulated and guitar affirming. By the way, any info about this model had been lost to posterity.

Anyway, this one was bought by my colleague in 2006/07(sold to the current owner in 2009), it had some light to bad fret buzz here, there and everywhere. I didn't know how to refret or level frets back then so I had set its height so just to clears the buzz area (especially the worst one). As I recalled, there was frequent stringing/un-stringing before I got the shim thickness right. You could snap the wounded G string if you wind and unwind too many times. I did have some stewmac tool then, not for fret job though but barely enough for guitar setup. I laughed every time one of my old repair work comes to mind.Hehe.

This time I made sure this JT/410 received the proper treatment it long overdue. I leveled the problematic frets, took out my old saddle daddario shim, sanded and re radius the saddle top, and re-strung it with elixir bronze 10-47. The guitar now plays better than it did 12 years ago.

I wish I could confront and correct all my pre 2011 shoddy or half done guitar/bass/amps/pedals work. That would be like replaying and unlocking secret medals in 'Namco Ace Combat 2'. To tell you the truth, this work had left a better feeling and some emotional achievement inside. What a day this was.

Old hard mission completed.

Yustech

Laney VC15-110

The complaint of this tube amp is it had lost a lot of treble. This is my first time confronting a Laney VC15-110.
I plug in a guitar to hear closely what was described by the owner. I pushed the bright switch. Yes, it does engage and disengage accordingly. I played with the treble and tone knob. Yes, they both responded accordingly. According to my ears, no noticeable treble lost so far. However, there are trailing popping sound when the reverb is open. The more the reverb, the more the popping sound trailing and decaying after. There's no pop disturbance when the reverb is shut off. Cold solder perhaps?

I open it up to do some spot soldering. There are three PCB board inside. A tone control board, a tubes preamp and power supply board, and digital reverb board with send/return, speaker output occupying a little portion of it.

There's a lot of connectors coming and going between a three PCB. I bet under operation, the electron in circuit must be very busy going back and forth. Accident could happen? Most of the connectors has the same amount of pins. To avoid miss plugging any of the connectors to the wrong receptor, I mark them with marker pen. Not all, only those that I know I would plug them wrong if I didn't.

I decided to do a full soldering instead. I saw a lot of potential cold solder on tone control and the tube board. The reverb PCB receive some solder here and there.

I also did a full PCB clean up and nipping all long leads/legs protruding out on all three PCB's. The picture below was before nipping. There was no sign of treble lost as far as I tested it after. Sound exactly the same as before. Hmmm..My ears is functioning well I hope. Digital reverb still has pop though.

Conclusion.

Construction/Assembly wise, I am deeply dissatisfied with the screw used to fasten all the tube sockets to chassis. I don't think I've seen tapered screws like shown. I know they exist in plumbing world.

From the looks of it, it appear as if it used to have thread but got chewed off as soon as it gets fasten. Now these screws are meant to hold the tube sockets. When socket gets loose then the fatigue would be pass to the solder pads and eventually to the main PCB itself. I have to say I'm appalled by this. What else was done sub-par in there that we don't know about? All the screws were replaced to the one (steel finish) shown in the picture. I believe its M3 size.

Most of the female connector was poorly assemble, it is as if were assemble/inserted with gorilla force. A lot of the connectors’ pins were pushed in too deep sticking out to the other side of the PCB. Laney should re-train their contracted manufacturer about proper handling and assembly of electronic components. The passive component legs too weren't cut short as they should. Did they gave this VC15 build contract to a motorcycle factory? I don't know, but it did look like it came out from one.

Coming back to the reverb popping issues. I believe the reverb engine is the FV-1 chip by spinsemi. I don't think Laney has any involvement in it other than design and merged circuit arrangement rights. I thought of trying to fix it but I decided to forsook it as I found a website (yes only one) selling a complete Laney reverb PCB. Looks a direct drop in replacement. Not immediately available though. This normally can mean two things for the stock PCB. One - It's impossible or expensive to repair the board. Two - the stock board was poorly design and known to be defective after passing a certain mileage hours.

This amp has yet to reach its 10th birthday and it's already has a faulty reverb. I know many spring reverb amps that still works after 25 years of service. I bought a 90’s Laney GC30 solid state amp in 2015. The reverb in that works without a glitch. This is why I prefer spring over anything else!  I know cost efficiency approaches is the pillar of any manufacturing but what's the point of putting any new and cheap technology if the bloody thing would go burst in less than a decade. A free replacement or recall would've been appropriate if not a consolation for the end user. Is Laney confident they will have a returning customer? Maybe on clearance sales day, provided it's an impulse purchase. Keep up the good work.

You know what, I may write to Laney about this. See what their respond would be. If it's positive then I would do a part II. If there's none then I couldn't care less about such kind of ethics. I know ranting more that it is now won't bring back any reverb back to life, what more to the brand itself. So Caveat Emptor to my other client and to the readers of this blog.

This unit should came with a 10 inch "HH" loudspeaker. It spot a 10 inch Jensen instead. I guess Laney was finishing off the leftover Jensen into all early second generation. With that said. Timely catch by the amp owner.

There's actually two version of VC15 - 110. The first pre 2009 got the spring reverb, the post 2009 uses built-in Digital Reverb. Compare the under chassis below to know which version yours is.

Thank you
yustech

Solid State Facebook Group.

Hello readers,

I've just setup a Facebook page called "The Solid State Guitar/Bass Amplifier Group". My purpose(together with you) is to make it a centralized platform for those who seek knowledge of it.
I'm looking forward on the group page growth to fulfill the expected vision. Kindly search on FB and click to join.

Thank you
Admin.

Buyers' Guide. Good Solid State Amp for USD500/MYR2000 Part II.

Below are some of today's Solid State Amplifier models currently available on the market. There's not a lot of them new now, however. You can thank the first Marshall MG series and Line 6 kidney POD for that (Clap).

My pick is objective according to each amplifier spec sheet. Tone is subjective, thereby it will not be touched here. Let's begin.

Laney LV100 - $222/-

The LV100 has two similar but different pre amps. The clean goes through conventional silicon circuit. OD1/OD2 goes through Laney's TEC (Tube Emulating Circuitry) technology, but by no means it's telling you there's an ECC83 tube in there. Nope. Both channels have an independent tone control and dedicated digital reverb. Both reverbs are placed before FX Send/Return (should be Pre Out/Power in). The LV100 outputs 65 Watts RMS through its 12 inch "HH" speaker.

Laney LV200 - $442/-

The LV200 has two different pre amps. The clean goes through a conventional silicon circuit. OD1/OD2 tones gets laced with the ECC83 thermionic electrons.Both channels have an independent tone control and dedicated digital reverb. Both reverbs are placed before FX Send/Return (should be Pre Out/Power in). The LV200 outputs 65 Watts RMS through its 12 inch "HH" speaker.

Randall RG80 - $333/-

The RG80 has an FET (Field Effect Transistor) circuitry design for both clean and drive with shared tone controls. By the way this FET does not imply any onboard effects like Phaser/Chorus/Flanger/Delay. FET is a transistor - Male is call Transbrother… Of course there's Transmen and Transwomen that would make Transfathers and Transmothers. When a transistor goes faulty then it would be called Transgender which… are of no use in electronics. Moving on! I guess the folks at Randall love their FET so much. I'm told by Randall that the reverb is before the FX loop. Doesn't that make it a Pre Out/Power in or Line Out/Line In? Anyway, speaking of reverb, it’s the good old spring type. I like that a lot. The loud speaker is 12 inch. I do not know the make. Power amp is at 80 watts. Generously loud indeed. Randall is staying true to the Solid State tradition.

www.randallamplifier.com

Peavey Bandit 112 - $349/-

This is the most complicated/versatile tonal pre amp of the lot. Peavey calls it their Transtube technology. However you will not find any actual tubes in there. There was never any since the first Transtube was introduced in 1995. Yes, it’s a transistor front end. Both channels have an independent tone control. I also yet to receive a reply from Peavey as to whether the reverb is before or after the FX Send/Return. Knowing Peavey, I would say its before? Power amp section is 100 watts strong but only through its internal 4 Ohms 12 inch speaker. I think the watts would be 50 Watts through any 8 Ohms external speaker. Still loud though. 

www.peavey.com

Harley Benton HB-80R - $135/-

I do not know whether this has a transistor or opamp based pre amp. I will kick this HB-80R out of here if it uses any digital preamp technology. Both channels have an independent tone control. I was told by Thomann that the HB-80R uses digital reverb. Thomann in their follow up email informed "the FX Send and Return is behind the Reverb". Not sure what that meant. It claims to output a hefty 80 watts. It too has a 12 inch speaker. Anyway, I don't trust this company as it is still new. It's just my personal opinion. There's not a single technical documentation (schematic) on any of its products compared to the rest mentioned here. I think it's a fair judgement to any new brand in this industry. I doubt Harley Benton would give out any schematics when the need arises in the future. 

www.sHARLEYkatpemBENTONgan.com

Laney LX65R - $270/-

I didn't know Laney would have this many. The LX65R has TEC technology on both channels. The channel has an extra filter circuit. XTS (eXtreme Tone Shaping). It's actually mid scoop for us layman. Both channels have an independent tone control The FX Send/Return is after the reverb. It should be called Pre Out/Power In. The LX65R uses spring reverb. Very nice. The power is 65 Watts through a 12 inch Celestion custom design loud speaker. 

www.laney.co.uk

DV Marks DVC Guitar Friend 12II - $600/-

I know the logo is yellow. DVC clearly states the use of solid state pre amps. Digital reverb is placed before the FX Send/Return. It should be called Pre Out/Power In. The power amp section is MPT "Mark Proprietary Technology". I have to confess, it is rare to hear a company that puts priority near the hindquarters. I guess it's not just loud then. "It's 50 Watts DV Mark loud" into a DV Mark custom 12 inch loud speaker. I do not know the make nor do I know whether DV Mark manufacture their parts. At least the key components. www.dvmark.it

 Meteoro Vulcano G200 - $???/-

The Vulcano G200 is another hybrid preamp. Because I cannot read Portuguese, I'm unable to know whether one or both channels get juiced by the pre amp thermionic valve(s). From its face, I know it has two independent tone controls. It does have an FX Send/Return but I don't know whether it is before or after the reverb. The power amp outputs 100 watts. It comes with either a Celestion or OEM 12 inch speaker. 

www.meteoro.com

Hiwatt Crunch 50 - $???/-

Nothing more is known other than what's obvious. Those are two channels with independent EQ, Spring reverb, 50 watts, and a 1x12 inch Fane speaker. Therefore I can only suspect it has an FX Send/Return. If it does, is it before or after the reverb? My inquiry has not been served by Hiwatt. I am not satisfied by the way they ‘’unpresently’’ present their product on the website. No spec list, no back pictures of the Crunch 50 Combo. Hiwatt only provide a standard six (darjah enam) composition of the amp. I’ve conducted a fair amount of searching online of Solid State Amplifiers only to find this is one bloody spec-secretive manufacturer. Could the Crunch 50 be too new in the market that Hiwatt had no time to put up the spec sheet? Don't get me wrong if I've thought of excluding you from this list. To be fair, I’m obliged to rant here. 

www.hiwattkedekut.com

Disqualified from this list on the last minute was Orange CR60C. It has three selectable digital reverb options, therefore I call that cheating. Orange should've chosen a reverb and be done with it.

Next post, We/I will be talking about the chronology of guitar amplifier technology, from my perspective and understanding of course.

To be corrected

yustech