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Also props to @andruca for the write up on their SB500S which helped push me over the edge and snag this one - cheers! Nice playing in the demos you put up, btw. https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/502833-nbd-pretty-nice-1981-yamaha-superbass-exemplar

@Sté I was trying to understand the differences between a pair of consumer in ear headphones such as the Bose ones and IEM's such as the Thomann ones. The jack plug is the same, but is there any other difference? Everything I have read seems to indicate there is little difference, e.g. https://www.rtings.com/headphones/learn/earbuds-vs-iems and https://producelikeapro.com/blog/iem-vs-earbuds/ Which seems to indicate that its the seal against the ear canal as opposed to any difference in the technology. So passive noise cancellation vs active noise cancellation such as Air Pods. However I'm trying to check if I can. If no difference, I'll just get a pair of cheapish IEMS and use them Thanjs Rob

So this leaves two options as as I see it. Andy's suggestion of taking some material off the heel of the neck and Bassassins idea about routing a hole for the bridge. I'm inclining towards the latter, as I've seen that done (twice now, once on a bass of mine and once on Bassasins Court up the thread) and it seems to be a workable if somewhat heavy handed solution...

I picked this up cheap because it's in a bit of a state and I felt sorry for it. It's not a particularly common bass around these parts, so I figured I could get it back to being hale and hearty again. It's pretty dirty - the tuners are green in places and I had to wash my hands after stringing this bad boy back up - boak! But that's just dirt. The main issue with this bass is the neck pickup. The coil windings have been... interrupted shall we say. Thankfully most of the coil is intact, the break is pretty close to the beginning/end of the coil so I'm going to try to unwind it slightly back to good wire then solder it back up and see if that works, failing that I guess I'll need to get it rewound. A wee project for the weeks ahead. Its mostly cleaning and polishing, the pickup to attempt to repair, and maybe some finish repair on a couple of nasty chips in the neck finish. Dunno if it's worth a build diary, so I'll probably just document my progress here. FWIW, the remaining pickup sounded pretty decent in my wee Laney 30W combo in the office here. For all the dings/dents/scuffs/scrapes/lacquer cracks, the bones appear to be solid and it feels quite nice to play. I think with a bit of work this will end up being a fine counterpoint to my BB1200.

Absolutely, and for a 'proper' recording I do it with one of the nice mics in the nice recording room. (Though I'd still argue that a DPA is a 'proper mic' ! ) But my day job is a recording engineer/producer - one who happens to dabble in double bass - and so fairly often bands would like to have an idea of what a double bass would do on their tracks, and a pickup just isn't going to give the right impression. 9/10 the guide track would be replaced, but it's nice to have something that has a chance of working if I fluke a great performance! The equivalent of plugging a bass guitar to a DI in the control room and working out a part with the band in the live room, as it were.

So I moved to the neck end and did the same amount of shimming with the same result...by now it was dawning on me that the shims on their own are achieveing nothing, because the bridge moves with the neck. I sort of knew this and I should have been able to work it out using a bit of string, a nail and an oil drum but I've always been hopeless at stuff like this so the practical work does help.... What next?

What do you mean by the same ? The same plug jack for sure, but position is different in ears. You can see example pic on thomann website. On sound side, it's pretty superior than all i've had as standard small headphones. All is clear, bass are really good. https://www.thomann.fr/the_tbone_ep_4.htm

Yes.

^ hard to understate how important this is! In my experience, most branches of physics an undergrad might go on to specialise in would require some understanding of how light and/or radio waves work, because they're both part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and find one way or another to come into play! Sound waves? Well, they're pressure waves, and then you're getting into fluid dynamic territory...I've noticed there's nothing like that "F" word to scare off an awful lot of otherwise very able physicists!

So shims...first of all, I trued some pretty extreme shimming at the bridge. This is two business cards folded in three and stuck one on top of the other..that is the most shimmage I have ever used by a factor of about three. Doesnt seem to have made much difference to the action height...

Hi Steve, I think it's well worth looking at this if you haven't aleady seen it. It shows the 'heatmap' for typical point source speakers on stands and straight ahead is pretty much what you want in most gigs. I think it's the heat map which is useful, it helps to be able to picture your cabs shining out sound into the room and you can take that mental picture with you to rooms that are sub optimal.

I think, this as far as this particular bass goes that is destined to remain a mystery. I bought it for £90 (as it says further up the thread) and it was in a bit of a mess. There were no strings on it at the time and I must admit I didnt see this particular issue coming, although in all fairness the construction is not what you might call 'conventional' so I'll give myself a pass there. It is what it is and I'd like to try and correct it if I can, with a budget of precisely no pounds. I've been messing about with shims a bit...more info below...

Fair enough - that's a highly specific requirement, using it for a guide bass track. If you plan on possibly keeping a take, I'd personally still choose a proper mic rather than a DPA as a bass simply sounds much better on a recording when it's not close mic'ed. IME - YMMV

I guess if it had a companion receiver unit, you could use it as a wireless too? That could be cool. Combine it with a wireless footswitch and you'd have a fully wireless rig.

Nah, I bet he overplayed a mush of too many notes on it 😜

He didn't, but he got the proof of concept right, and pretty much nailed it the 2nd time.

There are many branches of Physics, and some can be detrimental where understanding acoustics is concerned. The main obstacle for most, irrespective of their level of education, is realizing that sound waves and light or radio frequency waves are totally different in how they function. Light waves in particular are easy to comprehend, because you can see them. There is almost nothing intuitive about how sound waves work, and even at the post-graduate level there are few courses of study available. One very good source is here: https://blog.soton.ac.uk/soundwaves/