Leaderboard

Okay, I've just done my own test. Same bass. Same amp. Same flat settings. Finger style in same position over pickup. Only variable, three glasses of Fitou in between. It does actually make a difference to the perceived tone. Tomorrow evening, I will repeat, but with a Montrachet and see what transpires.

Useless experiment. For example, say, Maple from one tree will be a different composition from the sample from the next. Depending upon where abouts in the tree the wood is taken from, it will have a different density. The environment in which the tree grows, influences structure further. Wood by its very nature, can not be the same - each slab is unique. The only way to hear how a bass will sound is to play it when it's built. The rest of it? Nonsense. Next.

I spoke to Percy recently (about something else) and he hinted that the issues around organisation and logistics were getting more and more complex and the whole thing was becoming a pain. I am guessing (and I do not know this) that a lot of these guys are getting older and older and things like travel insurance are getting more and more complex/expensive. Also, some (not all) older people don't like travelling overseas as they are more inclined to have health issues and are anxious that they will be taken ill and be stuck in a foreign country with no support etc etc. The impression I got from Percy was that 'stuff' (he gave no details) was getting in the way. I think there is a tendency in the average punter to accept that this business is made up of individuals and that these indivduals have their own struggles; health, financial, family issues etc. Disappearing on tour can be a major pain if there is stuff going on at home. I remember reading Phil Collins' biography and getting the sense that he felt obligated to tour because so many people behind the scenes were relying on the band for their livelihoods. That was something I had never thought about before. I don't think people really have any idea how close to the bone some touring bands are finacially. I was speaking to someone the other day who had to leave a tour early becasue, if they hadn't, they would not have been able to afford the petrol to drive back from Italy to the UK. Those big money tours are very last season and a lot of bands, especially in minority interest music like Brand X would be, won't be in flash hotels etc. A lot of it is done on a shoestring. As we all know, Brexit is likely to make this a whole lot worse. Jeff Berlin is not better or worse that PJ, just different. Massively different but just different.

The radius templates from G&W in Portugal are due later today and this morning is an important stage in the build - it is where is starts looking like a bass It's too early to cut the taper, but while I still have a flat profile to act as a datum on my bandsaw, it is the ideal time to cut the side profile of the neck: The pencilled line is where the heel will be on the treble side; the cut is where the heel is on the bass side - and we have a few choices how we handle this. I'll find out from @Matt P offline what he prefers before outlining what it will be like. Then I looked at the options for the orientation of the back oak wings which are cut from one piece and so grain-match either side of the neck: And concluded this would work best: So back to the bandsaw, and making allowance for the c2mm purpleheart separation strips cut them out a few mm oversize: And so, as I said at the beginning...it's starting to look like a bass

My trusty rig of nearly 30 years!

Utterly meaningless on electrics. On acoustics on the other hand the wood does make a noticeable difference and I prefer Acacia, just a personal preference.

I would like to hear a test where everything was the same....including the wood. Would they all sound the identical, or would there still be variation from one instrument to the next?

I have it! I love it. I'm getting another one done.

Here is the latest incarnation of my board I'm pretty happy with this new arrangement. All mounted on a Schmidt Array SA450: Signal Chain Boss LS-2 (A/B switch for 2 basses or bass/bass station synth) > Morningstar ML5 > HX Stomp The ML5 has a pedal in each loop, so: Loop A > Cali76 Loop B > Octamizer 1 (Sub only) Loop C > Octamizer 2 Loop D > Iron Ether Oxide Loop E > Crowther Prunes and Custard HX Stomp has two loops: FX Loop 1 > Maxon AF-9 FX Loop 2 > Subdecay Prometheus MIDI Chain Morningstar MC8 (Dunlop Mini EXP pedal) > HX Stomp > ML5 Schmidt Connector Box/Patch Bay The Blue jack (Headphone out) is used either for home practice, or for running to the input of the Backbeat, so that it can be triggered by both the bass and the synth. The balanced outs of the Stomp means no DI box is needed, so a simple TRS to XLR adaptor goes straight from the Red output to the desk, and if I'm using an amp/powered wedge too, I can use the Green output as well. Power The power side of the board is all GigRig. The eagle-eyed amongst you will see there are two GigRig Generators. The Schmidt Array has an IEC input, so I've used an IEC splitter to use both Generators. One is for the Stomp only (isolating it) and the other is for the rest of the board. I managed to keep all the audio parts of the chain isolated utilising a couple of GigRig Isolators. Distributor sends power to: Morningstar MC8 Temple Audio 9V to USB Adaptor - for charging my onstage iPad (IEM mix/charts etc) GigRig Doubler - Isolates and provides 18V to the Cali76 2x GigRig Isolators power the rest of the pedals The last spot on the Distributor is a long cable that I can plug my Airturn bluetooth footswitch into to charge If you've made it to the end of this post congratulations! It took me almost as long to write as it did to build the board! 🤣 Hope you guys might find it interesting/useful for your own builds.

Decided to refurbish the black hardware on one of my basses as it was looking decidedly neglected after spending life in the cupboard under the stairs for way too long. In fact, the whole bass looked in need of some TLC. I stripped everything off, including washers and nuts from the controls, and sanded down to bare metal, doing a final clean with brake cleaner then primed the parts before applying several coats of Plastikote black spray paint. I put the various screws from the bridge and the tuner cover into the top of a cardboard box, pushed through small holes so that just the head was painted. I also removed all the grub screws, saddle screws, springs and adjusting bolts and put them in a container of penetrating oil. Cleaned all the knobs with an old toothbrush and soapy water. And eventually ended up with everything looking a lot better. Whilst waiting for paint drying/hardening I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean the neck, it was desperately in need of 'moisturising'. I see there's another thread gone up about this. I use small round cleansing pad wipes and nail varnish remover (alcohol based) followed by my own lemon oil mix - two parts extra virgin olive oil, two parts white vinegar and one part freshly squeezed lemon juice. Initially the wood is really clean and looks dried out by the alcohol - it is, but it's ok. The lemon oil, which I apply with the same type of cleansing pads needs to soak into the wood for at least 24 hours, but it works brilliantly and rejuvenates the rosewood really well - do NOT use on maple necks, and if you do try the 'recipe' make a sparing amount of it up, it does not keep! This was the rosewood before the lemon oil: And the type of grime to come out of the rosewood: And during soaking: Once everything has dried, paint has hardened, and neck given a final dry buff, time to put it all back together. A new set of strings on, full set up, and hopefully this will be getting used this year 🤞

I received this the other day. I’m a bit funny with filters. I love them but also find some of my favourites have a certain flaw which stops me using them. Mostly that’s when pushing the open envelope leads to a ‘whistling’ artefact instead of a squelch (like my fave FX25) or a loss of volume and/or huge spikes in sub bass (also the FX25!) I prefer a band pass filter generally, finding that they cut through the mix better and sound squishier when pushed. But then you need a clean mix too which you don’t always get. My recent adventures with a faulty Meridian Funk-U-Lator got me looking again and then this came up on Bc. It strikes me as a hugely versatile filter. Normally I find a good filter has basically one setting that works with a given instrument, but this gives a lot of flexibility from the various switches/bands/sweep ranges. The thing is, this think ‘bubbles’ and sounds ‘wetter’ than anything else I’ve tried. Slapping an A string for example literally feels like I’m spanking a wet balloon. The resonance control lets things bounce about even more, all the while retaining the low end. When pushed hard the filter wobbles and farts, making the useful range of the sensitivity control pretty me much from 0-100. Add to that control of the tone cutoff and you can really cook up some great sounds. Quick pic It also works well from an external battery Also I got an EHX bassballs again after selling mine years ago. Actually now I ‘get’ it and think it’s a great sound that works really well, especially with the distortion on. Having lots of fun with that. ped

That said I do hate slap.

"n+1" is the correct scientific terminology, where n is the number of basses currently owned. 🤣 This is a common assertion among cyclists, also.

I have zero interest in cat videos, but this is impressive:

@prowla - I agree. My point wasn’t about whether this forum could assist the aggrieved parties, it was about not assisting the defence.

I owned a fretless Travis Bean for 40 years, I bought it new in 1977.

I can't keep it in - Cat Stevens

Anyone here own an Integra? I was listening to Faith No More's The Real Thing earlier and I was always a sucker for Billy Gould's tone on that album (which I suppose is a mishmash of Geddy/dUg/JJB to my ears)...no idea whether he used one of these for the recording or whether it was just rolled out for videos. I know they go for peanuts, crazy really.

Step 1) Pick a highly contentious topic that has been done to death already, and with vast swathes of people heavily entrenched on opposite sides. Step 2) Give the thread a suitably condescending title, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with your position is a moronic fraud. Step 3) Throw a hissy fit when when not everyone immediately sees the error of their ways and dares to continue to disagree with you. Step 4) Suggest that most people are disabled and lack your skill and nuance in relation to a field that everyone here is extraordinarily passionate about, again because they dare to disagree with you. Step 5) Who knows, is there a point to all this? Can we please put this thread out of its misery?

What I am saying is it is normal procedure to not only tighten the strings, but also the truss rod when a bass is shipped directly from factory. They all need to be set up. If the retailer doesn't this means you will have to yourself. The instructions are in the manual and it is a 2 minute job. Manufacturing or QC problems are bad frets, humming pickups etc. High action is not.

This reminds me of stuff I was reading recently about whether different types and makes of tone cap make a difference. This is from Jason Lollar, of Lollar pickups: This is similar to the point that @Ricky Rioli made above - there is no way the player can play the same thing exactly the same twice, so unless you can take account of the differences in playing each time it's not a good test. If lots of different tests like that with different instruments and players show the same kind of tone for eachg wood, then that would be evidence. Do different people who claim wood makes a noticeable difference all say it makes the same difference? I don't know, because the difference it makes is meaningless for what I do, I mean, I pick fretboard wood for looks FFS (I've got a paduak and two ebony fretboards, they look great).

But with the Diabolik you've got the clean signal to blend in, so with the OC-2 first that's OC-2 signal (clean) and OC-2 Signal Fuzz'd coming through and blendable and with you blending your clean signal on the OC-2 it's 3 layers of signal going on. Best thing I could do is put the OC-2 and Diabolik in the LS-2 (accept the issue of a buffer) and have the option to run them in series or parallel and in any order. But currently playing Americana and country, it stays at home for when I'm jamming those Dua Lipa covers 😇

Filth

Update: I bought the jazz. It took a while before I gathered all info I wanted, but the bass is totally legit. It has MK stamp in the neck pickup cavity and signatures on the neck and in the neck pocket. All other markings are there too. The seller (a small vintage bass shop) is trying to get the certificate (he knows the guy he got it from). It's probably left behind in the house of his ex wife where he left, and it wasn't a friendly split apparently.... So we'll see. Anyway, it's a superb bass with a very even and musical tone. I've fitted it with fender nps rounds, as my other jazz already has (thomastik) flats fitted. Both are nice varieties.

I have no doubt that these sound different to someone with superb hearing, but to me they all sound pretty much the same. Seriously. I'm listening through decent studio monitors at sensible volume levels, and I suppose there's a very slight tonal variation, but nowhere near enough to make me prefer one of these basses to another. I have reasonably bad tinnitus which interferes with my hearing of high frequencies, but not the mids and lows. Put that guy playing those basses in a band situation and I doubt if anyone could possibly hear a difference between them. As always with these demos, they've chosen an immensely talented bass player who thinks that he's there to show how quickly he can play lots of notes. There's no actual law that says you can't demo basses by playing a simple walking bassline that allows the listener to concentrate on what the video is supposed to be about.

Yup! And covered under warranty 😁

Lakland 44-64 in the house . Will do a post soon

One can have gas and still be content. Its just that you are even more content when you acquire something new.😉

I'm looking to transplant everything from my Matt Freeman, so it'd be sunburst, gold guard, tinted maple neck.

My experience is that not a single one of them can be trusted fully. It's pot luck. What I know for certain is that intermediaries who find you the best deal will never, ever, not once, stand up and help when things go pear shaped. Their only use is to find a courier who will take stuff over length or weight that your usual provider won't and for getting a good idea of cost. I'll never book through one again because the standard answer when they fail is "the service is not guaranteed". Taking your payment immediately is somehow ALWAYS guaranteed. It's a very unfair contract.

There are considerably worse things to spend your disposable income on. In 25 years, I've only had one bass actually break irreparably, and that only cost £80. The greatest maintenance expenses most basses rack up are strings, 9v batteries and a refret one in a blue moon. I had to sell some (and amps and effects, hi fi and record collection) to fund a house move due to a divorce, but managed to keep the really good / irreplaceable one plus two spares. Once finances improve, I'll likely expand the collection again. They all get used, and look quite nice hanging on the wall when not in use. I don't smoke, drive an expensive car, drink much, take drugs or have any other expensive hobbies. I've effectively stopped gigging for the same reason I don't play online video games; I have to work with lots of people/joe public. I don't really want to engage with them outside of the work arena. That I enjoy playing bass is reason enough to own more than one.

I’ve said it before but I’ll re-iterate it anyay, whether this forms part of the evidence or not, the thread still forms part of disclosure, as the defence could argue it may assist them in some way. The fact that there are comments on the thread that suggest some posts have been edited and/or modified by Admin/Mods makes it even more complicated. The defence could request any redacted information in the belief it could assist them. It won’t, but it doesn’t stop them making an application.

I like the sound of this, @Merton Will be watching with great interest. And somehow, I'd missed @MattW 's build. It's lovely

I own the Mk 1 and Mk 3 but not the Mk 2, so can't comment too much on the latter. BUT the Mk 3 is like a 'best of' of the previous versions: it has the same octave tone knob as the 1 and 2; same solo foot switch as the Mk1; Tim tuning from the Mk 1 version 2; sub volume from the Mk 1; small enclosure of the Mk 2. What's different from all the previous versions is that it has separate volumes for the dry and octave signals, so you have a bit more control there. I also A/B'd my Mk1 and Mk3 and noticed that the octave tones are quite different, the Mk1 is smoother, and sounds better solo'd, (to me at least) but that's really splitting hairs. Note on version names: on the 3 Leaf website he calls the first 2 large footprint pedals the Mk 1 and Mk 2, the difference being the addition of the Tim tuning mod, and the small one is simply called the Octabvre mini. The newest pedal is just called the Octabvre, he doesn't give it a number on the site or on the box/manual. I noticed I said I would do a demo of it... sorry! I might have some time this week.

I have rationalised my obsessive behaviour by the following rule. If all other basses left me would I be content to play just this one forever? If yes, keep it, if no, move it on. Even sticking to this I have something like 30 basses. Once you start it's really hard to stop.

Fancied a scratchplate change. Don’t think the mint green did much for the colour of the bass. The red tort works better to my eye. Looks less bland if nowt else...

Just got a new (to me) Fender USA Professional Jazz. This was one of Lozz196's stable which I spotted he wanted to move on. It's got Custom Shop 60s pickups (instead of the stock Vmods), a Ki0gon loom and a tort pickguard. It plays and sounds great, I really like the higher and narrower fretwire - it feels very precise. So far I've done no mods, just added Dunlop straplock buttons. I'm going to have to replace the pickup foams with thicker ones as I can't get the pickups close enough to the strings for my preference. (I've seen other people comment this is an issue with the CS60s, the foam stuck to the brass grounding plates is too thin.) (My old MIM Jazz has just left to go to it's new owner today, the USA bass is so nice I wouldn't play it.)

I can almost predict the way this thread will go. I've been on Basschat too long. 😀

No one cares about how you look after the finish, let's see some pictures man. 😁 Ha ha! That's a really good point..