DTB

I have a PRS Silver Sky that had terrible static problems as soon as the central heating went on. Pick guard and neck were full of loud static which rendered it totally unplayable. i tried all sorts of stuff, including commercial anti static sprays, diluted fabric conditioner etc. all they did was leave some degree of residue on the guitar which worked for about 5 minutes. in the end i took the neck off and place a single piece of silver foil in the neck pocket, to which I soldered (tricky but possible) a ground wire that went to one of the ground wires, any one will do. I made certain that the neck screws contacted the silver foil when reassembling so that the neck plate and therefore the surface of the neck were grounded. This solved the neck problem. I did the same for the scratchplate, rather than shielding the whole thing which can be bad for tone, i did strips making sure the pickup adjusting screws and rear of scratch plate were connected then wired that to ground. sometimes I get the odd crackle now and again still from the scratchplate, when this happens I rub the scratchplate with a fabric conditioner tumble drier dry sheet, and that solves what the earthing cannot for a long time. strange because I had another Silver Sky with a maple neck and fingerboard rather than rosewood and a satin finish on neck not gloss, and it never had the same problems. if you get caught out on a gig, a bit of spit rubbed on the area of the scratchplate that is static will work for a while. good luck.

Hi, have you fixed this? i have a lot of experience with this if you still need help.

Absolutely yes. Love her and her music.

I have had similar issues to this. Shocks, obviously low voltage, but annoyingly painful from a mic when recording vocals. I solved it by earthing the mic cable outer plug with a croc clip and a cable going outside buried in the garden about a foot deep. i also use an RCD plug on the main electric feed into my studio just in case. It has never tripped. on another similar issue, one of my guitars is annoyingly noisy (strat 1954 single coils) so I connect myself to the guitar with a tens machine stick pad and a cable/croc clip to the rear of the trem block. Keeps it earthed to me even if I am not touching the strings, and cuts out all the static noise in the winter when the air is dry.

Ended up with the above after looking at and listening to several practice amps. For a small combo it has a lot of bass. It is actually almost a mini PA system and reminds me very much of my old Ashdown acoustic amp, but with less controls. Bluetooth music sounds okay from my iPhone, almost good actually. To get a decent snappy crisp bass tone with plenty of presence and definition and any kind of decent jazz bass growl I still need to use my valve preamp, but it sounds better than my small recording guitar cab which is what I was using. Although, one of the reviews I saw on facetube, it had a lovely growly tone with just a passive jazz bass with the tone control wide open, so it might just be my Sire bass has less oomph. Nice quality and solid construction. No nasty vibration or rattles even at full volume. Think I will be getting one of the Ashdown new British made 100 watt single 10 combos. They have valve crunch built in to the preamp. Whenever I make a purchase of a significant bit of gear i never get it right first time, but then the grass is always greener……… i was trying to add a post to say actually it does sound quite good having re-arranged my practice room, without using the valve pre. Has a nice growl to it. Operator error first time.

I went for a Phil Jones 17 combo in the end. will report back when it arrives as to what it sounds like.

So how much are they? I am (unfortunately) into Cobalt Flats for my fretless, and they too are expensive, seem to last so far though.

My sound , whilst not really MY signature sound but the sound I love to play with, I stole from Christian McBride. He often runs a Marshall 100watt guitar amp along side his bass rig (something the guitarist in my last band asked me to do and I thought he was nuts, little did I know back then!!!). It adds just a bit of grit to the tone and gives it more of that bridge pickup bite, but with a lot of neck pickup added so you have more bass without having to turn the bass up on the amp or on your active bass. I get it by running a valve preamp into my bass power amp and have recently started using a cab at home again rather than going into my mixer and monitors, sounds so much better using a real cab. Good example is live version of It’s On by George Duke available on facetube. Edit; Also see Reggie McBride on When Love Comes To Town, kind of similar tone on the bridge bit. I stole my guitar tone too but thats another story.

Yes so did I. One of the master builders at Fender Custom Shop mentioned it. He doesn’t like working with it coz it’s brittle especially if it’s a very dark maple that has been well roasted. Hungry now.

Why is it that yesterday the B string started having all sorts of issues. Thought it was my preamp to start with but even when I turned the bass volume down I could hear it acoustically rumbling away. Relief was down to less than .15 mm fine for a week then overnight it changes. i couldn’t sleep last night due to pain so 4am I reset it all. Relief action pickups. Set it back to .3 mm which is probably a bit much for a fretless but it sounds better than before, although even though the pickups are set as before the A string is quiet again 🙄 i just don’t get it. Aren’t roasted maple necks supposed to be more stable???

Yes my V10 is quite heavy too. Neck dive is also a bit of a problem. I am going to order an Ibanez headless fretless. I had a six string multi scale and that was superbly balanced and very light, not the best sounding bass ever, but good enough for when I am in too much pain to hold a heavy bass. I only sold it to bring sone cash in when I bought my Nathan East Yamaha. All my guitar/bass tools and spares are in a toolbox tucked away behind the sub somewhere. My 5 yo son often used to go through the box asking what each thing was. Pots and micrometers are his favourite, oh and spare amp valves (not near the sub), but when has the valves out i get fed up of saying careful and GENTLY!!!!!

Just a quick warning to anyone adjusting the truss rod on a Sire bass for the first time. Needed to adjust the one on my V10 fretless after owning it for about 3 weeks it has obviously adjusted to the ambients in my bunker. Sire provide a nice long handled long reach key but it is just slightly too small. I was tempted to go with it, but grabbed the one for my strat which was a better fit. The rod was quite tight and had I used the key supplied it would definitely have stripped either the key or the socket. so just a heads up. Apart from that, the over tight string guide on the headstock and the non existent set up the bass had when it arrived (all sorted) I am quite pleased with the build quality. Sounds killer too.

My wife had some fabric remnants. Bit of black felt cut to size and held in place with a small amount of gaffer tape. Works a treat. Also keeps my aching thumb nice and warm. Mkii version will have a small bit of velcro to fasten. much better dampening, instant, and no harmonics or rattle.

Yes we all know I am an idiot, old news. But I am very skinny with boney thumbs, even more so since getting ill. I am having trouble with dampening the strings, I use floating thumb technique since getting my six string years ago, together with left hand dampening when I can, but due to being skinny I have a real arch in my thumb between the knuckles. i dont want to use a string wrap around the nut. I know Mark King tapes his slapping thumb up for protection. Anyone use similar for dampening or do I have an original idea for a change?

I asked BD and they came back suggesting the GR 1x10 active speaker. Anyone any knowledge of the GR stuff please?

Done.

I am thinking about separating my bass from my monitors and going through a small amp rather than everything going through the monitors in my practice room. My current set up includes a valve preamp that really gives a nice growl on the bridge pickup on my J style bass, not distorted or overdriven, just a nice Jazz bass tone. Anyone have any experience with the EBS session range? I picked that one because it’s all analogue. I guess I could go with my current preamp and have a small FRFR, but like I say my practice space is quite small so big speakers are not suitable. Any advice or ideas please, and thanks.

They probably make more money off their utube channel than from sales now anyhow, so they don’t care.

Actually my V10 fretless came from Andertons. It was very well packaged, but was totally devoid of set up, was 2 years old (if i decoded the serial no correctly) and had a dud E string I contacted them via email several times listing everything that was wrong and even said you could have offered a set of strings (which I would have turned down as I doubt they would have stumped up a set of Cobalt Flats) by way of apology and they didn’t even bother replying to the last email. I told them i am a serial guitar/bass buyer and that this was my first and last purchase from them.

I bought my BBNE2 from BD. I got a very good deal and they entertained my then 4 yo son with a half size bass whilst I was making frantic calls to my bank to make room on my cc after realising I couldn’t use their interest free credit thing. I haven’t managed to get back there since but they did great coffee too from what I remember.

Hello everyone, I haven’t posted for a while. This winter has seen me dive back in to playing bass whenever I can and have been doing lots of practice every day when pain levels allow. ( music takes a back seat in the summer as my other love is motorcycles, but as my health continues to go downhill music will hopefully fill the void motorcycle might leave any time soon) and to my main point, Santa brought me a five string fretless in the form of a Sire V10. I set it up to my preferences and noticed the A string was a little quiet. I left it until I had a new set of Cobalt Flats to put on it, expensive but worth every penny, and although better string balance, the A was still a little quiet. I don’t like the strings to get progressively lower from B to G and always set them up with 2.25 mm clearance on each string following the fingerboard radius. I set my guitars with staggered pole pieces the same and always have good string balance. I measured the individual string height to the individual pole pieces and the B was about 3mm the G was 2.5 but the A was over 5mm. Also when sighting across the strings the B and G were way lower than the middle 3 even though they were radiused perfectly. So I thought I would set the saddle heights for the B and G by eye rather than measuring, bringing up the height of each by about .5 mm and then resetting the pickup heights. I don’t why the two outside saddles were so much lower when following the fingerboard radius, but once adjusted to match the middle three saddles with just a gentle slope, the string balance is perfect and it hasn’t affected the playability. If anything the B string sounds fuller and has more tone. I am 57 this year and have played since my teens but still seems I am still learning. Anyone else have a similar set up or encountered problems with string balance. If so how did you solve it?

So if you were seeking a bassist would you have one that played competently and was easy going but walked very slowly with a stick and needed help with gear?

I was going to start a new thread, but thought I would post on this one instead. I was back at the docs yesterday with yet more arthritis woes, turns out I have a rare inflammatory/autoimmune disorder that can lead to all sorts of problems including deafness, blindness and breathing problems in its worse extreme cases, I am hoping my doc will manage it so I don’t get that bad. I am now fairly desperate to get back in a band and enjoy playing with other musicians again while I still can, but I would need help to load in and out my gear, unless it was a straight to PA preamp setup, as well as 100% need to sit down to play on a tall stool. At least if there was a band van we could use my park anywhere blue badge lol. I would probably struggle with travelling due to pain levels associated with travelling, but for now I think it would be worth it just to get back on stage again. so would you have a disabled bassist in your band that needed help with his gear? not wanting to hijack this thread but seemed better than starting a new one as it’s fairly similar topic. to the op very interested to hear which strap works out the best. I know Walter Trout has a double shoulder strap thing going on due to a destroyed shoulder, perhaps google that maybe. Seems to work for him. Also I am sure I saw Michael Rhodes sitting down playing towards the end of his life with Bonamassa, and his gigs get quite lively, although not as much as some funk bands.

No buzz today so it must have been just the strings not settled onto the saddles properly. now to get some playing done. thanks for all the likes on the photo 😁

yes i thought it was exactly that, but I don’t think it is. If i press down on top of the string where it passes over the saddle it doesn’t do it. I resettled the string into the saddle with a bit of pressure and a wiggle of the string and it sorted it for a while. Almost as if there isn’t enough break angle from the anchor point to the saddle for the B and E strings. The action is set incredibly low and the neck has the tiniest bit of relief. It is obviously set up for a player with a very light touch. I always give myself a few hours playing a new instrument before jumping in with lots of radical set up changes in case I like it the way it is or sounds worse when I alter it. The set up reminds me of my Geddy Lee bass I had when I was working. I will try a new set of strings over the next few days. I really hope this doesn't turn out to be a problem bass.