JPJ

I am involved with a lot of teak in the marine world, and looking at that grain, I’d say it’s more likely from the mahogany family. Pictures of the end grain would be helpful - in my experience old slow grown teak tends to have a very tight and regular grain pattern with no great variation in the thickness of the individual growth rings.

I was fortunate to buy my NXT from a classical player who had this end pin stand as well as the tripod. I can confirm that the NXT works much better on the end pin and does allow you to use arm weight without the bass springing backwards and forwards. The only downside is what to do with the bass when your between sets and whilst I’ve seen some clever clamps that allow you to use the tripod and the end pin stands, they’ve all been from the USA so prohibitively expense (and that was before tariffs).

My journey to double bass is like that of many, via the gateway drug of the EUB. The biggest difference on arrival at a real double bass is the string height/action and the physical right hand effort you have to put in to get the lower strings to speak with clarity and volume. Having transitioned, I went back to my NS NXT and raised the action up to double bass heights and gained a far more double bass type tone. But, as Ned Steinberger himself says, the NS EUB’s are not intended to be replacements for double bass, but are in fact to be considered an instrument in their own rights.

Re 2.4ghz vs 5.8ghz Recently, I did a gig as a sound guy. I had two devices connected to the bands Behringer X-Air XR18 running an external dual band router, one on 2.4ghz and one on 5.8ghz. The 5.8ghz connection dropped out two or three times during the gig whereas the 2.4 stayed rock solid all night. That said, I see that X-Vive have now brought out the U45 - a 5.8ghz version of the U4

Judging from his vocal mic, it sounds like quite a bit of reverb going on?

I’ve used J-Tones (Reds and Big Twin) and found them to be excellent pickups providing you spend time to get the fit in the bridge wing ‘just right’. I’ve recently moved to a David Gage copperhead, which is a huge improvement over the J-Tones but I guess you’d expect that given the respective price points. So far I’ve had no feedback issues with the copperhead, but I’m playing a gig in a couple of weeks with a notoriously resonant stage so that will be the acid test. Do you used F hole blockers on louder stages?

So, used this on my gig last Sunday. Loved the way it tightened up my sound, but found that the harmonic distortion didn’t sound great through the PA so switched it off for the gig. Could just be my eq in the PA but, thanks to a delay at the Tyne Tunnel, I didn’t have time to iron this out. Further experimentation required, but overall very happy with this very musical compressor.

Here’s an update video on the finished model. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EdniV9P7M/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Wait until you try two (or more) subs centrally, you’ll be a convert for life 😂

Latest incarnation of my board, transplanted onto a Pedaltrain Metro 20 kindly supplied by our own @spacecowboy. This will probably be the last incarnation of the doubling board (for electric, acoustic, EUB, and double bass). If I acquire any more pedals I’ll probably split between an electric board, and a second board for the acoustic, EUB, and double bass gigs.

So I’ve had time to have a good play around with the various features of this pedal and colour me impressed. The tone control with the added harmonic distortion could become addictive. I’ve only tried it through headphones thus far, and I’ll have to see how that mod-scoop sounds live, but suffice to say she’s making her way onto my pedal board in time for next weekends gigs 😎

Close mic the drums (as close to the skin as you can get) and gate the hell out of them to control the mush. For most of our gigs, mic ‘ing the drums is a bit overkill for front of house but essential for IEM’s and our drummer definitely plays better and more consistently on IEM’s. Quite often his drum mic’s are not in the front of house mix, save for a well eq’d and gated bass drum.

So this just arrived from the lovely folk over at Anderton’s. I’ve been sans compression on my board for a while since convincing myself I didn’t need it and selling my Spectracomp, but I recently came to the confusion this was a mistake. As much as I loved the Soectracomp, the requirement to engage with software to tweak the parameters made me shy away from a like-for-like replacement, and both the Empress and the Cali 76 were identified as possible candidates. After a late night YouTube session I settled on the Empress. Looking forward to getting to know this over the weekend and then all being well, gig it next weekend.

Two of the best gigs I’ve played for onstage sound have both used side-fill for monitoring. One, a local bar that is popular on both the national and international circuit for up and coming bands has monitors mounted from the ceiling both in front and to the side of you, where they are pointing directly at your ears instead of your knees. The second was a major bike festival where the floor monitors were supplemented with two stacks of side fill stage left and right.

For an accurate ‘70s period relic, you need to add the cigarette burns to the headstock 😉

Most mixers only have one headphone out, so you’ll need something like this to take the mixer stereo headphones out and power two sets of headphones. https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0835-AAF If you go down this route, don’t forget to buy a TRS to TRS cable with the right size plugs to fit your mixer.

He gives a nod to Rick Jones in the video so it’s possible that the Upton is based on an Acoustic Image design.

Since entering the world of double bass ownership, I’ve watched a lot of the content put out by the guys at Upton Bass in the good’ol US of A. Last week they posted this interesting video of a combo they are developing specifically for double bass. Interesting combination of a down firing 10” woofer with a front mounted mid-range driver, built-in HPF and an eq ‘specifically voiced for double bass’. Still in the prototype stage, but I thought I’d share here. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJZ-FN3yk-b/

I defretted my Warwick Rockbass Alien electro-acoustic a while ago and its revolutionised that particular bass. Here’s my thread on my method. Might be a few useful nuggets in here, but as @paul_5 says, patience is key.