Linus27

2 hours ago, Soledad said:

Good rundown of some options there. On my previous (Mayones BE4) I settled on LaBella 'white nylon' (that's what they call them and they aren't white).
I'm currently using D'Add chrome flats on the Sandberg - they are working very well on that bass so happy. Have EB Cobalt flats on my fretted P/J - can be v good but I agree quality issues. The D'Addario chromes are very consistent and have nice blue silks (mauve on the EBs) - yep, that stuff bothers me!!

What gauge LaBellas are you using?

For the LaBella Black Nylon I am using the 750N Light which is 50 - 105.

For the LaBella Low Tension Flats, I am using LTF-4A 42-100.

I tend to move basses around a bit dependent on what type of band I play in. However, I do have one bass which is a keeper but that is because my dad bought it for me as my first bass, its been with me all through my musical career so is sentimental and has all my musical history in it. Plus its the best sounding Jazz bass I have ever played.

Strings are a difficult one for me as it depends on the bass.

For my fretless Jazz I use LaBella Black Nylon which are fabulous and I've had a lot of compliments when I use this bass. For my main gigging bass which is a fretless Precision I use LaBella Low Tension flats. They sound awesome, really warm and balanced and again, I've had a fair amount of compliments. My other fretless Precision which I predominantly use for recording, writing and rehearsal's is strung with Rotosound 77 Jazz flats. These are probably my favourite sounding flats but do have the highest tension so tend to not gig with this bass. When I had my fretless Stringray, I struggled to find a string that I liked but when I switched to LaBella Black Nylon strings on it, the bass came alive and I never looked back.

There are a few strings I'd like to to try at some point, a set of T.I's just because everyone raves about them so I wanna see what all the fuss is about and a set of Dunlop flats as per the other thread. They seem to be regarded quite highly. I did quite like Ernie Ball Cobolts but it was so hit and miss on getting a dud string that I went looking elsewhere and settled on LaBella's.

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Chorus: JAM Pedals Waterfall Bass, the best analogue chorus on the market, but very expensive, more fluid than the already excellent Boss you had or the mythical CE-2.

 

Octaver: Boss OC-5, does what you want and more, furthermore it has way better tracking and is more reliable than the OC-2.

 

Reverb: You already have what you need.

 

Delay: JAM Pedals Llama analogue delay in an affordable iteration.

 

Drive: One Control 360 AIAB as it emulates the Acoustic's Jaco Tone with the musical drive needed for a fretless.

 

PS: I'm a fretless player only too and these are the effects I use with a very light touch, but I am considering getting rid of everything but a reverb.

Just been looking at the One Control 360 pedal and it looks like I might be buying a new pedal. It looks really good 😁

I only play fretless these days and this is my board. I'm not totally finished with it yet but in terms of the pedals, I have the following.

1. Mooer Ambient A7 Reverb. Absolutely adore this pedal and it blows the TC Hall of Fame 2 that I previously had out the water.

2. Electro Harmonic Bass Clone Chorus. Really lovely chorus pedal which has the added benefit of having bass and treble controls. Previously had the TC Corona which I thought was awful and a Behringer Super Chorus which was good but noisy.

3. Boss OC-5 Octave. Simply the best.

4. Zoom MS60-B Multi-Effects. Not really using it much and still playing around with it but it does have some great patches. I'm more using it to play around with sounds to see if they work for me like flanger, compressor's, overdrive, amp sims etc.

5. TC Electronics Tuner. It's a tuner, it works and has never failed me.

As for future pedals, for me, they have to enhance the sound of the fretless or create a nice subtle effect that's not too distracting so I'm considering a flanger, EBS Triple Envelope Filter and maybe a compressor and something like a Sansamp Bass Driver.

2 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Actually my Gnome didn't measure flat at all with everything at 12.00 but your 280W big brother may well be eq'd differently. Mine rolled off quite early, had a bit of an upper bass boost then a huge upper mid/treble boost. That does give it a clean, hi fi sound with the right speakers but it is ultimately not a very accurate sound. I only mention it because it is objective evidence of how manufacturers do flavour their amps, they aren't just wires that have gain as the old Cyrus amp was meant to be but full flavoured additions to your bass sound. The Bugera turned out to be one of the most neutral amps we tried at 12.00.

 

As to the point about dialing bass out I find you need to do that as a matter of course to get a good live sound and to boost the mids. That's even worse with PA speakers that are meant to be flat response when flown and are way too bassy on the floor.

 

The LFSys Monza and Monaco's are designed to take that into account and have an extended but tailored low end.

@Phil StarrI've just been reading your post about the LFSys Speakers that yourself, @stevie and @bussonetthebass were testing earlier in the year. As a fretless bassist who generally likes a very clean, warm and rounded tone, it has certainly got me very interested. I'm currently using a Barefaced Two10 with a Gnome 280w which I do really like or a MarkBass LM IV which has not grabbed me so much. I only use reverb, chorus and octave but its important that the sound stays clean and the octave especially keep the notes defined and doesn't go woolly or mushy. I play in a pretty busy acoustic three piece and we need to keep separation of frequencies between the acoustic guitar, vocals/vocal layers and then my bass. I play a lot of melodic fretless bass and need to maintain a very clear, defined sound whilst maintaining a full bass to fill that bottom end. At times I feel I don't always achieve this, especially with the octave pedal as it loses clarity. By pure chance, I used a Fender Rumble 500 at a festival the other week which I believe uses Celestion speakers and when I kicked my octave in, the sound was incredible. Even our singer mid sentence stopped singing, looked over at me and voiced "wow" at me and then kept doing it every time I used the octave pedal. He even left me and drummer to just groove at the end of one song with the octave pedal on as it sounded so good.

So the LFYsys cabs sure look interesting and I'm assuming they are named after F1 circuits which as an F1 fan since 1979 who proposed to my wife on the grid at Monza, honeymoon'd at Monaco and driven Silverstone a few times spurs my interest a bit more 😁

26 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Lot's of us are doing this though it's a only minority, but one that is increasing.

 

I've played through PA amps into PA speakers, bass amps into PA speakers, PA amps into bass speakers and recently regularly straight into active PA cabs. My regular set up is currently Sansamp into active PA monitors or into a Bugera set flat and on to an LFSys Silverstone which is a flat response bass speaker. That's when I don't just use in-ears.

 

The best sound I get is at home putting the bass straight into studio monitors sometimes using the Sansamp or often just into the mixer. You can get pretty close to this on stage but room acoustics can make that difficult at times.

 

Going this way is great if you like the sound of your bass 'au naturel' it also makes eq simpler. If your bass amp has a 'shape' then you can only really control it if your parametric tone controls can be set to the same frequency and  Q and you have an ear educated enough to make that happen. Otherwise your tone controls work like a committee, eventually compromising because they can't actually reach agreement

This is super interesting, especially the point about if you like the 'au naturel' sound of your bass and how you have compared the EQ of the Elf, Gnome and Bam. I have the 280w Gnome and what you say the Gnome is flat, I actually find this to be too bass heavy for my liking and need to dial a bit of bass out. So my preference for a natural bass sound to my ears is different to the flat sound and how a coloured amp can complicate things even further.

41 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Not dense at all that's exactly what you get, except that when you buy a bass amp you are stuck with someone else's choices.

 

By and large if you feed into the effects return in a bass amp then you'll get the same sound going through to the speaker. Not all amps share the same architecture though so don't hold me to this. The tone shaping in a bass amp is in the pre-amp section and so you are stuck with any flavour which may be designed in. There's often different amounts of HPF, smiley faced pre shaping and not all tome controls are flat at 12.00 o/c. I'm guessing the OP wants to control his own pre shaping.

 

Almost exactly a year ago we had hold of the three micro amps Gnome/Elf/ BAM. They all come in almost the same dimensions with the same controls/facilities and so on. We measured the frequency responses and they are all different. With controls flat the Elf is classic smiley face, the Gnome has a raised top end and the BAM in between. All of them had a reduced output at 400Hz and all the mid controls were centred on 400Hz. Interestingly it was almost/totally  impossible to make each of them flat or to make them sound completely identical despite the mid control conveniently lining up with the mid suckout and having the measured frequency response in front of us. The same will be true of pretty much any bass amp.

 

As an analogy I'd say its a bit like using pickled onions in a recipe when you've run out of fresh ones, you'll never quite get rid of the taste of vinegar

That is such a great explanation. 

4 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

Am I being incredibly dense here? What is the difference between using a power amp and an external pre-amp and using an amp with one built in?

My understanding is if you plug your bass direct into a power amp, you get a pure uncoloured tone and just the sound of your bass. You do however lack any controls to modulate the bass, mids and treble. If you plug into a bass amp, you are then restricted to the manufacturers pre-amp and the tone that they bring. So if you have an Ampeg amp, you get the Ampeg pre-amp colour, if you have a MarkBass amp then you get the MarkBass pre-amp colour and so on and so forth. Using a just a power amp, you get an uncoloured sound and then you can use the pre-amp of your choice to colour your sound, for example a MXR pre-amp, an Ampeg pre-amp, a Sansamp pre-amp and you are not limited to the colour of a pre-amp in a bass amp. 

U2 - Under A Blood Red Sky. Totally blew me away the energy and rawness that the studio albums lacked although I still loved the studio albums.

35 minutes ago, jrixn1 said:

It's a good, modular concept: the instrument and pedals provide the tone; the power amp and speaker have just the one job - to amplify it transparently.

 

However, a GR Bass Pure 800 is, what, £680 - if you can find one in stock anywhere.  A Big Baby 3 is £1,149, with a three-month lead time.  That's £1,829.

 

Instead, look into powered speakers (some people call them 'FRFR', so use that as a search term).  An RCF 732-A is about £750 and you can get it on next-day delivery from any number of shops.  The internal 700W RMS power amp benefits from DSP which handles crossover, phase control, and speaker protection.

 

I used mine with various preamp pedals with no problem - just plug them in with a normal jack cable.  The powered speaker has options for input level (mic or line); line level is fine - be careful with mic level as it will very loud.

 

Other RCF powered speaker models to look into: HD 32-A, 932-A, 745-A.  And from other manufacturers you have the QSC K12.2 and Yamaha DXR12/DXR15.

 

Since moving to powered speakers I've had the best and most consistent sound ever - definitely never going back to a traditional bass amp.

Thank you. I should of said that I do have a Barefaced Two10 already and a MarkBass Little Bass IV. So I'd keep the cab and just swap out the amp but I do get what you're saying.

I was thinking today how each manufacturer of amps, cabs, active basses etc. have their own sound and add colour to some degree and you never quite know what you get until you buy your new gear and either love it or hate it. It then got me thinking about how the old Mission Cyrus HiFi amps never had a bass or treble controls and was one of the best amps I'd heard back in the day along with NAD amps. I then read a post on Facebook about how some bassists are running a power amp with their chosen speaker and using a pre-amp pedal for tweaking their sound but mostly letting the natural sound of their bass come through rather than an amp colouring it. This got me interested and more so when one chap said he was using a GRBass Pure 800 power amp, a Barefaced cab and a Sansamp pre-amp pedal. Another said he does the same but uses the GRBass One 800 amp as you can bypass the EQ completely and just use it like a power amp.

Is anyone running a setup like this and does it work? Would be interested on any thoughts or feedback.

I have the MIM Fender FSR 70's Precision and it is absolutely amazing. It's my favourite look for a bass, so when I saw Fender had released them, I found a shop that had them, drove straight there, played it and had bought it within half an hour. The quality, finish, playability and tone is the best I've had from a Fender including the two US AV75RI Jazz basses I've had and the US Standard Jazz and Precision I've had. It comes as standard with 62 Custom Shop Pickups and US hardware and I've had Jon Shuker make a maple gloss fretless neck so it's now my Sting replica. It's also my go to bass for recording as it so is so good.

I believe there is a new Warwick Gnome I Pro 280 V2 that has an aux in. Just make sure you get the V2 as the original version does not have the Aux In.

https://shop.warwick.de/en/amplifier/bass-amps/bass-amp-heads/36949/warwick-gnome-i-pro-v2-pocket-bass-amp-head-with-usb-interface-and-aux-input-300-watt

As Steve has said, to get the Fender Precision TV logo, you want the PB70 Precision and the PB70US come with US Pickups and Alder/Ash body. I'm a huge Japanese Fender fan and I have the PB62 Fretless Precision andxa 62RI Jazz which are both amazing.

Generally no but we did a gig at a music club recently and after the gig, we headed to the bar and the two girls behind the bar went crazy and started shouting, "oh my god, it's the fretless bass player, we both adore the fretless bass and we hardly ever hear anyone play one, we loved listening to you play and the sound of the fretless". This obviously made my night. We then played there again a few times and they made similar comments but refer to me as the 'fretless bass player' and even renamed the band to The Tim Shez Band and The Fretless Bass Player 😂 The funny thing about this is our singer is not overly comfortable with the band being named just after him but the drummer and I prefer to be more unknown and just the other two, his rhythm section.

So as a joke I got this tshirt made and have worn it a few times at gigs 😁 

In my experience, I think woods and density play a factor in how a musical instrument sings. After all, its vibration and frequencies we are dealing with so how these travel through an object will play a factor in how an instrument sings and resonates etc. We've had dead notes, badly set up basses etc. which will affect how a note sustains or resonates so in my experience the wood and density does affect this. This is why I also subscribe to playing an instrument acoustically as Roger Sadowsky suggests. Tone and voicing on the other hand in my experience is not really a contributing factor of an electrical instrument, this in my opinion comes from the pickups, strings, technique etc.

I wouldn't necessarily say its a fake. I believe that Made in Japan was used up until about 1995 and then switched to Crafted in Japan from 1995 onwards. I would say the Made in Japan on the headstock is just a design logo and not anything more than some sort of logo, similar to a 40th Anniversary or 75th Anniversary type logo.

For reference I adore Fender Japan basses, they are the nicest Fender's I have played, especially mid to late 80's models. I have two and they are my work horses. What I like the most about them is the high gloss necks rather than the satin necks that you tend get on US basses. 

I've had a couple of fallings out with bands that I have left, one of them absolutely huge. Bands No.1, I chose to leave because they were quite flakey in the sense that we'd have band practices arranged so I would drive 45 minutes to get there to find not everyone turns up, so no drummer or singer as they can't make it or can't get a babysitter but failed to tell anyone. Even had a band practice where they turned up with the baby and then had to go off somewhere so as I was the only one who'd had a baby, they left the newborn baby in my arms to look after as they went off somewhere. Plus, trying to get them to commit to gig was impossible as nobody was available as they couldn't get babysitters or be free. So as we all communicated via email so I dropped an email saying I'm leaving the band to pursue other things and thanked them for everything to then get a barrage of abuse from the singer and guitarist. I tried to reason with them and keep it constructive but it got quite nasty so I didn't reply after that.

Band No.2 was someone who I thought was a friend. We'd been in a band before and he always was a bit special in I want lots of attention which is fine. He was the band leader and organized all the gigs which again was fine. We were doing about 130 gigs a year, but at least a third of them were freebies and of no benefit but he either couldn't say no when asked to play or it was a way to satisfy his drinking habit as it was a beer festival or a fete/festival. He also didn't drive so one of us, usually me, would have to pick him up and drop him home after the gig. So cracks started to appear when we were doing 2/3 gigs a day or 5 gigs a weekend. It was something like play a 2 hour club gig on a Friday night. Then Saturday, drive from Surrey to Portsmouth to play for an hour midday at a fete. Then drive to Oxford to play an hour or 2 at a beer festival in the afternoon. Then drive to Gosport or somewhere else to play in the evening for 2 hours at a working men's club. Then possibly Sunday drive to a beer festival or summer fete somewhere miles away to play for free for 45 mins to an hour. All of this while picking him up and dropping him back afterwards. We started to notice our singers voice was starting to get damaged and she was struggling with the amount of singing she was doing. Even in one day she could be doing 3 gigs and singing anything from 4 to 6 hours a day. We also have families and were getting no time to spend with them and also spending so much time and money driving to gigs which we wouldn't get paid for. The drummer also was losing out as he would normally work nights as a Royal Mail driver but was having to turn down work to do a gig only to find he'd get paid £70 where he could be getting anything from £180 if he worked instead.

Some of us put forward that we should limit the amount of gigs we do per day, so 1 gig on Friday night, a maximum of 2 on a Saturday and none on Sunday if we played Friday. This was to protect our singers voice. We also said that we only want to do gigs that paid or if they didn't pay, then it was a benefit to us in terms of exposure, promotion or could lead on to something else. We said that driving 3 hours to play for free for 20 minutes at a school fete is a bit pointless. This didn't go down very well at all with him and a few arguments ensued but we continued. Tensions started to creep in as more and more gigs and freebies and multiple gigs in one day started to creep back in. Our singers voice and health started to suffer and she started to get sick. Plus, the music started to suffer as it was quantity over quality which was then affecting the performance. The drummer especially started to play completely different drums parts as he was fed up meaning famous bass parts didn't fit or well known parts to songs no longer sounded anything like how they should, So it was the start of the summer and we played a really bad gig on a Sunday. We were all at each others throats, we played really badly and were promised some things which wasn't true. So after the gig, I said to my friend and the band leader that I have decided that at the end of the year I am leaving the band. I was giving him 6 months notice but will happily stay on into the following year if it takes a little longer to find a replacement. I thought this was reasonable. Well, my friend went absolutely ballistic, called me every name under the sun, and said that if I do this then he and I will never speak again. I told him that I am giving him at least 6 months to find a replacement bass player which will be a doddle and he's over-reacting. We'd been friends for 20 years so this is a little over the top but he called me a whole host of things like a snake, traitor, back stabber etc. and said that if I do this then we will never speak again. So anyway, we then had another gig to do that evening, a 60th birthday party for a lady who'd booked us but guess what, my friend, the band leader didn't turn up and would not answer anyone's messages when trying to get hold of him. This was very out of order as he accused us of not being professional at times and we must do certain things and not let customers or punters down by being late or cancelling any gigs etc. Thankfully, he only played rhythm guitar and did some backing vocals so we managed to get through the gig perfectly without him.

Anyway, the band ended and we formed a new band as it was originally his band and his band name and out of respect we felt we should start a fresh. We also slightly changed the songs and style of the band to make it different but stuck to roughly the same genre. Some members left which was amicable and my now ex-friend formed a new band playing a slightly different genre and style. However, my ex-friend found out that we were continuing which at first he encouraged us to do but then seemed to turn against us. We think because he felt we wouldn't be able to succeed without him but it turns out that we were. We had about 40 gigs a year booked, gigs booked for 2 years in advance, including parties, birthdays, festivals, Christmas and New Years gigs. He started to spread nasty rumour's around about us to venues, phoning venues pretending to be us and cancel the gigs, get venues to try and pay us less as we were now a four piece and not a five piece anymore and even created a fake email address pretending to be a venue emailing us to say the gig at a big club has been cancelled. Of course none of it was successful as we were one step ahead of him but it did cause some disruption and a huge amount of stress as well as venues or people becoming suspicious or concerned about our integrity. We would contact venues or bookings a few weeks in advance to say we were looking forward to seeing them and playing just as a way to confirm we are still playing and to counter or check to see if there had been any contact from my ex-friend. Thankfully no gigs were successfully cancelled but some venues did tell us that someone had tried to call to cancel the gig. It even got to the point where my ex-friend sent me and others threatening texts and one female person linked to the band had to phone the Police as he was stalking them and making them feel unsafe. Some of my friends on Facebook, not linked to music were even contacted by my ex-friend to get them to like his new band and to not like mine. The mechanic who works on my car said his wife was even contacted by him and he phoned up drunk talking rubbish. They've never even met or spoken before. He even tried to ban us from travelling to the Isle of White to have a holiday as this is where he goes to visit sometimes and didn't want us on the island as well.  So this went on for around 2-3 years with repercussions every now and again but its pretty much stopped now. Most of the toxic people involved who were his hanger-ons are not in contact and due to the Covid, the band that we formed stopped at the start of 2020. Just amazes me what my ex-friends motivation was as we were not in competition with him, had no grudges to bear and were just a small local band playing music, its not like were were famous or any sort of threat. All I can think is it was just a control issue or jealousy.

Apart from that, all the other bands I've been in have been fine and I'm friends with now still.

On 16/08/2023 at 09:32, Obrienp said:

I try to keep my amp list to one combo and one (or two) decent cabs, plus a main head and compact spare (for gigs). At the moment I am in transit from valve/class D hybrid to clean class D, so I have more gear than I need.
 

I have a Peavey MiniMax 150 combo that I use for rehearsals with both bands and gigs with one. I also have an Orange Terror II 500 head and 2 x Orange 112 cabs, which I gigged with the blues band I play in but i have found that the rig is more than I need for our gigs.
 

I keep a Warwick Gnome iPro (280 watts) in the gig bag as a spare and tried it out of curiosity at one gig, only to decide that I actually prefer the cleaner sound. This has lead me on a quest to find a clean head with more EQ options. I also decided I didn’t need to be lugging 2 x 12 cabs to all gigs and bought a well used Barefaced Two10. I love the Two10 but not with the Terror head: too much old school but it is great with the Gnome.
 

I just bought a Mark Bass LM III on the market place and I am hoping it is going to pair nicely with the Two10. If it does, there is going to be a barely used Orange Terror rig on the market place.

I also have a Warwick Gnome I Pro 280 and I absolutely love it with my Barefaced Two10. I've started to use it a lot more at gigs as this setup sounds so good.

I've also just bought a Mark Bass LM IV and it sounds alright through the Barefaced but I'm not blown away with it so I might sell it on. I did have an Ampeg PF500 and this sounded really good through my Barefaced. I also tried an Aguilar TH500 last week through a Barefaced Two10 and this setup sounded really musical. It was only in a shop so no real world comparison but the guy in the shop who was playing my bass through it was really surprised at how good it sounded.

This thread might help a little bit with some info.

On 15/08/2023 at 19:46, Rayman said:

Yeah, I think when it comes to harmonics, rounds may well be the way forward, but I prefer the feel of flats, personally. I have them on quite a few basses. For me harmonics are a bonus, not a necessity, so I guess I have to find a happy medium.

I play a lot of harmonics and I only have flats or nylon strings on my fretless basses.

7 hours ago, nilorius said:

Sometimes Your emotions, feelings and visions could not be perfect.

Couldn't have said it better myself 😜

Cheers everyone, I guess it's going to be a try and see if they tend to vary from bass to bass.

29 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

They’re usually wider - 44mm as oppose to 42 - but shallower in depth.

Wider as in a 70's neck? I don't mind wider and shallower is better for me. Just measured my 70's Precision and that is 42mm 👍