electric nate

The manual says it's a Svetlana 12ax7, I've yet to actually take the pedal apart and look at it though, but it was bought new so i've no reason to doubt the stock tube is still in there. From what i've read the Svetlana is one of the lower gain 12ax7's available. I'm looking for something with clear midrange and highs at high gain levels just to try to even out the scooped sound the pedal has. I guess I'm looking for something pretty unusual and specific in terms of tone, perhaps just replacing the tube isn't going to give me enough of what I want. I'm after a super-aggressive, tight high-gain metal sound I can blend with my clean signal you see. I can get extremely close by using a transistor overdrive, with the drive low and the treble high, right before the valvedrive in my signal chain.

Has anyone tried swapping the tube in the EBS valvedrive? The factory tube is a Svetlana which I rather like for a bit of heat and grind but it doesn't quite sound sharp enough or open enough for the band I'm in at the moment. It tends to sound a little compressed and murky at higher gain settings and even with the EQ flat (which for some reason is bass and treble at zero and mid at full on the valvedrive) it has a noticeable mid scoop to it. The sound I'm after is more aggressive, lots of bite, bark and sizzle and a tighter low end. I'd prefer a mid hump to mid scoop. Can anyone recommend me some brands/models of valves to try? I'm not sure if buying a replacement 12ax7 noted for it's "high gain" or "emphasis on the mids" is going to be better or worse for bass, as all the descriptions of overdrive or frequency response characteristics manufacturers give, seem to apply mostly to guitar or hi-fi equipment. is it worth me purchasing something like this [url="http://watfordvalves.com/product_detail.asp?id=1396"]http://watfordvalves...ail.asp?id=1396[/url] for example?

I've never played an LTD bass i didn't absolutely hate, something about the string spacing and the action just feels horrific to me. I never liked Yamaha BB series until i bought one. They're lovely to own because playing it distracts you from how fugly the body shape is! Stingrays turn me off. I don't like them aesthetically, although I assumed they'd be wonderful to play given their reputation, but when I got to play one a while ago I was shocked at how fat and unplayable the neck was. Dunno if different years have different dimensions or what but this one was like playing a tree. Never liked gibson basses, they look bad and sound worse. Same for Hofner IMO. Most boutique/coffee table basses irk me too, they seem to be produced for a demographic with more money than talent. Having said that, one of the best live bass tones I've ever heard was a fancy Overwater worth several thousand. Give me a fender any day. Japanese made ones are some of my favorite basses I've played. They're like well designed tools, simple, but high quality, sturdy, durable. I feel like you really get out what you put into them. I try to avoid active electronics too, I prefer to have as little between my fingers and my speaker cab as possible. Even when I use effects I always use a line splitter to run a totally clean signal parallel to the wet signal.

I dunno about the single finest, I feel that might be yet to come in the ever changing world of amplification and instrument technology. [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDGRc_krpYg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDGRc_krpYg[/url] This has always been fairly near the top of my list of great bass tone though. Nice subtle grind, enough to give the tone a bit of edge, not so much it sounds overdriven. Far as I know this basically just a well performed and well recorded P-bass+ampeg svt.

I actually work in a rehearsal studio. We use Line6 amps for guitar and bass. The guitar stuff I'm not enormously keen on but it'll do for rehearsals. However, the bass amps are brilliant from the studio's perspective. The ones we have are Lowdown LD300 pro's. They're stupidly reliable. I've been here over a year, never seen an issue with one yet, and they get used and abused 7 days a week. We get the odd person that whinges about them but usually they just haven't bothered to learn how the amp works, or they need to reign in their expectations and come to terms with the fact that they're not playing Wembley stadium or recording at Abbey Road and the amps here were chosen to be practical for rehearsal purposes. And practical they are indeed. Easy to lug about, and they provide plenty of power and a variety of tones. They're never going to sound just like an SVT rig or a Bassman or whatever else, but they'll get you in the right ballpark which is enough for a rehearsal session. Anyway, the LD300pro is now out of production and has been replaced by the LD400pro which are available here [url="http://www.gak.co.uk/en/line-6-lowdown-ld-400-pro/18694"]http://www.gak.co.uk/en/line-6-lowdown-ld-400-pro/18694[/url] for £350! Not that i'm promoting that particular online retailer, they were just the cheapest price I found in 2 minutes of googling.

If you could build an amp with nano technology then you could just mount it in the control cavity of your bass and have a speaker cable instead of a jack lead going directly into a cab. Huzzah! One less thing to carry!

[color=#222222]Just got me new Genz Benz neox 2x12. First impressions: holy crap what a detailed and articulate sound. It's a lot more sensitive than I was expecting as well, I figured being rated at 600w it'd require a fair bit of grunt to move air, but I was very wrong. It makes the power amp I bought seem completely overkill. Like driving a tank to the corner shop. [/color] I've been busily re-tweaking all my effects and tone settings as the new cab has revealed a lot of details I wasn't so fond of. I guess it's incredibly difficult to say what a "coloured" sound is or what a "clear" or "uncoloured" sound might be without having an incredibly extensive experience of hearing the same bass and amplifier though many many different cabs, but certainly the Genz sounds more "high definition" to me than anything else I've used. I'll be interested to try playing an iPod or a CD or something though it to see how it sounds with a full range sound source. [color=#222222]The tweeter in this cab is wonderful too, that has to be said. I'm not usually a tweeter kinda guy, I was planning to just keep it turned off but it's actually really well balanced with the woofers and not at all harsh or fizzy sounding like some tweeters i've heard. The attenuation knob on the back of the cab is more like a very subtle presence control, gently shaving down the very top end sparkle rather than dialing harshness in or leaving you sounding muddy and vague without it. Lovely stuff.[/color] [color=#222222]The only thing I dislike so far is that it could do with some handles on the sides. Straps would do - the thing is so light they wouldn't need to be strong. The handles on the top are great, really well made and handy for rolling the cab on it's wheels, but if you want to walk up a flight of stairs with it it's kind of awkward because the handles force you to hold it upright, but the cab is tall enough that it would be easy to bash the bottom of it against a stair or two unless you have your hands right up by your chin, which is fairly uncomfortable. If the handles were half way down each side of the cab, the bottom of the cab would be nowhere near the stairs and you could keep your hands about waist height which is a lot more comfy. I'm kind of nit-picking here though I guess.[/color] aaaaaaand that's enough rambling from me.

I played a Modern Player Tele in Dawsons in Manchester the other day. I've always LOVED tele/51p basses, the shape, the simplicity, always thought it was a bass that matched my own ethos as a player. The finish was exquisite, perhaps a little annoying if you prefer a smooth matte neck rather than a gloss one, but I can't fault it's application and quality. Anyway, the point is, these really do LOOK the proverbial canine's testes in person. However, for me it just didn't FEEL right. I know when i've got to have an instrument because it just sort of comes alive in my hands somehow, it resonates right, the notes translate perfectly from my brain to the fretboard and that just didn't happen for me with this. It felt essentially just like an inert piece of wood, a tool, a thing, an object. I WANTED to love it so much, I wanted to look cool with my 2 shiny humbuckers and tele headstock, I wanted to thunder along monstrously on the exquisite maple fretboard but it just didn't tickle my pickle as an instrument. It seems kind of mean to say, but it felt a bit like a model rather than the real deal. To me the modern player tele is like a souvenir samurai sword, it looks great as an ornament but it just isn't going to hold up in a real swordfight. Maybe the quality is variable and I played a "duff" one? Maybe someone else will pick it up and want to marry it and start a family with it instantly, I don't know, but it wasn't for me. Tis a gorgeous bass but not gorgeous enough to make me cheat on my aerodyne jazz.

Supposedly the covers have some effect on the pickups, i'm not sure if they were intended to contain or reflect the magnetic field (perhaps an attempt to improve sustain?), or if they were just supposed to reduce interference and noise. I'm sure you'll find plenty of people willing to claim they have an effect on tone, but there's no great players with great tone I can think of who left the covers on. (edit: I'm sure that'll sound like an invitation for someone to post a bunch of pics of famous players with pickup covers on and prove me wrong!)

[quote name='KiOgon' timestamp='1316945698' post='1384552'] Hey Merello, Pray tell - how have you posted that picture? It's almost 3D to me, the head even sticks out over the 2 borders of the forum page. I don't know if it looks the same to everyone? Cheerz, John [/quote] I see this too! My guess is that the image has a transparent background, which is possible with .png format as far as I remember. I want this bass quite badly, it's just the kind of thing I like, simple design, very little to it, but what few components there are, are of the highest quality. Obviously overpriced though. It'd be great if they did a jap or mex version, or even a squire, then people could buy it and put a good pickup and circuit in it themselves.

I am now the proud owner of a mint condition Avalon U5 thanks to this man. A nice easy purchase, he didn't seem phased by me being half drunk (he came to meet me in the pub, i'm not an alcoholic!) everything went smooth and groovy, just the way it should be. Many many thanks, and my hearty recommendation for future sales/purchases. He clearly takes very good care of his equipment!

oh niiiiice, i'm not usually into big name bass players, but this guy is great. Real down to earth quality playing. He's a proper bass player, rather than a soloist with a bass. Thankyou!

Thanks for all your help and suggestions guys, I've done a lot of searching and research and trawling through youtube and basstasters and decided it HAS to be a U5, other preamps are great, nice tone, good features etc - but when I hear the U5 something just clicks and seems "right", it's the only one I keep coming back to. I've hopefully now got a sale arranged soon with a fellow BC member!

[quote name='Chris2112' post='1369233' date='Sep 11 2011, 11:15 AM']the vile arse miasma soaked into the wood and the shop had tried everything to get rid of the smell without success! As you can imagine, that thread was quite funny.[/quote] note to self: do not eat lunch while browsing basschat

The only thing i like about that zon is the headstock, The rest of it is horrid, especially the body contour where the laminate has been cut away. The fodera would at least make a good coffee table. Being singlecut means more surface to rest mugs and magazines on!

I'm an annoying geeky customer. I always end up asking things that the staff don't know the answer to, like: "are these tubes run at full plate voltage?" "what frequencies are the eq bands?" "what transformer does this use?" I always like to test for bullshit as well, pretending not to know things i've already read up on to see how far I can trust the staff. I had a guy in The Bass Gallery in Camden try to charge me £280 for an EBS valvedrive, when their own website was advertising it at £220. He "dropped the price down" to £250 when I questioned it. Then I blurted out the RRP and he figured out I wasn't an idiot and went to check the price properly.