guildbass

Gosh... Sounds a bit naughty! It's not like they are offering a residency... i would have thought that if your band was big enough to make a financial difference then they ought to be offering some kind of incentive... Like a number of pre-booked dates...

But it does all depend on how the market is... If the pub guys who book the music get pissed off with your attitude...You and your guitar stay at home...A difficult balance especially as we are often looking for venues and the venues know that, yet we are theoretically adding value to their business...Who values who more...

It must depend on the popularity of the band....

Yeah, I bought a pretty cheap Tele from Ebay...It was a Shine... It came with the chrome bridge cover that people refer to as the 'Ashtray'... and it was horrible... I rest my hand on or near the bridge and the ashtray held your hand up in the air. You certainly couldn't damp strings or 'chug'.

Thing is, They've been playing since 1957...I used to have a 7" EP single of 'Cliff Richard and the Drifters' with a live version of a rocker called Apron Strings, [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kbao1tF_7k"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kbao1tF_7k[/url] and an bass led Instrumental called Jet Black (with shades of 'Move It) in there... The Live version wasn't bad considering... a couple of bum notes on the bass but a decent rolling bass line... Not bad for a bunch of 16 year olds all playing through a Vox AC30 or whatever...So I was prepared to believe that was live...Until I looked and listened closely....

I built this and was forced to sell it...I still hurt.. .

[quote name='EmmettC' timestamp='1324326822' post='1473115']
I always thought my Trace Elliot made every bass sound the same, but my Ampeg and SWR don't alter the sound as much, unless I dial it in. I used an Ashdown at a gig on Friday, and though not as bad as the Trace, it seemed to make my G&L and Fender sound similar, and not how they normally sound,
I don't own the Ashdown, and I didn't have alot of time to fiddle, so I could be misjudging it, but my Trace was terrible. My fender sounded no better than my cheap Aria played through that amp.
[/quote]

I used to love the sound of those Trace Elliots, the green ones, but as you say, the amp has the tone, the bass is just a stick with strings on. Interestingly my old guild had such a ferocious sonic signature it even sounded like a Guild through a Trace! I actually think that most bass amps are set up to make a 'P' bass type guitar sound good...And 'P' basses and their ilk have a deeply uninteresting tone through a HiFi so the average bass amp starts with that almost 'non' tonal characteristic as a starting point and builds from there.
Certainly, if I was building a bass amp for retail I'd start with the most common bass guitar and tailor my amp to make THAT guitar sound nice...And that's a bolt neck fender bass...As you say, It seems to me also that if you stuff almost any Fender-esque guitar through a Trace, you get a Trace sound. Stuff a Warwick Streamer through most bass amps and you get a Warwick Streamer sound...

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324463358' post='1474389']
SO what happens if you take your super flat rig into a venue that has lots of heavy soft furnishings in and lotso of people too?

Or tiled walls.

Do you leave it all as it is or do you use eq to try and help tailor your sound to the venue?
[/quote]

when I used to use it, I left it exactly as it was all the time. I was running my Guild through it so it was pushing out a fair degree of 42 Hz anyway and the only way to get that bass to cut through a mix was to use a plectrum and the bridge pickup with a typical rock type song . There was enough depth to the sound to provide a rich 'fill' anyway and it never seemed to get overpowered or indeed couple with the room...Even in southampton Guildhall

I no longer use that rig though. I am much happier with a little amp for small venues...as I'm not playing with a Glam Rock band now...With just a classical guitar and the female human voice only we can manage quite happily with a little amp or for bigger stuff, D'I' into the desk and in-ear or wedge monitoring. My bass only needs to be sonically balanced with the acoustic guitar so it's really easy to set up. There IS a little bit of coupling with that little amp so I tend to stick it on a plastic crate or just roll the bass off a tad

That's fantastic news... I actually got a prickly sweat on thinking about you losing the basses...But how nice to literally work down the page and find a happy ending!

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1324383442' post='1473582']
What sort of songs?

There's a big difference between blues and prog rock.
[/quote]

Haha... Imagine having to learn Yessongs in 2 days....

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1324422175' post='1474187']
Sad thing is, it doesn't sound like it watches...
The rhythm guitar is acoustic in places, the drummer is hitting ride and it's sounding hats, lead is massively compressed for a combo with no pedals..., it's all for show like top of the pops...only the singing sounds live.. :-(
[/quote]Oh! you wrote that while I was asking!

Are those little amps on the stage actually doing anything, and are the Shadows actually playing because If they are, wow to the sound and wow to a super tight performance.

Sue Ryder bass...are we talking about those charity shops... I saw a Fender bass and Strat copy in the Salisbury branch a couple of years ago...They're good then are they?

My '63 Hofner Senator...animal glues in the neck were old so the neck moved. It fed back on 'A' onstage, crappy floating wooden bridge meant the intonation was marginal by the 9th fret!

My Guild 302... fabulous instrument apart from it being a tad neck heavy which was OK, but sounded like you were hitting a biscuit tin full of mud. Dull, heavy ponderous lows and mids. Tops worked well mind...quite flute-like...I think it was the set neck construction that gave it the sound. Astonishingly strong though, never EVER went out of tune irrespective of the temperature...Made a Streamer seem fussy!

My Fingerbone Fretless. Sounds EXACTLY like an 80's boutique fretless should sound but it's basically a super 'P' so half the fretboard is across your tummy.

[quote name='alexclaber' timestamp='1324382580' post='1473561']
You need the voltage to drive the current flow - you increase voltage and current flows in response, not the other way round. As impedance drops then current has to increase to maintain power output, hence the minimum impedance ratings and how amps don't consistently double max power as you halve impedance.

If you want an absolutely clean sound then valve amps aren't any louder than solidstate amps of equal power. The success of the RH450/750 shows that you can get away with quite a lot of compression and valvelike distortion before many bassists consider the sound to be no longer clean - it doesn't appeal to me for most of my sound(s) and likewise I'm not a fan of valve amps for most of my sounds. Yes, a 200W valve amp can sound loud but you can hear it squashing the transients compared to an 800W solidstate amp when cranked up - whether you like that or not, that's up to you.

Guildbass - have a look here for enlightenment: [url="http://barefacedbass.com/bgm-columns.htm"]http://barefacedbass...bgm-columns.htm[/url]
[/quote]

OK...Got that...So what you are saying is that even if the signal goes to a square wave, as illustrated in the 'it goes to 11' article , which is of course effectively DC at rail voltage, albeit switching at high speed between +ve and -ve rail voltage ...That DC voltage plus the current output of the amp won't have any adverse effect on the coil....?

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1324351658' post='1473344']
No. Total myth, I'm afraid, one which is summarily dismissed every time it's unfortunately regurgitated.
[/quote]

Ok...Well I was simply going from the experiences of a mate who used to have to deal with the 'In house' gear of clubs where the resident 'DJ's' used to break into the Amp safe and increase the volumes. because when they were honking into the mic it sounded louder of they ate the thing and got a clipped output. Doing that would melt the coils of the drivers.

I'm afraid I don't follow this. If you run an amp without clipping, your signal waveform has nice rounded peaks. The speaker faithfully follows the changes in voltage.
If however your power amp is offered a too large an input signal, it runs out of headroom, so instead of responding by making the peaks bigger it flattens the larger peak off to form plateaus. if the input signal is big enough, the output waveform essentially looks like the bottom half of each peak with a flat top. in effect, you get a series of flat tops broken only by the odd drop down This is NOT some myth...It's right there on the scope. Those plateaus are at whatever voltage the amp can manage flat out...(Which in the case of my Mosfet amp is 110 volts.)
THAT's there too on the scope. Stick a reasonably steady DC voltage through a voice coil, and the coil presents what is in effect a short circuit. It gets hot and the thing loses mechanical integrity.

Now that's what I've SEEN happen out in the world. That's what I've observed happening on a scope, so someone needs to explain carefully and in simple language why a hard clipped waveform ISN'T DC, when it looks and measures as DC, and why shoving DC through a voice coil won't overheat and ultimately kill that coil.

Help me out because that myth busters list didn't tell me why I am wrong, it just said I was...

[quote name='alanbass1' timestamp='1324332146' post='1473216']
Wow, seems I'm being tainted with bleating by having a view. For the record I'm not bleating, just making what I feel is a valid point. One of the key 'measures' I use when buying cabs is based on not having the amplifier output greater than the cabs rated power handling. Others may not, but I do. Unless I'm totally wrong, I don't believe stating an amp sounds like 'n' watts' qualifies as a valid power rating in this context. So, for this very reason I believe that TC Electronic are wrong in the way they present the power rating for their amplifiers.

For the record I'm not talking about pints (never had), and I have not (or ever had) stated I feel I have been cheated. I own a RH450 and a Classic and I use them as my main gigging rig. However, that does not stop me thinking that TC are wrong in the way they have marketed their amps.

There you go, I'm now ready for the return rant...............
[/quote]

What kills cabs...or rather drivers, is Dc voltage, and the more an amp clips, the flatter the signal peaks get. Clip it enough and those flat plateaus add up to a solid elevated DC voltage...And that will brew up the driver coils. A 10 Watt HiFi amp can happily kill a 500 watt speaker if it's clipped hard into it for long enough. if you want a 'crunch' in your tone, generate it at the front end with a valve pre-amp or something then use a big healthy power amp to simply amplify accurately whatever you've put in...Your rig will love you for it...

The reason may well be that the smaller amps are clipping and clipped tones sound loud to the human ear. It's why one can get away with a 50 watt Fender Bassman. All that crunch and fart sounds loud.

It's why you need really big power amps if you run clean.
My mate does FOH for Porcupine Tree so he's well up on what works and is always looking for lighter, more wieldable kit. He's been very impressed with the Mackie Class 'D's. They're not any better than the Peaveys as far as I know...Nowt wrong with them...

That bass is basically the original Ned Steinburgher design. I've got a '98 NS2000-4 which was the next gen shape...

Actually apart from a slightly more slender horn it's the same. Mine has twin soap bars rather than the PJ set up. It is really beautifully made and will set-up faultlessly through all three octaves. I can arpeggio chords at the 21st fret and it sings with perfect intonation. Mine is as heavy as sin. At this price it's a proper top drawer instrument for sod all.

It will also take significant upgrading. The pre-amps in those basses were extremely good and really enjoy being hopped up to 18v from the 9v. The bridge isn't quite as good as a US model but Spector will sell you the US brass bridge which drops straight in. The machine heads are Korean ones...They're fine but not quite Grovers but the build, the wood and so on is fabulous.

Sonically It'll stand in the same room as a Warwick Streamer Stage 1

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324327653' post='1473134']
How did you pick your crossover frequency?

How do you know your pre-amp is running flat?
[/quote]

It scopes flat when set accordingly. I run a slightly phase delayed signal though the pre-amp and then mix that with an inverted copy of the original signal. If I get a null, it's flat...I can get it pretty close on the solid state side. The valve side does have the odd harmonic slipping through...,

The crossover frequency was set by ear...I tweaked it until there was no dips or bumps as the sweep tone ran up. it plays music fairly well and at the end of the day it doesn't significantly colour the sound of the bass,. The point of this post was to ask or perhaps discuss whether we use our basses as one half of a tone system, with the other half being an INTENTIONAL change or enhancement to the tone made by electronics in the signal path. OR do we use our amplification to simply make the instrument tone audible, with little or no alteration to the instrument's natural sound. I choose the latter. I endeavour to reproduce my instrument's tone without adding anything. I will never achieve perfection but I strive for it.

I do however have a fair amount of reverb on my vocal...Because my voice sucks!

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324325247' post='1473092']
What cab is it you use that is so incredibly flat. I am truly intrigued at this point.
[/quote]
The Pre-amp is a Peavey max. It has a cross-over output. Run flat it's pretty clean, especially through the solid state side. The output of that is shared into a Crown MA 2400...1200 RMS into 4 ohms per side. One channel feeds a 15" Gauss in a ported cab. The other channel is run into a custom built top cab which has a pair of 7" kevlar coned B & W HiFi drivers in individual tuned enclosures. The cross-over-ed output from the pre-amp can be swept between the two cabs to get them close to linear. With a pair of horns on top (which I don't actually use live) a sweep tone gives a close to linear response. It's a little more bumpy down at the bottom than it could be where the port isn't talking to the Gauss quite as well as it could...It was originally built for a Fender... But basically, with Cd music through the system, it sounds like a fairly good PA speaker. I don;t use the horns live, and to be honest, the stuff I do these days doesn't require this rig. Instead I use a small '80's 'Boxer' amp which is a single 12" in a wooden cab. It's not great but I can get it to sound pretty and close to the basses natural tone and at the end of the day, the punters don't care....It's rich enough to fill the bottom of the sound and bright enough for my solo stuff to be heard as individual notes.
in the studio, i will be D.I'ing with (hopefully) new strings...

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324310508' post='1472865']
Really?

I don't. I don't care if the response is linear or what the THD figures are or any of the other numbers on the spec sheet. The things I'm interested in are: Is it loud enough? Is it light enough? Do I like the sound that is produced when I play my bass through it into my speakers?
[/quote]

Fair enough. Horses for courses...I already like the sound of my bass so I use amps which add as little as possible to the instrument's sound, and I use a cab which again adds as little as possible. sadly, I can't afford digi amps so my amps weigh about the same as my car...Hey ho...:-)

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324162377' post='1471478']
Spector also uses different pickups and preamp and has different strings. This is going to mask any subtlety in sound the wood may make, if any.
[/quote]

Hmm... I don't think the pick-ups do that much... I've heard a Pedulla going from Barts to something very up-market and the overall tone was barely altered... I think the basses construction creates the primary tone signature, followed by wood DENSITY followed by pick-ups. Both my Guild 302's sounded the same, one was mahogany, one was Ash but they weighed virtually the same. The Spector weighs 25% more than the virtually identically shaped Warwick and sounds brighter and 'toppier but doesn't have the long lasting growling bottom notes ...Or rather it does, but they are pushed back in the mix so to speak. In a sense, it's like the Warwick has all the sliders on it's metaphorical 7 band EQ flat, and the Spector has the bottom three rolled off [quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324298622' post='1472652']
But you'll be changing the tone by allowing another object to resonate and therefore "processing" the sound.
[/quote][quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1324298622' post='1472652']
But you'll be changing the tone by allowing another object to resonate and therefore "processing" the sound.
[/quote]

No!... The point of the thread is in effect, is the sound coming out of the bass what we like, or does that signal NEED to be changed. Up until the point of the signal leaving the instrument, any activity whether mechanical or electromagnetic is involved with creating the tone. At that point, the question is;' Is that tone completed, or is it in effect one half of a tone. In my opinion, for an electric 6 string guitar, it is half the tone and the amplifier adds the other half. however, i believe that a good bass guitar can output a tone that merely needs to amplified.
Yes, a pedant could argue that every transducer adds or subtracts something, but the difference is, unlike a guitarist, we are not necessarily choosing these things to add to the sound, we are choosing these things to try and preserve an existing sonic signature.
I don't buy a Mosfet power amp because of the neat way it clips or the way the rectifier valve lets go, I buy a huge solid state power amp because it has THD figures of 0.0001 % or whatever... In other words, I look for a linear response and I buy massive amps so that they don't clip

[quote name='4 Strings' timestamp='1324290354' post='1472493']
"

>>> ... because they are acoustic instruments! All correct in theory but the potential effect on an electric bass is too small to be measurable nor audible.
[/quote]

The only thing is, if you push a bass guitar up against a wood door and play it, there is an appreciable amount of volume. The bass guitar's body, neck and headstock is resonating with enough energy to make a large flat surface radiate sound waves at a fair level. I would imagine that the design and nature of the materials used in the body extremities could have an effect .on the energy within the body (and thus ultimately the output) if they were allowed to move... And if they were allowed to move in a controlled way., could have a 'designed in' positive effect...

Yeah...maybe a bit of proximity effect, but not a huge amount...Same goes for the other instruments. A snip of tape echo on the early stuff, a special room on the later stuff, a basic mic mixer without tone circuits straight into an Ampex high speed tape recorder. Later stuff was stereo with some more complex mic'ing going on...But much of it is extremely natural sounding stuff and you can hear that it is not done with much if you listen with a very revealing audio set up as the phase information from the room is still there from the microphone.

i shall be putting new strings on the Warwick. Whether i take the fresh edge off the strings or try to capture them with that first few hours of brightness still intact will be dictated by when I can put them on.

We are very cognizant of the interaction between bass and other instruments, in fact I have modified my bass lines many times to remove or re-voice a
note or chord that is interacting with some other part of the mix. However, the classical guitar does tend to stay well away from much of the bass lines...I am trying for a sound which uses bass as the 'floor' of the soundstage, using sustained chords to provide a rich backdrop, arpeggio'd chords to provide a ripple over that, the guitar putting the sparkle into the air and the vocal a lyrical ribbon flying through it all... f***, that sounds pretentious, but hey, shoot for the stars, right?

[quote name='LawrenceH' timestamp='1324181673' post='1471581']
That bloody thread must be the most misunderstood piece of confusing 'evidence' about wood and tone ever. It is entirely irrelevant, except for perhaps demonstrating the unsurprising fact that the same pickup position and strings on two different pieces of wood have the potential to sound similar, especially through computer speakers. What it doesn't do is prove that wood has no effect on tone. It is n of 1 with no info on wood resonant frequencies, densities etc etc and the lack of consensus doesn't even preclude the possibility that people can hear a difference,just that they can't ascribe it to one or the other.
Anyway, I've been flamed on here before about wood but I think it's actually very interesting, so at the risk of virtual immolation once again, the physics behind wood's contribution to tone is well-characterised. For a string fixed between two points, unless the mounting bar (read: body) is perfectly rigid (which is impossible) then some energy will be imparted to the bar, transfer of which will be most efficient at resonant modes eg the primary resonant frequency. This in turn leads to faster decay of the string note envelope in a frequency-dependent fashion and this is itself amplified via the pickup.
An unambiguous demonstration of the role resonant frequency plays is to take a Fender guitar with a dead spot at a particular fret and put a small c clamp on the headstock. The node causing the dead spot will shift as the mass of the clamp has altered the resonant frequency(ies) of the neck. Headless basses were designed in part to address this phenomenon, so it's important to recognise that both material and construction contribute - if the latter didn't, xylophones would only be able to play one note.
Graphite composite is a very stiff material, and I'd imagine it has a correspondingly high resonant frequency such that the energy imparted to the body is minimised- out of interest, are Statii acoustically quiet compared to, say, a typical Fender, notably in the mids? Fixing wings onto this type of material won't make much of a difference and you'd expect such an instrument to sustain very well with an even decay envelope. Similarly, laminate neck-throughs are typically going to be very stiff and strong. But take a non-laminate, lightweight neck and bolt it onto a medium density bit of wood and now you have the potential for significant resonance modes in the mid-range which will affect the tone of the instrument more noticeably. Anything that then alters the way the [i]system[/i] resonates, which can be making a bit of wood thinner, or stiffer, or a high mass bridge, has the potential to be audible. Acoustic guitar builders have more tricks up their sleeve here because the construction plays an even more dominant/complex role in tone, so they can incorporate bracing, change back, top and side woods to alter mass versus stiffness of any one part of the system and in multiple planes through the material, as well as altering Helmholtz resonator tuning which will play a dominant role in tone. We can't do a lot of that with electric basses so tend to be more reliant on the inherent properties of the wood in that respect, laminate construction notwithstanding.
Btw I'm sure that even if instruments did tend to differ in general it's perfectly possible to build bolt-ons with the characteristics of neck-thoughs and vice versa.
[/quote]

Perhaps while the neck is designed not to resonate, the wings, affixed as they can be via different density strips, are allowed to move when excited at certain lower frequencies. In effect, acting like the ports on a loaded speaker cab do....???

As regards very rigid materials...Surely any vibration generated by the strings will pass through that material without attenuation and either the entire device will 'ring' or if there WERE wings fitted which were allowed to move, they would be excited by the vibration. Wouldn't the structure of the material have a bearing here. I know from speaker cabinet design that Medite ( a very dense chipboard) was liked because it didn't 'ring'....

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1324135512' post='1471187']
Funny you should mention a ribbon mic.

Interesting bit of kit that against a more modern mic.

The ribbon is heavy as far as mic membranes go, and very inflexible (its actually corrugated). Back then they couldnt deal with too much SPL either.

The result is a mic that by its very nature severely colours the tone, it loses a lot of top end, more importatnly though te mic cant reproduce very fast transients at all, in effect its a limiter in and of itself.

Now you may think this is a mad or bad or dangerous thing to use on a asource if there is some other device available that can do a better job of reproducinbg the real sound for you. Well sometimes, but not always, Bruce Swedien delivberately used ribbons when recording fast percussion deliberately because of this limiting effect, it meant he could get a much louder mix with louder percussion without having to resort to further processing.

Now that is what I mean by every thing you use has an effect, everything colours the sound, so your Buddy Holy single ribbon mic recordings, apart from the huge amount of eq that is inherent in a recording to tape at any time (boost highs going in cut them coming out to help with the hissss, also the biasing as well) would have been helped with nice Pultech style eqs and almost certainly some form of compression (yes even then).

You dont seem to grasp what goes in to a mix to make it sound natural, at the very very least you will be eq'ed (probably some fairly drastic cutting so you and the kick fit together), almost certainly you will be further compressed. There may well be other tricks too (ducking the bass of the kick to get more clarity and perception of tightness, not to mention a couple of dB of extra level attainable in the entir emix as a result). Then there qwill be the rest of the band too. It isnt done to justify the equiptment its done to make it sound better, and if you dont do it you end up with a vastly inferior mix every time. I'd happily prove it to you.

You ask what the Royal Albert Hall adds to a sound, well in fact it has always suffered from a massive echo, which initially was extremely detrimental, until the work on the vellarium and mushroom design and placement in the late 1990's started to get things under control [url="http://peutz.fr/lacoustique/articles/salles/PaperIOA02.pdf"]reference[/url]. There is nothing helpful about that, but its natural I guess.
[/quote]

I say ribbon mic... It may not have been.. But it was a vocal mic of some kind. The point was that the band played live, in a room with the guitar/amp combo doing it's thing, an upright bass, a drum kit or some cardboard boxes or the producers knees for percussion and a microphone. Yes, of course the equipment added or took away some stuff but not intentionally. At the end of the day, the tone of the bass was recorded faithfully...For what it was worth.

What we have going into the Studio is a classical guitar, a bass and a female vocalist. I intend to preserve the essential tone of my bass as far as I can, because I LIKE the tone of my bass and consider it appropriate. It has a pleasing, well rounded tone without the help of extra electronics and I believe it has that tone because of it's construction. I intend to reproduce the acoustic tone of the rather good Yamaha classical guitar as far as I can, and I intend to do likewise with the vocal.

The Guitar will be externally mic'd to sound like it is even though it has a reasonably good built-in piezo/mic set-up. My bass may be compressed/limited if I can't play evenly enough but the point of this thread was about the tone of the instrument. I will NOT be altering the TONE of my bass by stuffing it through magic boxes. Natural limitations in recording devices and room acoustics, whether real or synthetically applied are a part of the listeners experience but this thread was about whether a bass guitar has an inherent tone or whether it derives it's TONE from the intentional modification of the signal path, like an electric guitar does. In my opinion, MY two basses both generate tones which, when amplified need no alteration
to sound nice. Yes, in a challenging sonic environment one might need fancy help to RETAIN THAT TONE in the mix, but the point is, the tone generated by the instrument alone CAN, and in my case IS good enough. The tone generated by my set-neck Guild WASN'T....It needed help. The tone generated by every bolt-on neck bass guitar [u]I[/u] have tried (that's me, not anyone else mind) , needed help to bring it to life.

The OP said '[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Do we actually like the sound bass guitars make or to do we need the sugar coating to make them palatable?'[/font][/color]

Well, In answer to that question, I like the 'natural' sound my two basses make and after 38 years of bass playing and 38 years of having and hearing basses which sounded dull, dead and lifeless unless they were put through loads of circuitry, I believe the difference is that the construction of the Warwick and the Spector, being NS designed maple through-necks, gives them both their own distinct and natural tones which are attractive and usable enough to stand alone, something which no other basses I have owned of played has had.

So there!

[quote name='silddx' timestamp='1324066059' post='1470598']
My electric basses all sound sh*t without amplification, I couldn't go on stage with much louder version of the unamplified sound, I'd be a f***ing laughing stock. I plug them into my POD X3 and they sound ace. Sound is nothing but personal preference and whether it fits with the other instruments and voices.
[/quote]

The tone of my Warwick is pretty much spot on through a headphone amp into big headphones. When I plug in I generally tweak the amp to get back to the natural tone of the guitar...Often I find the bass on the amp has to be rolled back quite a lot either because the amp is rather exaggerated there or it's interacting with the room.

With the Guild, I used no end of magic boxes including a Line 6, a Berhinger modelling Bass pre-amp and an Alesis combo which was jammed full of effects. Now I use the Alesis set flat with no effects or an old Boxer amp with a 1 by 12". The big rig hasn't come down stairs for ages as the other instrumentalist in the band plays classical guitar...We're not loud.... I am thinking of knocking up a neat little tuned port 4 by 8" cab to sit under my Peavey Max Pre-amp and push it with my 90 watt into 4 ohm per ch Mosfet HiFi amp...