BigRedX

IME quality instruments use bolts with inserts rather than wood screws.

IME the quality of service for delivery to my address from all the major carriers except for Royal Mail and Parcel Force has gone seriously downhill in the last couple of months. Most notably: I had DPD randomly leave a parcel in my front yard on a rainy day, rather than take the time to knock on my front door and wait for me to answer it. At least they took a photograph of it, which I was able to use to locate the item in question and retrieve it before it got water-damaged. I work from home and the first I knew of the delivery was when the "delivered" email popped up on my screen. UPS who up until this point have been very good, left my parcel in my "Blue Bin" rather than knock on the door. I don't have a blue bin. Nor do any of my neighbours (nor did they have my parcel). I do have a green and brown bins and the brown bin had just been emptied on the day of the supposed delivery. It took two weeks of pestering the suppliers before I got a refund for the lost item. Last weekend I had a "delivery" from Hermes booked via Parcel2Go for a custom order item for my gf that has taken 8 months to build to order. When I placed the order I was told that the delivery would be made by Royal Mail. When I received the despatch notice this had been changed to Hermes. The tracking promised a Monday delivery, but apparently it was supposed to have been delivered last Saturday. Checking the tracking it has been signed for but the signature is nothing like mine. According to the information it was going to delivered some time between 11.00 and 3.00, and weirdly enough I had a delivery from Royal Mail for something entirely different right in the middle of that delivery window. There has been no sign of the parcel from Hermes, the supplier has been looking into it. I realise that all the delivery services are under increased pressure with more people ordering for home delivery, but the level of "service" is now verging on a joke. At my address it is only Royal Mail and Parcel Force who take the time to actually knock on the door and then wait for the occupant to answer it.

IIRC some of the 60 and early 70s Japanese guitars with stripy necks are made of laminated bamboo. Hopefully @Bassassin will be along to confirm this or to put me right.

AFAICS the Bluetooth feature on these amps is for playback of an external audio source for the musician to play along with. Therefore the latency from the Bluetooth connection won't be an issue.

I would hope so. I really can't see the point otherwise.

That's oversimplifying things. I think you'll find that there's more than a few people here that are of the opinion that the wood can make a difference. However when compared with all the other things on a bass that can also make a difference the choice of wood is one of the less important factors. Also the difference it makes cannot be predicted simply by knowing what wood(s) has been used in the construction. The other important thing to take away from this discussion is that solid electric instruments are completely different from acoustic instruments and what is important in the construction an sound of one is not necessarily important in the other.

An the important word is "density" and not "species".

I've been saying for years that manufacturers of digital wireless systems including Line6 have been missing a trick by not including a digital output on their receiver units. This goes part of the way to addressing the problem. Hopefully the wireless input will start appearing on their other multi-effects units. I'd certainly consider upgrading my Helix for one with a wireless input.

No.

In that case no MIDI needed. However if it is possible to control the cut-off frequency and other parameters with the Grandmother's built-in sequencer, then being able to synchronise the two might be a useful function.

There's a trick that guitarists with bolt on neck instruments sometimes use and which might be applicable the basses made in the same way. Slacken off the strings so they are not exerting any pull on the neck. Then very slightly loosen the bolts/screws attaching the neck to the body. This only needs to be the smallest amount so that the neck isn't held completely tightly in place, no more than 1 turn and probably less than that. Then tune the strings back up to pitch. This has the effect of pulling the neck as tightly into the pocket as is possible. Then tighten up the neck screws again. It probably won't make much difference to instruments where the neck is a very snug fit in the pocket, but on some it can make a noticeable change to the sound.

MIDI is not audio. It is mostly digital information about what notes are being played and how they are being played. Think of MIDI data as the punched roll on a player piano. If you want to know what MIDI functions the Grandmother will send and receive have a look at pages 43 & 44 of the manual. AFAICS most useful thing you can do is to synchronise the the Grandmother's sequencer and appreciator to the drum machine clock - see page 37.

My job is to do both. If you're not showing off you might as well be replaced with a sequencer.

IMO tone wood only applies to acoustic instruments where the wood and construction make an important contribution to sound. On a solid electric instrument it's just wood. Or Aluminium, or Carbon Fibre etc...

No! Are you?

Just had a look and it turns out he's made a couple like that. The body wood is just listed as "Custom High-Dense Ply". If you look at the data sheets for the other multi-piece bodies all the individual woods used are listed, which would indicate that there is nothing special about the woods used for the body of this bass. Full details can be found here.

In that the "plywood" thread I also posted these basses: This bass is made by Jens Ritter who is a well-respected high-end luthier. I know that it's not standard plywood, but it is made up of multiple thin layers of wood rather than a single piece of "tone wood". And this one is by Bas Extravaganza, and is actual plywood bought from his local DIY superstore and built to show that it perfectly possible to make a great sounding bass out of very ordinary materials.

My parcel is still in Belgian Customs. Talking to Interparcel on Monday the goalposts have been moved yet again and they are now not investigating any parcels in this situation until there has been no movement for 30 WORKING DAYS. In the case of my parcel that will be Wednesday of next week at which point it will have been in transit for over 7 weeks.

Lots of information without any actual important detail when it comes to actual tolerances. For mainstream electrical components the tolerances of the components is ±10%. That's a 20% overall difference between the two extremes, which is a large variation. I would hope that for something that has supposedly as much care taken over them as these pickup the tolerance is much smaller than that. Hopefully under ±1%. My position has never been that wood makes no difference to the sound of a solid electric instrument. It is that: 1. In the overall scheme of things it is one of the less important factors 2. It is not consistent 3. It is not absolutely quantifiable. Given all of those, and the fact that I have yet to see any proper study that absolutely shows that this is not the case, I'll stick with my opinion that the choice of wood on it's own does not matter in construction of a solid electric bass or guitar. Consider each instrument as an individual and sum of it's various parts. Don't try and attribute one particular element to producing the sound, because it is a complex system and you simply can't do that.

Why? As a luthier who is showing that different woods for the body produce different sounding basses, he has an interest in actually making the basses sound different. For all we know most of the time his basses sound pretty much the same and that these 3 are hand picked as the most extreme sounding examples. In short for a scientific PoV it shows nothing other than three different basses sound different. But we knew that already didn't we?

Of course you need to. Otherwise there would be no point in buying pickups of the supposedly the same design from different manufacturers. Also how do you know that the pickups are the same? And if they are what are the manufacturing tolerances in terms of number of windings and strength of the magnets?

You're no scientist either. A sample size of one of each is statistically irrelevant. For this test to have any real meaning it has also to consistently show that supposedly identical basses always sound the same. That means take 10 (at minimum - ideally 50+) basses with EXACTLY the same spec and show that the tonal variation between is insignificant. Besides what are we hearing as the difference? Is it the wood species or the wood density? Is it unconscious player bias?

IME the easiest way to get flat-wound strings in the 70s (at least from the mid 70s onwards) was to buy a bass with them already fitted. I seem to recall that my local musical instrument shop had a couple of sets from either Picato or Rotosound lurking at the bottom of the miscellaneous string drawer, and that was it. If you wanted a set that wasn't at least 5 years old you'd have to order them specially.

IME the string needs to feel "tight" to feel and sound good. That can be just tension or by being less compliant either through the construction of the string or by increasing the break angles over the saddles and nut. I've also found that having a taper wound string where the tapered section ends immediately the speaking side of the saddle helps a lot.

IIRC from the one I used to own, the two screws immediately behind the bridge in the photo above were used to adjust the string height.