NickA

I think I have one more stand than the number of basses I'm bringing. So I'll bring it ...if there's still room after I've stowed three e.basses, a double bass and an amp in a Skoda CitiGo. 🤔... aand an extension lead.

Pictures! Rare to find a genuine label in an old bass I think. Still, my dad inherited a violin that said Stradivarius inside; obviously it wasn't.... but was still worth a few £1k. Not many (any) references to any Trinelli making basses ever. Seems unlikely anyone would fake up a label to someone unheard of! Anyway, pictures! If it's a blond plywood one then we can be pretty sure its not from 1810 😁

No feedback issues on my Tanglewood, the built in preamp has a phase reverse button which stops feedback completely ( sounds a bit odd at low amp levels as the guitar and amp are out of phase ). Wish the amp I use with my dB had that option .. though it's a minor issue tbh.. our guitarist band has more problems with his semi acoustic guitar (combined with a "blues blaster" boost pedal 😬)

In an orchestra there are four or five of us, plus it's rare (though fun) for the whole orchestra to be belting it out. So we're audible even when pizzing. In jazz, add a drummer, two saxes, a keyboard player amped up to match the drums ...and audience who chat and clink glasses when you're playing ...and you certainly need an amp! Yet jazz bassists still mostly favour carved basses. Unless you use a magnetic pickup, the sound of the bass itself comes through the pickup and I guess pros, especially in a studio, use mics a lot too. So yes the sound of the bass itself still matters ...otherwise I guess we'd play eubs instead?

I tried a load and found: Fender kingman nice to play ( has a neck like a fender electric) and amplified well, but it was neck heavy and rather quiet unamplified. Korean ovation .. the sort with lots of little holes. Really nice amped up but too quiet otherwise. US ovation, the sort with one big hole. My fave, but it was too expensive at the time and I never saw another. Harley Benton ( not the ovationalike one) = surprisingly good sound and quality, bit quiet though. Tanglewood standard, Ok but a bit brash Tanglewood "rosewood reserve": I bought one on eBay for very little (£180?) ..it sounds ok, it's fairly loud as they go. Amps up nicely. Do I play it? Hmm, not a lot. Used to take it to folk sessions but it was too quiet to be heard without hiding an amp under the table. I take it on holiday sometimes and occasionally play it in the garden ( doesn't upset the neighbours). Tbh one of the several electrics and a headphone amp does the job... and for genuine no amp playing, I have a double bass. PS: Takamine ... Supposed to be good but I didn't track one down. Warwick Alien ..love to try one, but suspect they're seriously overpriced for what you get.

..and short fingernails if you intend to slap anything.

My local bass shop. They're good for new basses, from ok laminates to some quite nice carved Chinese basses (if you have £7.5k for an Eastman vb503). Always come well set up and with quality strings. Plus, they state their prices instead of this "on application" nonsense. All clear and above board. What you can't do there is compare with used basses as they rarely have any. One of my orchestra colleagues has a bass bags supplied laminate. It's ok, but kinda quiet and lacking lower end. She says it was a low risk option and what they recommended in her price range (£2000). As the man says..robust too.

Even a good laminate won't match a carved bass. The carved ones are more sensitive, produce a lot more bass and generally have a better tone. Laminates generally a bit bass thin and thuddy. Of course if you only ever play through a pickup or amp, then it matters less ... but there's still a difference. Check out your favourite Jazz bassists and you'll see they're all playing carved basses. Even go along to a local gig or jazz session and you won't see many laminated basses. There's a reason for that. Not to say there are no decent laminate basses, but go 2nd hand, go old, 1960s if poss, expect to spend £1200-£1500. I would say do NOT touch a new laminated bass with a barge pole; you'll get a nicer bass 2nd hand for less money and £4k would get something really quite good. Certainly don't ever buy on line. Go to "the double bass room" in Hastings and try a load.

My pjb amp "high" EQ knob is at 12kHz. Speaker -3dB at 15kHz. The only use for that Hi EQ knob is getting extra slap sparkle. ... must be high bandwidth as I can hear what it does and the next one down ( high mid ) is at only 2.5kHz.

I put a spectrum analyser on my fretless and reckoned the boost was around 6kHz ... coinciding with my maximum hearing loss!! Which is why I hooked up the analyser to see if it was working 😁

Weather proof too. Couldn't take any of my basses out busking in England! Mind you, I did see a lady spill a whole pint of cider into her acoustic guitar once, so even pubs aren't safe.

What more can you say!! Eudoxas on a tin bass? I guess some pigs deserve ribbons .. if you love those pigs enough. 🙂 🙂 I don't think anything would induce me to buy a metal bass ... but I love this thread. You're all quite, quite mad ... which makes the world a better place.

Get a 'scope on it! My homeade "Wal" 'tronics clipped when I tried playing slap; the sound of a nice slap twang is somewhat different from the sound of a squared off waveform .. but my picoscope showed the truth. Needed to go 18V or attenuate the pickup signal ... or just buy an ACG-eq-01 🙂 ... which handles the peak signal fine (high pickup attenuation followed by high gain I guess).

Depends what you want! The John East ones are very clean, but clip horribly if overdriven with a less than full voltage battery. Alembic also quite HiFi. Lusithand, we're told, a little gnarlier. The Wal one "distinctive" in it's soft distortion .. roughs up beautifully if you play hard. I play my Wals a lot and hardly ever change the batteries... The bass with the East ACG in it once went flat mid rehearsal .. but maybe the battery was duff. My own version less good as it derived a split +-4.5V supply voltage from a potential divider ... which used more power than the 8x op-amps! As for function, all have a low pass filter for each pickup, a pickup blend and a master volume. Filters different tho. Wal and Alembic have filter Q switches ( boosts at the cut frequency). The East acg-eq-01 has variable Q filters ( two extra pots). Wal and the East have a "bright boost" /"pick attack" function; switched in the Wal, variable in gain and frequency on the East ( yet another two pots!) The East has the most tweakability ( too much ..hence newer versions only available on ACG basses). The Wal one is most organic. Choices choices.

My own version of the Wal electronics was a purely functional copy with no attempt to emulate the exact sound ... couple of FET x4 op-amps, a few resistors and four pots. It worked pretty well, but wassn't reliable. That particular bass now has an East ACG-EQ-01 in it that can do "some" wal like noises but really isn't the same as (like my own design) is as linear and wide bandwidth as possible!! Did Wal deliberately degrade the sound path to get a more "organic" sound or is it just a happy accident? !! Who knows. Sadly we can't ask him and Paul is just making new from the old schematics I think. Anyway it's really interesting to see the schematic as I've been sort of meaning to go through my own Wal to do that ... and now will never need to 🙂

Seems mighty complicated for what it does ( buffer each pickup, filter each pickup, sum them together, add in some hp filtered signal for pick attack ). And capacitors all over the place! And why those transistors? Weird stinky poo. One thing is that transistors are not very linear, so probably putting those in creates some distortion ...in which case using just the right transistor might be important.

The narrow neck is ugly, but with the wider fingerboard and a new tailpiece it's workable! Least of our worries!

OK! So we're thinking blockless due to the inward curves in the upper ribs just before they join the neck (visible in some of the photos I took) and we're thinking unconverted blockless due to the narrow (likely beech) neck. South German / Tyrolean 1880s. But not necessarily too bad a thing so long as the neck doesn't wobble (amazingly it doesn't) This whole project has kind of stalled as the orchestra don't really want to spend a few hundred quid in order to gain a bass worth maybe a couple of thousand when they don't really want to own a bass at all. Tim Batchelar is too busy and short of parts to fix it at the moment. The chap who was playing it can't afford to buy it, let alone buy it and get it repaired, and they won't give him the bass to fix up at his own expense and he won't spend much money on it if he has to give it back! I'm wondering if I should make them an offer and get it fixed up myself, but then I'd have to sell it really ... or maybe persuade them to sell it on here as a do it up project ... neither of which gets my mate a bass to play, but at least gets it out of the cupboard it's living in and back out in the world. Ah basses, dontchaluvem.

Oo, a compact surface mount Wal tronics clone. That would be good to have. Bit unfair on Electric Wood...but I guess they've had many years to reap the profits of the design work.

Great info. We'd guessed about the rather basic conversion from 3 to 4 string but that it's a "bockless wonder" is a suprise. My first poke at it told me it DID have a block. How do I tell for sure?

Second that. And you'd have to lose C, C#, D, D# on the bottom string, rendering much cello music unplayable ... I'm intrigued by the existence of 4ths tuned string sets though and off to read up. As a cellist originally, I tried tuning my first bass guitar in 5ths ... didn't last tho.

Man up! 😉😁 I had full strength Spiro's on my 4/4 and no trouble with night in Tunisia .... But is your action too high? You can go really low with high tension strings. Higher positions are much easier since I dropped the bridge a bit and thumb position possible without injury. Nb: switched to full strength Eva pirazis a couple of years back, to make bowing easier, intending to swap Spiro's back in for jazz, but the Eva's are ok and stay put ... I'd probably struggle with the Spiro's now!

I'm a huge pjb fan for double bass, but I'd call it "accurate" "transparent" "hifi".... Not exactly bright. No tweeters. Does sound a lot like a double bass does without amplification.

I shipped a £10k 'cello to South Korea once, then to Hong Kong then home a few years later. The shipping company made it a double skinned plywood crate then packed it in the container with all my other household stuff. I left the double bass with my dad though!