NickA

Eb cobalt flats on my bitsa jazz bass. Because ... I never much liked the sound of flats, but the cobalt's are quite bright and zingy. They don't wear out the fretless fingerboard and they feel great. Nice strings tho perhaps a bit too full of their own character. I put some on my fretless Wal and they made it sound like a bass with eb cobalt's on rather than a fretless Wal. Going to try some thomastic jazz flats on the Wal but sticking to the cobalt's on the jazz. ...as old age advances my pro zing anti flatwound prejudice reduces. Though I can't yet agree with Beedster that they're good for slap. Examples please!

Whole threads on this topic. EG: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/456879-heads-with-built-in-high-pass-filters/page/1/ A lot of double bass players use some kind of pre-pre ( eg that Stan Clarke EBS jobbie), they have nice features like a moveable notch filter that will eliminate an annoying room resonance and so on ..plus acting as a DI box and having a guaranteed piezo friendly input impedance. Bit of a Swiss army knife for sound tweaking. I've not bothered... Checked my pjb flight case's spec sheet and found it has 4.7MOhm input and a 40Hz HPF already... but the notch filter might be useful. Basically, you don't need one but might like one if feeling a bit tweaky.

Well, when I was at primary school (some time ago) a nice lady came and stuck her hand down my pants to check mine out. She never mentioned bicarb or baking powder 😂.

Proving that just as owning a fancy bass doesn't make you a great bassist ... oneing a posh camera doesn't make me a photographer, as I'd evindently pressed a button that did something weird to the exposure and focus (the compostion is just lack of skills!) Anyway, a few could be salvaged: .. and there were only three Wals there but I'm sure they will come again .. so everyone gets a go eventually. I must remember to try a Dingwal again myself ... they sound fantastic but look kinda scarey!

Loadsa photos coming as soon as I download the camera. Late due to waiting for a parcel... so didn't get to try everything that snagged my interest, but enjoyed: that ancient Hofner archtop, the Kramer, getting a go on a Wal Pro IIe ..and hearing my own basses played by other people from an audience equivalent distance. plus Old man's GR cab .. so light! And someone minimark combo... so small and yet so powerful! And Andy pointing out that the action on my 5 string was not, as I thought, a bit high, but near unplayable low ( I'd been measuring it wrong). Thanks all and see you next time

The markbass already has a fixed hpf built in. An external one might be more tweakable, but unlikely to make much difference. If you're suffering from "boom" move the amp away from any walls and maybe raise it up a bit..and there's always the bass knob of the eq to turn down.

Cakes! At previous embb people have brought cake. Are we bringing cake? It will be shop bought in my case ..but still cake.

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!