NickA

Noticed THIS in Shephead's Bush crack converters today! People who made it are proud enough to put it on their website. http://www.jacoland.it/site/jacoland-barcelona-simone-feroci-signature/ Surely they didn't make more than one!!!!

I did! Paid £850 for my fretless in 1997 and have never regretted it or played a bass I liked as much. The fretless is very special indeed, nothing sounds quite like it. Fretted Wals less special IMO. This here Honduras mahogany one is expensive because of bass direct's 20% commission! ( And an extra neck that would cost £1600+ from Wal ).

I know no one nor have I ever met anyone who uses a German style bow. There must be some reason for this. In my own case I went French from the outset because I was originally a cellist and despite unsuccessful dalliance with a bass viol have always had my hand over the top of the bow. The French sort just seem comfortable. and yet... You tube vids of the Berlin Phil show them all using German bows as does this one of a Korean double bass orchestra! One of the weird and wonderful things about bass playing ( along with viol Vs violin corners, straight vs sloping shoulders, flat Vs carved backs ....)

Main reason I sold my trace gp12smx.... too many possibilities. Now have a Bank of TC toneprint effects to waste time on instead. Damm those Danes.

'fraid I use a device called a Skoda citigo ... And if amps etc are needed, a bigger version called an Octavia estate. I've taken it on the train a few times, with discomfort and difficulty. Met a bloke once who moved his around in a bicycle trailer ... bit risky, these things cost £1000s!

I've tried a few walking stick ferrules. Either grippy but too soft so wear out or hard and not grippy enough. File the sharp end off the end pin. Then he'll have to use a floor mat ;-). These are brill https://www.bassbags.co.uk/product/super-sensitive-stoppin/ ..

Double Bass and Cello radii are tiny. The radius on my double bass is about 3.5 inches (and being set up for Jazz is moderately flat!). Cello tighter still. And they both have "romberg bevels" too. I've never seen an electric bass that was like that! It is indeed to make bowing possible, though on the double bass it does allow you to dig in very nicely. Having played the 'cello for 16 years or so before getting my first electric bass, I do still find the electric bass fingerboard a bit flat (especially on my 5-string) but it's no biggie.

Shielding the control cavity won't help in this case as the noise is coming in from the pickups. You can shield the pickup cavities but it still leaves the front open. You could also shield against radiated interference by shielding the whole pickup ( surprised more pickups don't include an internal shield ).. but there is nothing much you can do about close field magnetic interference without also blocking the signal picked up from the strings ( and using thick plates of steel ). Copper Vs spray on conductive paint? Probably the same effect. Commercial basses almost all use paint and it works pretty well. Much easier to use than copper foil .. and less prone to gaps. Humbuckers = the way to go.

Wish I had this one: https://www.thomann.de/gb/km_stehhilfe_14045.htm. Bloke who sits next to me at orchestra has one .. very comfy.

Conductive paint inside the pickup cavities might help a bit (connected to the ground wire if you can). A low amp impedance will reduce the noise too, but rob you of high end. A single single-coil pickup into a high impedance buffer in an electrically noisy room is the worst case. The solution is this: https://www.delano.de/jmvc_4_fe_m2/jmvc_4_fe_m2_details.html

I switched from spiros to helicore hybrids some 20 years back to make bowing easier. Never noticed a coating. good strings .. bowable, pluckable, fairly soft under both hands, flexible for easy thumb position....last forever. NB: Switched back to spiros a few weeks ago, as I had only jazz gigs coming ... Wondering why I ever swapped for helicores. God that growl and sustain. With the Carbon bow, they sound and feel great. Maybe a certain lack of subtlety .. and rather loud. Playing Brahms 4th next week ... Keeping the spiros on. See if anyone complains! Meanwhile, went to a jazz session, hosted by a pro trio ... the pro bassist was using helicore hybrids ( and had the same bow as me ); sounded great.

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56, bad back ( prolapsed a disk years back) none of my basses weigh under 4.8kg. I'm with the OP. They just feel so good. Not that I'm doing two hour sets six times a week in a casino band ... which a fellow Wal owner and (facebook) acquaintance manages. Solid mahogany, nowt like it😃

I got my first 5-string a few months back. I was playing music with a low D in it and was also drawn in by the extra low notes and the increased number of notes available per hand position. BUT: most of the 5-strings I tried (including a Pedulla, a Zon, some Stingrays, plus a Chowny and some Warwicks at the EM bass bash) seemed to sound and feel a lot different on the bottom B string, it didn't feel "in keeping" with the rest of the bass; of these the stingrays were OK, but a Sandberg VM was perhaps the only one with the same feel and sound across all five strings - but that had a 34" neck (and I have small hands). Bought a 2nd Wal in the end ... just ... well I'm a Wal freak and couldn't help myself. It IS a different instrument to a 4-string. First you have to be a lot more careful about string damping as there are more strings to damp than you have free fingers to do the damping; I've had to adopt "floating thumb" which is actually good and I'm now using it on the 4-strings too. Second, it is not always easy to hit the right string when you are used to none of them being further than one string from the edge, the A in the middle is confusing and at first I'd find I was plucking one string and fingering a different one; I'm getting there. Third the neck is wide so it's a long way across to the bottom string. My hopes to plant my hand further up the neck and still get a bottom E ... yes, sometimes it's good, some music that on a four string demands all kinds of up and down the neck suddenly doesn't. But apart from remembering I don't have to change position, the tone up there isn't quite as good as you get from playing the same notes in a lower position, so I'm still based in first position. All in all, I'm glad to have a 5-string ...for one it's improved my four string playing, its an interesting learning experience and its opening up new avenues; if I could only keep one bass .. hmm. Not sure. Think I'd stick with the 4 string..... which I took out to a session last night and did not miss the extra string one tiny bit.

Judging by my dad's cello bow collection ... People just keep the old one and buy another. I have two bass bows and two cello bows so far.. and likely a third cello bow by Xmas. Then more bows than electric basses even! Ps: don't think wooden bows sound "richer" really. Anyone? Maybe a bit "darker", all very subjective. My bass is a big fat dark sounding one, the new bow gives it lift / clarity ...but so might a £2000 wooden one. Gotta go try a load .. but don't write carbon off. A £2000 carbon bow is nothing like a £200 composite one.

Malcolm is still going in boxhill. T&G Martin in Oxfordshire? Worth a visit (you can see Simandl's own bass there too!) Casswells Strings (near Silverstone)? Stock Arcus and Coda carbon bows, not many wooden ones though. In the midlands: Bass bags (stock ..or at least can get.. Arcus but their wooden bows are lower end). Turners Violins: lots of wooden bows at all prices. Tim Bachelar in Leicester (http://www.batchelar.com/bows.html) I was bow shopping myself a couple of years back. The problem I found was that I wanted to compare good carbon bows with decent wooden ones (budget around £1k) and failed to find a dealer who stocked equivalent wood and carbon. I think around that price a carbon one is better than wood and dealers who stock carbon bows can't sell the wooden ones. Consensus seems to be that if you have a big budget, wood eventually gets better than carbon again! Meanwhile, I borrowed an Arcus S3 bow (hand made carbon) from bass bags (down the road from me) and liked it so much, I just kept it. My then bass teacher liked it enough to buy one himself. Massive step up on my old "brazil wood" bow. Water proof (!) drop proof (it's been dropped on its stainless tip from a music stand with no ill effects) and no CITES issues (no tropical wood, no "mammoth" ivory) and none of the expensive silver or gold trimmings that wooden bow makers seem to like adding and which really thump up the cost; just stainless and titanium. Should have tried lots more bows, but this one hit the spot.

The original pickups in my j bass were single coil for sure. The two being wound in different directions and having opposite polarity magnets. Turn one pickup off and lots of hum results. The delanos are silent. The sound I think comes from the narrow aperture rather than the singlecoiliness per se. So you can make a humbucker that sounds close to a regular single coil .. trad humbuckers ( stingrays, Wals etc ) have a wider aperture.

I have a pair of humbucking j pickups in a bass (Delano) but Don't fender make a version too? I think they have two coils inside but only one around a magnet.

Sandberg VM5. The split coil pickup is the other way up so closer to the bridge on the bass side ( which is how all p pickups should be imho ) also has an H near the bridge so can do Stingray noises too, but it's easily turned off. One of the best basses I tried on a recent 5 string hunt. Leo fender said his best basses were the g&l ones ....so it seems he didn't think he'd got it right first time with the precision!

These are great. I have four electric basses and on not one of them does everything quite line up ( the Wals included ), so don't get too sore about your unaligned neck. On my Northworthy bass, the misalignment of neck, pickups and bridge was my own fault as I left Alan Marshall making the neck and took the body away to fit with tronics ... And yet!!!! This one has the best string/pickup alignment of the four, by dint of the schaller 3d bridge. Actually the Warwick isn't bad; the bottom half of the two piece bridge is squiff but the upper part is adjustable side to side ( with difficulty ) so the strings can align with the pickups and neck. Looking forward to seeing the end result anyway. Nb: Gotoh tuners .. great, very smooth, very low gear ratio. Bought some with trepidation for the Northworthy bass. Actually work better than schaller lights despite feeling a little flimsy by comparison.