NickA

David 😉 . They seem to do their own deliveries in a big van. You'd think they could arrange DHL or something. There are other rental agencies .. eg I went to try out some basses at Thwaites ( Watford) and was told that, unfortunately, most of the basses in my price range had been rented out! Some searching needed. Think bass bags have the monopoly on renting out affordable factory made basses tho.

I was told it was the same, but "Closely resembles" according to the manual. Different then. Lots more octave shifting for starters!

Obviously 🙂 🙂 Tablet typing, couple of whiskies ... it would have to have a treble recorder mode for me as it's the only wind instrument I've ever played. Doesn't it feel a bit wrong way round to a flautist?

My bro has an EW 15000. Plays it in sax mode but the fingering can be changed to flute or oboe, think you can even put it in "brass mode" with simulated valves. Makes every sound under the sun.

I wouldn't buy a double bass I hadn't played. Too many variables. In these days when you can't spend several hours trying lots of them out, rental is the way to go. Bassbags is 10 minutes from my house ... had several bits and pieces from them over the years. Tried a few of their basses and can't fault the setup ( that Eastman VB503 is nice, though the 1910 English bass was better .. I nearly bought it ). They'll probably talk you into spending more than you planned, though ... maybe it's just me being a soft touch 😉

Or a Sandberg California. Less character than a stingray but the B string sounds much tighter. The only 34" scale bass I found to match or better the Sandberg B was a Wal ( bit more than £1k though! ).

I defretted my first bass ... got the frets out with a kitchen knife (no heat required), filled the slots with plastic wood and sanded it all flat. Disaster really; it had badly aligned plastic "mother or pearl" inlaid blocks and it always buzzed on certain notes. Got an ebony board fitted by a proper guitar maker and it was just fine - and not that expensive really. On a neck without inlays it can be done OK, though the real way to fill the fret grooves is by hammering in little slips of wood ( not easy) ; some kind of epoxy filler (plastic wood or resin) will do the job ... sand flat and then put a coat of epoxy varnish over the top. The BEST way to do it is to have a new board fitted. Due to the bad taste of most of humanity, removing the frets does indeed reduce the value ... stupid, as fretless basses are so much better.

The best controls on that Alembic were "lead guitar volume" and the "mute vocalist" switch. John McVie's ebony one was nearly as complex as that photoshop jobby and can't think what all the controls did: https://reverb.com/au/item/6414168-alembic-series-graphite-john-mcvie-actual-bass Had a trace elliot GP12SMX amp once ... so many knobs and sliders I spent hardly any time playing rather than tweaking!

Too right ....... Pencil marks on the fingerboard 😉 big help in difficult tuning situations

Sound travels 340m/s so 100ms is a wall 17m away. I played in Perborough cathedral once, ( HUGE space ) lt felt like forever before the first return of sound .... Which then reverbed forever and muddied the following notes - could use more damping frankly! Those Norman builders weren't hot on acoustic modelling. Think what I'd like is indeed close to an echo, but followed by random reverberation and with the initial transient smeared out. Sure I can program it somehow between the hall of fame and the flash back boxes. Just enough to sound a clear note before the effect kicks in. Meanwhile subtle plate or ambient work well.

Got a TC Electronics Hall of Fame in the post on Saturday. "What's that do then?" said my other half. "Makes it sound like I'm playing in a huge cathedral" I explained. "Oh, right" she said " guess you don't need one to sound like a middle aged man playing all by himself in the spare room" True enough 😁. As to the little red box .. as with all TC stuff, maybe too many options, especially when you hack into the tone print editor. Seems to start the reverberation very quickly, ( max of 100ms delay ) so lacks a bit of breathing space before things get effecty. Cathedral fun aside, using it less works best. It's only for fun really, doubt I'd ever use it in a band.

Get an adjustable bridge, then you can tweak the action to suit. I don't have one, but only because I haven't ( in 30 odd years ) gotten around to it. They used to be considered a bit low rent, but now almost every Jazz player and some of my classical only double bass fellows have them. Local repair and setup man only fits adjustables now.

Was about to do some practice with ireal player on the old android tablet, when happened on this. Shows its not what you play it on but how you play it. Enjoyed Jamming along .. reckon my £5000 bass sounds slightly better..not a lot tho!

Sold. Unsurprisingly. Hopefully staying in the UK with someone who will play it ...not flip it for £6000 to the states. Surprised the gallery, of all people, got caught out by this one.

Not an oddity it's an early custom with a pro bass neck on it ( they did at first). Worth about £5000 if it's all working. There's rush fans in the USA who will fight to the death for it!

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Apart from the ever increasing prices!

Oh and gold plated hardware. Especially on boutique basses. Like having gold taps in the bathroom or a gold plated gear knob in your Bentley. Sometimes, more is just less and less is more pleasing.

Basses that have been deliberately damaged to make them look old and road worn .."reclicing" I believe; awful thing to do. Called "distressing" in the fake antique furniture business or "antiqueing" in double basses and 'cellos. There were two blokes made a perfect copy of a very ancient and valuable double bass (an Amati) a few years back .. it looked perfect; then they set to it with pumice stones and sharp implements to make it look like a real (ie old and damaged) Amati; could have cried. Doing this to double basses is unforgivable, but doing it to bass guitars is also pretty bad .. even if they're only Fenders. Amusingly, though, I have a 130 yr old 'cello that was "antiqued" when built in a french factory a couple of centuries ago ... if finally caught up with its faked up age!

The Wal pickups do have separate coils for each string (two for each string in fact), but they are not then separately buffered; they are connected in parallel within the pickup. The earlier Pro IIe basses had the option to switch the coils in series or parallel (there is a little switch on the pickup body), but it was dropped on the Customs (don't know why). So the individual coils do indeed load each other (string to string). As you say ... just like having individually buffered active pickups (like the MECs in my Dolphin). I don't honestly know what the advantage in all those separate coils really is. Anyone?

Which is what many people seem to want 🙂 🙂 🙂 I fiddled around for years trying to replicate the Wal electronics: buffer for each pickup, active low pass filter for each pickup and THEN an active blend (mixer) - It's not that hard really (though the Wal "pick attack" function is a bit more complicated ....). The buffering, separate filters and "mixer" effectively put the pickups in series as their filtered signals add, and they don't load each other the way the pickups in, say, a passive Jazz bass do. Also as the pickups don't conduct any current, they don't filter the signal themselves, so you get a very flat frequency response. Later on I bought some John East ACG-EQ-01 electronics which do what my own design did (only better and more reliably); they do the same as and far more than the Wal electronics as everything is adjustable (filter Q, pick attack filter etc). The bass with that setup now overlaps in sound with a Wal but sure as hell can't do all the things a Wal can. I eventually gave up and just bought a Wal... and there is no comparison really; the real thing just works "as a whole" and has a huge range of sounds (there is no "Wal sound" really). The electronics certainly play a part; they have a pleasingly organic fuzziness when driven hard - which the ACG-EQ-01 doesn't (it's clean until it clips). But I still think it isn't "just" the electronics. I think if you built a mahogany bass with a stiff and stable neck, added some Bass Culture "Wal Buckers" and John E's electronics, you would have something very like ... but still not quite the same as it wouldn't do that slight fuzziness the same way. This one for instance; which the maker (MPU) says wasn't 1:1, but close: