kurosawa

Well I think that vid is ALL about the sound. And there is a mechanics of sound. Also, I read on some forum that luthiers don't do tap tones to predict musicality of wood. These guys must have missed that Very Important Armchair Opinion.

I have seen the 2x4 vs. alder "test." And what struck me right off was that the sound was compressed (the added tracks didn't get in the way). Yeah I ID'd the wood correctly by ear, but it's stupid to think all there is to sound is the filtration provided by a particular plank. A note has an envelope. It has a certain kind of attack, that is, it responds eagerly, or tops out. It has a swell, a duration, and decay. Many times I've seen it said "the difference in the wood is in the playing." Exactly. Playing is dynamic. Squishing all the expression out of music doesn't leave the most interesting components, especially not the ones we need to play dynamically and musically. Also, there are problem woods. I almost bought a body because of its weight. The maker offered aspen or Western red cedar, over a century old, capped with walnut or spalted maple. But having had problems with poplar (a poplar body I once owned gave every neck put on it horrible dead spots), I shied off aspen, which is related. Then when I learned that Western red cypress not only has a limited fundamental, but hits a ceiling where no matter how much harder you play, it doesn't get any louder, I found it misfit my style. I like a bass capable of letting me spit notes off the strings like little sling stones. I think whatever note I'm playing has to be the most important thing on the planet for me. The bass is a voice. I'm saying something. And so I end up finding most of the wood I like is alder. It doesn't limit me in any way. It produces an interesting sound, an involving sound. I can just let that one note ring out. I don't feel any need to ornament it, noodle around or anything, because it speaks so well. It has something to say of interest to my ear. I am not drawn to the mahoganies and their sound-alikes, nor maple. But according to sales, they are someone else's perfect voice. I have played compelling instruments made of hard ash and of walnut. Black korina is nice. I am about to try my first swamp ash body. I have always been drawn to maple necks, whatever the fretboard material, above mahogany. I have one all-wenge neck that is very authoritative, perhaps not as versatile as maple. I am very tempted to try it on hard ash with a single-coil P pickup, or maybe a pair of wide-aperture SGDs. It would probably be a one-trick pony, but what a trick!

Santana was hunting tone with his ears when he came to PRS (before he was "discovered," by Santana, or rather his guitar playing fans) and stopped, having found what he was seeking. So maybe both men know something about wood and tone. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjHpVGMaleM[/media]

Hofners, many Voxes, Epi Wilshire & Newport, Gibbo Ripper, Bass VI, Mosrite, Travis Bean, Kramer aluminum neck (some).

SQ-series (MIJ) Squiers are still a bargain. They began to climb earlier this year but came back down. Now MIJ Fenders and Squiers are both dipping in price. Good news. I bought a SQ P over 10 years ago for $350 and another recently for $400. In real terms, that's a drop (it should have inflated by 1/3).

@ discreet: If you're not thinking of buying a DI at this moment, please ignore. If you are, I recommend you watch this demo I saw this morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C91FNiALTFY .I was an early BDDI adopter, but the VXL demos knocked me out. If I was starting out with a simple solid state amp and needed a DI, I'd be more than happy to add a very good tube emulation, tubey EQ, and touch-sensitive mild old school distortion in the bargain. When I saw the demos, it became a toss-up between the VXL and the SFT I'd originally planned to replace my Fulltone Bass Drive with. But when I found the VXL used on GC for $60, the tie was easily broken, because somehow I found myself without a DI (which the SFT doesn't provide), and the SFT I was looking at on eBay was $140 used. See also the manual: http://www.samsontech.com/site_media/legacy_docs/BassAttack_ownman_v6.pdf

If I were wanting a US item from overseas, I'd have to go with guitarcenter.com in the used dept. Anything else would be either too expensive or too dicey. When you set up your search, uncheck "used" and check "vintage." I don't know how they handle overseas shipments. You will find many good deals there. You can call the GC that holds that item and ask for an "in-hand" description, that is, they'll hold it and examine it and you ask all the questions you want. I plan on buying everything I can from GC used.

If I wanted a lightweight 500w amp with a tube preamp, I'd buy the Carvin BX500 sight unseen. I once bought a Carvin power amp online without ever having seen one because the price was right, and the quality, sound, and reliability were all I'd hoped for. Specs and a link to a BP review are at http://www.carvinguitars.com/products/BX500

Would love to see pages with actual photos of neck pocket markings, neck stamps, headstock decals, etc. I have 2 SQ-series P-basses. When I got the first (a magic plank) I had to shim up the neck pocket using vulcanized fiber spacers to keep it aligned (because I had to unscrew the neck every gig to tweak the neck relief). Little did I know I had a 2.4375" SQ neck on a body with an American 2.5" pocket. The SQ s/n was on the neck plate. The one the bass came with was blank. I'd love to have some way to ID the body. Have a CAR J body with ground strap that I bought as being MIJ, Stamped CAR JBD in the neck pocket. Has an oddball control cavity shield. Would love to ID it, but would need pix. Only my "new" SQ is in original shape.

It's all about the sound for me. My favorite flats have both pure nickel wrap (JF344, the loudest, wettest sounding flat, and 640/1, the richest and deadest) and stainless (LaBella or Fender, classic dry stainless sound, plenty of ripping fret clack on glisses which I love, rather dead, love the way they distort). My favorite rounds are LaBella M45 (loudest, richest round, when I began playing them, they wouldn't give a hint what they were made of, but now they're listed as stainless, and that surprised me). I'm about to try various Circle K balanced 5-string sets, which only come in stainless roundwound. If the first set sounds great, I'll try other gauges. If not, I'll quit right there, 'cause it has to be all about the sound.

Good thread. Really brings home that nothing new has happened in bass equipment since the invention of the electric bass, except advances in speaker design, which make all else possible. Now that light weight, compactness, great sound, and enough efficiency to handle outdoor gigs are all available at the same time, it has to be a 2x15 to have it all in one box. Unless there's a repeal of the laws of physics, this is as good as it will ever get. Too bad we didn't have these cabs back in the 60s!

Seems there are things people like about tubes that might be worth separating. One is the harmonic restructuring of the signal as it starts inaudibly to distort (that whole even-vs-odd, tube-vs-solid-state thing, AKA "tube sweetness"). Another, the tube's accuracy in reproducing the sonic events that add up to "grunt" or "growl." Those are inherently tube issues. Then we have EQ issues based on circuit design, like the way some circuits change the EQ permanently (the "Ampeg sound" or the "Fender sound") and how interactive or independent the tone knobs are. I like a tube. One. Many folks say "hybrids" are just a marketing gimmick. Many say it doesn't do much. I think it can do a lot cheaply. If the first thing your signal hits coming into the amp is a tube, and all the signal goes through it, then any re-shapings it experiences should follow it the rest of its journey out to the audience. It doesn't seem much is added by filtering it again and again through the same kind of filter. I think of each piece in the bass puzzle as a filter. Even the tone generator, the string, has built-in filtration. Then each thing sucks up this thing or that, shaping the sound by removing something. The things to conserve are sonic events, that which produces what's called "three-dimensionality of sound." These events can't be re-invented and added back. Once lost, they're gone. Rigidity of tube construction is relevant. Another reason why I'm beginning to think it's better to keep tubes to the preamp is that distortion pedals these days, like the Hartke VXL and the Catalinbread SFT, sound so good that all we need out of a power amp is power, reliability, low weight, low cost, and low distortion. We don't really need power tube distortion. On top of that, I have recently noticed an awareness by cabinet builders that some cabinet schemes don't play well with tubes (has something to do with impedance curves). With that, the ancient advice to start with the cabinet and work backwards from there seems safest. I have played my share of Ampeg and Mesa all-tube amps. But with one tube and everything else solid state, I found all the difference I need. Now if you like the SVT flavoring, Ampeg makes a SVT preamp. If you like a drier hi-fi sound, you can get that. I've seen people beginning to go to tube DIs to get that tube sound, and it seems these are split into more flavored units like the Reddi and Evil Twin, and flatter like the TD-100 and Monique (which is also a preamp). This isn't to say there's not a great deal of convenience in simply buying a good used SVT-2 Pro. It's easy to operate, plug and play. There are other readymades, like the SVT-4 Pro with a tube preamp and MOSFET power amp. There are lightweight hybrids like the LMT 800 and PF500. And there are amazing bargains like the SVT-7 Pro and Carvin B2000. I might go with one of those. Right now I have 3 all-tube 100w heads in the Ampeg tonal family. Of course, local varieties will differ with tube heads weighing so much and being so delicate in shipping (I don't mean the tubes, I mean the way my Buster head was dropped in shipping and the transformer kept going when the floor stopped the cabinet). It just so happened that AIMS amps in the US (I found one in Iowa and another in the Southwest where they were made) are obscure enough and appear infrequently enough that few look for them. I also got a Pignose V100B, another obscure head, lighter and more modern (Chinese made) but also overlooked. But I'm aiming for that 2x15 sound, and so will probably end up running it on solid state power with one tube up front in the signal chain.

I have two good ones, an SQ-series P and a Status Hellborg. The good one that got away was a '68 Tele, owner wouldn't sell. You would think the '63 P would have been a good one but it was only fair. And so was the Ken Smith BT-5. I am trying to deliberately think my way through the creation of a good one, but I expect to fail.