donkelley

cool info, thanks. Well there ya go - small delay in the wireless. That would drive me nuts on bass - funny, but I've used wireless systems for years on guitar and lives with a spec of lag at times... but on bass I think I'd lose my mind LoL. It's tough enough being perfectly timed on bass, and so important! Glad it's such a good tool though, and useful for certain things at least 🙂 I might grab one at some point.

Yes, latency adds up. Not everything adds audible latency actually, only digital gear does (Well there are exceptions, but it's inherent to digital gear, although mostly so short as to be completely unimportant and inaudible), and typically most of it is so low it doesn't matter. I'm simply basing the feedback on this wireless on what folks said above, and pointing out that science backs it. HOWEVER, there are other possible culprits - for example, the player might "think" there's latency in a wireless if you walk further away from your amp than you normally would, like across a room, because there is VERY audible delay in sound travelling across a room - so it's certainly possible that the complaints about latency above are due to the wireless system giving the musicians a chance to experience the speed of sound being a very real problem.

I was about to post the same thing. That's drumsticks on the VERY BRIEF bass part in "Big Time". That Levin invented "funk fingers" out of it was a direct consequence of how awesome it sounded.... WATCHING levin play funk fingers is HILLARIOUS - they're so long LoL, I have no idea how he has any control over it, although he is a bass playing genius...

I have D'addario XLs (I think) on my peavey grind 6, 35" scale, bridge strung through (for design reasons for now).... and these do not work either. B string is too short. What I've done for now is put a tiny piece of plastic under string in the nut... like from a plastic package (the hard clear plastic they put cheap headphones, batteries, etc in)... cut so it's a few mm by a couple mm, under string in nut area. tuning it up it pulls with string so have to place it carefully before tuning up so it will move into place, and it bends into shape under tension. works great, but certainly not ideal. I have been told that I need to get extra long scale? something like that.... let me know what you find out!

never had any issue with DR strings. I'll be looking here to see how the replacement sounds!

so, summarizing what I'm reading here (I haven't tried it myself), the ammoon wireless maybe also is very low latency, but coupled with a couple other digital effects with each very low latency ends up with audible latency.... that's just not ok. I wonder how many other wireless systems have latency that, when combined with a couple of digital effects, result in an audible latency issue?

Yep... the days, carvin icon 5 fretless with piezo and 2 j99 jazz pickups in soapbar covers, active and passive, varimid, 18v, coated ebony board.... Same one I'm playing in my profile pic

HAHAHAHA.... can always tell a well read talkbasser

I've been replying too, but it's been going down repeatedly then coming back up again. (that's what SHE said)

Just an FYI folks - looks like nginx web server for talkbass.com keeps dying. I'm a user there but also a software engineer, and I recognize a web server issue when I see one. So if anyone uses talkbass, don't fret (haha) if you get a "404 site not found" or a broken talkbass in your browser. I hope the operators there are aware of the issue and trying to resolve it.... I don't know how to get in touch with them to let them know.

By the way, that's the best happy accident I've heard of - your wife getting you a 6 string bass. That must have been a much bigger challenge for her than the guitar would have been.... and much more exciting! You can grab a telecaster on CL any time you want, cheap or pricey, they're all pretty good due to simplicity of design imho. But 6 string basses are harder to come by - I'm impressed by your wife's resourcefulness and support!

Id love to have those transcription pdfs too please - but the links are no longer in the original threads from 2012. it says "[attachment..]" but nothing there that I could right click and download. Could you please post them somewhere offsite and put a link here, or just PM both of us so we can send our direct email to you or something? Thanks so much!

Ok.... I'm an audio engineer as well as session player.... I understand what you said, it is of course true. However - the point of this is to get a great sounding DI - and there are MANY passive DIs that sound better than many active DIs - yes ,due to transformer artifacts. Whatever the reason, though, these passive units are still sought after and highly respected in the industry. I was, though, just pointing out that one must not assume active is better for DI. Passive can be excellent - and as you and I both noted, it depends on your needs.

Those Radial units are fantastic.

Firstly, some of the greatest sounding DI boxes used for bass over the past 40 years were passive... general use, and amazing sounding, assuming you don't need cab emulation. So don't poopoo on passive DIs. Only reason to get active DI over passive is for options is offers over passive - what options do you need in it that would require active circuitry and power? - eq - overdrive - cab sim (I presume these require active, although I suspect there are passive cab sims) - mixing/routing (2 ins to 1 out, 1 in to 2 outs, etc... which likely requires active circuitry to do so without loss) Anyhow, I personally use the behringer BDI21. has never failed me. But I also keep a radial passive DI box around from the old days - it's warm and full sounding, amazing on bass, but no effects/eq/od... better for styles other than rock, bdi21 is better for rock (cuz it has mid scoop for rock built in).

I want it! very badly! a new seymour duncan musicman pickup in the bridge would solve the worst issues I'm sure, and worst case the preamp could be replaced too. That light? and it looks SO much like a warwick it's crazy, actually..... just missing the brass frets, nut and bridge (But who cares for this price). looks built VERY similarly to my new-to-me old peavey grind bass..... great build quality, but shoddy electronics (Which is the easy part to replace).

OMG that looks amazing! and neck through at that! anxiously looking forward to your experiences with it!

just throwing in 2 cents - vintage? flats on a precision or jazz bass. or if you're into the monkees sound (I actually really am, the session producer/bassist who played on most of their tracks was a fantastic musician, not to put down peter, mike and mickey (yes mickey, a solid rhythm guitarist, not drummer at first)- all of whom were very good guitarists and, towards the end, peter became a really really really good bassist)... a hollow body gretsch bass, also with flats.

I felt that way when I was 20 and owned an Alembic Series 1. Now I'm 50 and literally want to saw the wings off every bass I own, to reduce weight LoL.

Wow, where do I start? ~~~~~~~~ Yamaha John Myung model (purple and all)... really wanted this, really hoped it would be amazing. love 6 strings, love the color and general look, love dream theater. This one was --- defective imho. the action couldn't get nearly low enough, we're talking really high, without a shim that was 2.5 mm thick at the very end of the neck pocket! I did that and it was ok, but with a shim that thick it never played the same after, I didn't make a proper angled shim out of wood or anything, before I decided it wasn't for me. Tone was - meh. no presence at all. no life to it. very dead sound, yet acoustically teh strings were nice and bright and new sounding. just the electronics, and/or wood. Couldn't unload it fast enough.... should have been the best 6 I'd played up to that point, but no. LTD cheap model was waaay better. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cort headless precision bass from the 80s. .. Headless with licensed high quality steinberger (heavy, good metal) hardware. terrible weight distribution, boring tone, half circle p bass neck LoL. blechy red and white burst from hell . EWE. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ibanez BTB 6 - I did try to love it, but in the end only just... respected it. so well made, so beautiful, so nice to play, but I didn't like 35" scale (Still don't), and it was lacking in life. so little tone variation with touch. most ibanez basses are very sensitive to touch, but not that one. Played a low end btb5 later on that was full of life, so I know it can exist. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ USA fender Jazz, 1990s pretty bad tone with new strings, setup was high and needed a shim but I didn't bother. This was clearly a bad bass in many ways, yet it looked pristine. I think it was a lemon that nobody ever wanted to play, and I found out personally why they didn't. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Epi Thunderbird (low end bolt on model) Pretty good actually, better than expected. I liked the tone, very gibson. but just too awkward and heavy for me. Much better than folks say they are, but the cheap bridge metal - it was bending AS I WAS ADJUSTING IT. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ speaking of cheap bridge metal.... Hagstrom 8 string bass, the chinese reissue. should have been great. - no depth to the tone at all, very middy (way way too much for practical use as a bass, octave strings were way louder than fundamentals, needed an active bass boost like crazy) - terrible bridge metal - flexible while adjusting, could easily have been broken off - noisy pots when turned, noisy switch when switched.... just so cheaply put together, but the wood and acoustic tone were great. played ok too for an 8. But I've played much better 8s than this. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 8 string NON OCTAVE bass, generic chinese brand of some kind sure, it was cheap, used. huge neck, couldn't reach low B and F strings in normal fingering, had to wrap hand around it. terrible fretwork, some notes didn't work right or played the higher notes. I filed frets like crazy to make ti playable, but even then action was awful, neck through but couldnt' get low enough. nice double truss rods though, half way decent active preamp tone, and picks didn't soudn awful actually. but I'm only 5'7" so away this giant went.

How about a different preamp instead if you like the sound? Much less likely to be a problem fitting cosmetically into your bass, and I personally really like Mec pickups - but the preamps do seem to have somewhat inconsistent things going on from instrument to instrument. I love my mec preamp for it's tone, but it's a tiny bit hissy (the treble is jacked up by default in most mec preamps so this CAN happen, but it still "shouldn't"). I'd look into a new preamp with more flexibility in gain staging. some allow you to setup overall volume using a little control inside the cavity - you could look to see if yours has that already, but it probably doesn't.

outstanding axes... I own two, both 5s, a fretted and a fretless. Even though my main is now an 05 warwick streamer jazzman lx-5 (whoa I love this thing - turns out thick D necks feel better for me and are way easier for fast playing for me), the subs sound amazing and are more touch controllable for tone than most other basses I've owned, while recording straight to the desk and sounding like a final recording.

that neck and headstock are absolutely gorgeous sir!

there are some sounds you just can't get without a PASSIVE tone control - the way the treble is reduced is a slope that isn't matched by the treble control in an active circuit, and when you turn a passive tone control down all the way it actually changes the resonance frequency of the passive pickup in the circuit so it has a lower frequency (pitch) peak than without the passive tone control set like that. So ideally I like to add a passive tone control to my active basses which is also in the circuit at the same time, but switchable so it can be removed for traditional hifi active bass tone (more sizzle in the treble without that extra capacitor in the circuit - and yes, even with a passive tone control turned up all the way the capacitor is still in the circuit... slightly reducing the high frequencies in a gentle slope downwards as the frequency rises). That is, honestly, the only thing that makes passive basses sound better than active for some styles and to some player's ears. I'm not a believer that active is superior to passive or vice versa, but I do really like having active basses for the tone and sizzle they can offer. There is a trend among some fancier builders to have passive tone controls in the circuit WITH active tone controls, as I described above, because of the tone improvements that I outlined above and versatility which can't be matched by only passive or active circuits alone. Carvin, for one, is doing that on some of their newer bass models.

I've owned a LOT of basses and 3 6 string basses over the last 3 or 4 years (well last 30 years of bass playing actually, but mostly 5 and 6 strings over past few years). I owned, loved (until the honeymoon ended) and sold an ibanez btb 6 string - 556. it was sexy, amazing, but the bart 1 pickups and/or body woods left me flat always. it was too tame. I own a carvin icon 6 (just got it!) neck through walnut top alder wings maple/walnut neck ebony board 3 band with vari-mid and piezo pickups with blend and .... well the list goes on. It's an absolutely shockingly amazing bass. I also own an ESP LTD B-206 FM (flamed maple) 34" scale 6 string bass as being discussed here. It's a truly excellent bass. I managed to lower the action nearly to the point my carvin and warwick are at, which is uber low. It sounds more aggressive (once you tune in the very bizarrely interactive preamp tone controls) than my carvin, and my carvin is not tame by any means. The ESP/LTD is in fact nearly as aggressive sounding as my warwick. It's beautiful, VERY well made, solid as a rock, plays great. Only downsides are that the preamp goes through batteries many times faster than my other active basses (seems to last maybe a couple dozen hours of being continuously plugged in before needing a new battery - my other basses would last for several days being plugged in before dying if I left them)... so in real life use my ESP LTD needs batteries replaced every week of regular rehearsals, recordings, and a weekly gig. That's not a huge deal, just need to remember to change the battery and replace it before gigs. The bass tone control (on the 3 band) works also like a volume control, it's the design of the circuit (like some older tube amp tone stacks) which takes getting used to. It still works fine but you have to mess with things a while to get it sounding just right, then basically leave it alone and use treble and mid for tone controlling. I am quite happy to keep my ESP LTD with my warwick (Germany), carvin (USA), and 2 ernie ball (USA) basses. nobody would know that I paid $350 canadian for it, used. when I got it the action was terrible - but I lowered the bridge like crazy, adjusted the neck very very slightly (truss rods), and left the nut alone since it was actually cut low enough for a change (compared to most production basses). I put on d'addario XL medium light strings (nickel wound, their standard line). That was a year ago. It's been rock solid stable in our changing climate every since - the neck IS more solid than on an ibanez SR 505 I used to play.... never owned a 506 but I definitely prefer this bass to the 505 I used to have. I love solid necks that don't need constant adjustment as weather changes, and I like necks that are very rigid as it improves the tone of the instrument very very obviously compared to more flexible necks (my opinion, but based on lots and lots and lots of experimenting and research and general consensus among some builders I've talked with). For what it's worth it's built in the same factory as the midrange (500 series) ibanez basses - but the design specs are superior (5 piece neck, dual truss rods, superior (imho) top wood, vastly superior sounding esp branded pickups in my bass compared the korean fake-bartolinis in many ibanez basses). I know they change pickups in different years and even some are 35" scale length, but mine at least is completely satisfying... fully stock aside from a basic setup.... to this VERY pickup tone-freak and low-action-loving professional bassist.