Osiris

With my JMJ I find that I need to very slightly adjust my right arm position if I'm anchoring my thumb on top of the pickup, but it's only a small shift and was very easy to adapt to and isn't an uncomfortable position - for me anyway! I flare the right elbow out a fraction so the forearm has clearance from the body edge and all is good, that's with the bass on a strap so it's more or less in the same position it would be when seated. But I tend to play with the thumb pushed up against the edge of the scratch plate much of the time and find that that's the most comfortable position for me and doesn't require any adjustment of the arm or hand position. 

58 minutes ago, dmc79 said:

Thanks, I mentioned that I think that’s what’s on them anyway. I suspect I’ll prefer D’Addario medium scale rounds anyway. Just deciding between regular light 45-100 or regular 50-105.  
 

I’ve seen that if the E is too thin, it’s floppy & boingy like a rubber band, or if it’s too thick it ends up sounding muddy. Interested in thoughts on best gauge for Mustangs, particularly with rounds. Thanks 

Another D’Addario rounds user here on my Mustang, although I am still using up my store of 34" scale strings I bought years ago when they were half price somewhere or other! My preference is for Nickel EXL160 50-105's which IMO have more than enough clarity and presence without being too thin, bright or muddy - my tonal preference is for a fairly flat response with deep but controlled lows, plenty of mids and a defined but not shrill high end. Tension is perfect for me too. More presence and definition than with flats but without being too bright or brittle sounding, but still the low end punch. They're usually good for anything up to 2 years of regular gigging before they get too dull for my tastes. 

Just received a cheap and cheerful noise blocker from Andy, all good, deal with confidence! 

I'd been running my tuner after my compressor for a couple of years without any issues. My reason being the assumption that the compressed signal would give the tuner a more consistent signal to work with - despite almost certainly not hitting the threshold on the compressor as my tuner responds better with gentle sting plucks than the strength I usually play at. But a recent shuffle of my board meant that the tuner went first, before the compressor. It seems to respond ever so slightly quicker this way, but we're talking fractions of a second, maybe half a second max per string. My comp is bufferered, whether that matters or not 🤷

So IME, both combinations work, with my gear anyway (Pitch black custom into LMB-3) with tuner into comp possibly a tiny weeny bit quicker to respond. I'd say just go with whatever works for you.

Just received a Gator bag from Phil, it was new as described, a great price and he kept me informed re the posting. Cheers Phil 

3 hours ago, BassAdder60 said:

Yes I appreciate the understandings and getting it right but playing live as a bass player I question the real benefit that a fingerstyle player in a loud rock band would hear / feel.

Granted it’s crucial in recorded music and studios and PA rigs but I still say it’s debatable for a basic gigging band if it’s really necessary ( I would stand corrected if there was real evidence to the contrary) but for players who have decent technique and dynamics I still ask is it really worth it ? 

If you don't want to use one, don't. Nobody is forcing you to. But I'm also a working bass player and gig regularly and always use one, my bass sound is more controlled and sits in the mix better because of what my compressor is doing. Plus I still have total control over my dynamics, the idea that compression destroys dynamics is a myth that refuses to die... It's worth it to me but if you see no benefit then don't bother. 

Compression works on - and benefits - all playing styles when dialled in correctly. And the risk of sounding like a broken record you really need to understand how compression works, what each parameter does and how they interact with one another to apply them properly. It's more of a feel thing than an obvious tonal change, but when done right brings your bass line to life. It's very easy to get compression wrong if you don't know what you're doing which leads to the same old arguments against using it. Do some homework on the subject and it'll start making total sense, so much so that you'll wonder how you ever got by without it!

20 hours ago, BassAdder60 said:

I’ve discovered I don’t need a compressor at all as I found it added nothing and took away always something ! 

They do that if they're not dialled in with the right settings, but they do the exact opposite when configured correctly. 

I took a punt on it through eBay, I've got one of the sellers civil war muff clones and it's a great pedal so thought I'd try something different. It was this one, 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186294077685?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=-rQ31T5FTxq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=gZq2qOSFQFe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

On 05/06/2023 at 10:47, fretmeister said:

I'm looking for a small size pedal that will do that sort of farty mids P bass tone.

Like John Deacon Live Magic sound when the other instruments were resting. It's quite farty on it's own and perfect with the rest playing.

 

The youtube demos at low gain levels seem pretty good, but if anyone has any real world experience I'd like to hear.

 

I know I could get a BDDI or similar but I don't have the pedal board space - small is beautiful!

 

ta

 

Dunno if you're still looking for a pedal that will give you a farty mid range but I've recently picked up a clone of the Way Huge Red Llama and it nails that kind of tone, IMO. It's a very unique sounding pedal, it's a low to mid gain drive but with almost fuzz like characteristics albeit without massive amounts of gain. Excellent bass retention too, I didn't notice any significant low end loss at loud in-the-house volume. I've never played the real thing to compare how close it is to the original but from the couple of YouTube clips I've seen I'd say it's definitely in the same vein. 

My thoughts of it are in this thread. In short, I thought it was hilariously 💩.

14 hours ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

When I left one of my JMJ mustangs on a hercules headstock dangler type of stand it developed black stains in the area in contact with the stand. I was able to clean it up so there is just a faint dark mark now, — not really a problem on a roadworn instrument, but to prevent this reoccurring I ensure there is at least one layer of t-shirt between the bass & stand at the point of contact. Not ideal but 'it is what it is' as some would say.

 

Can anyone recommend a specific stand (masnufacturer & model) which is definitely safe out of the box for instruments with nitrocellulose lacquer?

 

 

Interesting, and I'm sorry to hear that. My JMJ lives on one of two Hercules wall hangers when it's not being played, I've had the bass 4 years now and it has been hung on the wall in all that time and there's no visible discolouration or other reaction artefacts where the hanger is in contact with the head. The wall hangers have been up for around 10 years now.

When I'm out gigging and rehearsing I use the Hercules headstock dangler type stands too with no issues. But the stands are only around 3 years old. Like you, I had an issue with a pair of older Hercules stands where the plastic clamping system was starting to get sticky and break down. But at this point those stands were something like 15 or more years old and credit where it's due to Hercules, when I contacted them to alert them to the issue they replaced both free of charge, not that I was expecting them too considering the age of them.

So I appreciate that this doesn't help in your situation and it sounds like you've just been unlucky. And for what it's worth, I'd be annoyed too in your situation. 

1 minute ago, Frank Blank said:

4 groat?

3?

I'm open to sensible offers on this!

1 hour ago, Old Horse Murphy said:

The Lionel has a metal jack plate like this one below and basically they had different threads. If it was plastic I'm sure it could be adjusted easily enough to work. 
 

In the end I used the original Sandberg jack socket and attached it to the EMG wiring without too much commotion. 

Thanks Nick, was it just a case of snipping off the EMG connectors and soldering the ends of the wires to the existing input socket? 

On 22/08/2023 at 13:05, Old Horse Murphy said:

Thanks for all your recommendations. I thought I'd try the Geezers in the end and installed them earlier today. The only issue I faced was that the thread of jack socket was just a bit too big to fit the jack plate so I used another jack socket I had spare. Other than that installation was a breeze. 
 

Sound-wise I really like it. It's quite "clanky" with the tone all the way up (reminds me a bit of JJB's P Bass sound) which isn't at all too much to my ears, but rolled off a tiny bit it's exactly what I was looking for so I'll give it a good run out across a few gigs I have coming up. 
 

The only thing I don't particularly like is the EMG branding. I've touched it up with a bit of black model paint which looks okay and if they're like other EMG pickups I've owned, the branding wears off soon enough anyway. 

 

 

@Old Horse Murphy  I'm also thinking of putting a pair of EMG Geezer Butler pickups in my Sandberg short scale. You mention the jack socket being too big to fit the jack plate, by this I'm guessing you mean the little plastic cover that holds the input jack in place on the edge of the bass? Was it much of a difference, i.e. could you just enlarge the hole a fraction on the little plastic jack plate to get it to fit? Or was there also an issue with trying to fit the jack socket through hole from the control cavity to the outside of the bass? The reason I ask is that I'm a bit cack-handed at this sort of thing and if there's any extra mods required to make the GZR's fit the bass then I might need to have a rethink.

I don't want to pi55 on your chips but the CS-3 isn't really a suitable bass compressor - unless you want that super squashed compression as an obvious effect type of sound. I used one for a while years ago but quickly moved it on as it was too heavy handed even at minimum settings for what I look for in a compressor. You might get away with it if you have a way of running it in parallel with some of your dry signal, or you might just enjoy it for what it is, but you can't argue with the price! 

Bass the world have got a new video up demoing both units, both sound good to me, especially the 1176 😎

20 hours ago, Dankology said:

Having melted areas of finish in the past and with a nitro-finished bass incoming, I'm looking for recommendations for stands appropriate for home and stage use.

 

(Which is to say low-profile for the living room and near-idiot-proof for gigs)

I've had my JMJ Mustang, which I believe has a nitro finish, for 4 years now and have used Hercules wall hangers as well as their tripod stands with the neck gripping thingies*, and never had any issues with the materials they use in their products reacting with the finish. 

*One of these. 

Just sold a pedal to Col and all was as it should be, no fuss and instant payment. Cheers Col, enjoy the pedal!

16 hours ago, franzbassist said:

My covers band are playing "White Wedding" and it sounds surprisingly good, however I'd like to clean up the bass and need your help!

 

i) I'm playing it with a pick

ii) Initially played with down/up strokes - sounded sloppy

iii) Switched to down strokes only - much better, but still not clean enough to my ears. 

 

So my thoughts are to try and see if a compressor can tidy things up, however I am a technonumpty when it comes to such things, so can anyone suggest some good basic settings to try?  I have a Providence Bass Boost Comp I can use, or try out the (8) compressors in my MS-3.

 

   

 

 

 

 

Recommending compression settings is difficult as there's so many variables to consider, so what works for some will almost certainly not work for others. There's also different types of compressor design that can impart different qualities on the signal.

And I know I keep banging on about it but to get the best out of a compressor you really need to understand what each control does and how they interact with each another. Have a look on Ovnilab at the overview pages as they're really good at at explaining the relative complexities in understandable language. But it's still down to you to apply that knowledge to make the magic happen 😉

But from what you've said you're looking for I'd suggest a ratio of around 4:1, always a good starting point, a hard knee setting if you have control over it, and ideally a FET or VCA based circuit as they're usually inherently quicker and punchier sounding than optical compressors. But these are just guidelines rather than rules. I

15 hours ago, MartinB said:

I think I learned White Wedding once, long ago - is it the one where there's like 32 bars of the same note over and over?

A couple of suggestions:

- Attack determines whether the initial transient is allowed through before compression starts. So you don't want to set it too fast, or it'll squash the percussive "click" of the plectrum. The Providence manual says it goes from 0.1 to 10 ms; I'd probably crank it to maximum.
- For general smoothing, set the threshold so that the gain reduction indicator isn't lighting up on every note - just when you dig in a bit. This should help even out any over-enthusiasm, without sounding too effect-y. But also try setting it so that it's on all the time, and see if you prefer that sound.

All good pointers. But there other options to explore that you may prefer, for example, I prefer faster attack and release times as they work better with my heavy handed playing. You can also experiment with lowering the threshold to catch every note but using a lower ratio, 2:1 for example, to give everything a gentle squeeze. 

There's no real absolute rules to compression but it's easier to get it wrong than to get something that works for you if you're just fiddling about without really understanding what you're doing. It's definitely worth sinking a couple of hours homework in, and if you can do that while twiddling some knobs it might help things make more sense. It's also worth trying different settings with the band at volume as compression always makes more sense in context than in isolation. 

3 hours ago, bassjamm said:

Thanks for chiming in @Osiris.

 

Perhaps I didn’t explain my thoughts very well, but I don’t “have” to have a valve. I just love the valve sound. Always have. So my uneducated mind thinks, “Valves good. Compression with valves? Probably good.” That said, I know the Teletronix unit I mentioned earlier doesn’t have any valves in it. So valves aren’t a must. I’m after something simple, warm and with a sense of quality about the tone/build. If I have a gazillion knobs to twiddle, I’ll get overwhelmed and won’t get the most out of the pedal.

Thanks for the clarification. In that case the PC-2A might be worth a look, but as Jack tightly says...

1 hour ago, Jack said:

That's the problem though, if it has one knob labelled 'compression' you might get the best out of it, but its best might not be what you're looking for. 

On 07/12/2023 at 23:55, bassjamm said:

Oi oi gang — I'm thinking about diving into the world of compression for the first time. Could do with some input please.

 

This'll be for playing at home. Cleaning up signal for effects (octaver, overdrive, low-pass filter). Some light studio use. No need for a touring machine.

 

I LOVE valves. Something about the warmth of them — they light me up. With that in mind, I'm curious about these two compressors:

 

Effectrode PC-2A (which has valves in, I believe)
Teletronix LA-2A

Can anyone describe what I might expect from each of these bad boys? Or how they might compare, please?

 

I'm pretty dense when it comes to this stuff. But I'm learning, slowly. So please, go easy on me — I'm not Einstein. Ha.

 

Fire away, basschatters...

Not trying to be difficult, just get an idea of where you're coming from... Can I ask why your want a valve driven compressor? As far as I'm aware, most valve based designs actually use the valve for the post compression gain stage and not to do the compression itself. From what I've read, the Mark Bass pedal mentioned earlier is the only unit other than some high end studio gear that actually uses to valve for compression duties and not just for make up gain. How much difference this actually makes in reality, you'd have try for yourself and see what you think - I'd guess not as much as you might expect. There's a number of different compression types, optical, FET, VCA etc, and many different designs of each type and each have their own inherent characteristics, neither better or worse than any of the others designs, just different depending on what you want. Personally I wouldn't but a compressor just because it has a valve inside unless it was doing something that I couldn't get from a different unit. If you want mellow warmth, I'd look at an optical design. Yes the PC-2A has a valve in it but I suspect some of its warmth is coming from the inherent characteristics of an optical compression circuit. 

On 07/12/2023 at 23:55, bassjamm said:

I'm pretty dense when it comes to this stuff. But I'm learning, slowly. So please, go easy on me — I'm not Einstein. Ha.

It cannot be stressed enough, do your homework if you want to get compression right. Read up, learn what each parameter does and how they interact. Only then do they make sense.

Joel very kindly sent me up an IEM case free of charge. I'll be throwing some money into the charity bucket as a tank you. Top marks, cheers!

1 hour ago, ezbass said:

The very reason I use an MXR87, just helps the bass sit better in the mix, rather like when using a compressor during recording/mixing.

 

@Osiris is one of our resident comp experts, care to chime in, Lord of the Dead?

Can do, but not sure I have anything helpful to add really 🤷‍♂️

I have tried the Mk1 Lusithand Alma and it's a very good unit - and I say that as someone who doesn't really care for optical compressors but of the several I've tied this was by far my favourite. Haven't tried the Mk2 so no idea how they compare. Optical comps tend to have a slow slow attack by their inherent nature and can get a bit 'grabby' with my heavy handed playing which is something I don't care for about them generally, however, the Mk1 Alma didn't have that slow grabby thing going on which is what I really liked about it. It's a very good unit, IMO, and I liked it a lot, but not quite enough for it to displace my humble Boss LMB-3 which I've been using on and off for 20 odd years. It's not the most sophisticated or costly unit, but it works better than anything else I've tried for my playing style and I haven't found anything else that adds the sheer amount of mid-range punch that you can get from it. The Alma is one of the so call character comps that imparts its own thing on your tone, and it does to a point but it wasn't as pronounced as I'd expected from what I'd read about it. That's neither a good nor bad thing, just an observation. But as a simple, easy to use pedal it sounds very good and does what it's supposed to do. But it's not one if you want granular control over your compressor. 

I've not tried any of the Empress models, but they have a reputation for being very clean and transparent which is not something I want from a compressor so I've never bothered to track one down but would happily give one a go if ever the opportunity presented itself. But the Boss BC-1X is very good, I can see why fretmeister likes it, it's definitely transparent and a very clever bit of kit. If I was recording it'd probably be one I'd go for, but as I'm almost exclusively a gigging musician the simple LMB-3 works better for what I want.