Russ

I used to have a SVT-7. And I ran into the cutting out issue during a gig, in the middle of the first song.  Which is a shame, as it was a fantastic-sounding head, with just the right amount of "hair" to the tone, and gobs of power. I got it fixed and immediately sold it on. 

Supposedly the defect has been addressed on newer versions of the head. I've been tempted to get another, but it's a gamble I don't think I want to make. Apparently the new Venture series heads nail the SVT tone, but I've not had a chance to try one yet, and it'll be a "simulated" version, since they have no valves.

Now that Ampeg is part of Yamaha, the QC is supposedly much better than it was. But, y'know, once bitten and all that. 

It's a cool toy, never seen a 3D configurator before. Very nicely done. 

But I'm a Bongo guy - once they start offering those through the configurator, I'm in. My bank account will hate me though...  

1 hour ago, tauzero said:

Built-in wireless - preferably modular so it can be upgraded when quantum digital wireless comes along.

 

Fretted/fretless operation by moving a lever:

 

 

I'm sure there was a better video than this but I can't find it.

Great idea, but it kinda works backwards - the fingerboard should come up rather than the frets going down, otherwise the action is going to be too high for the fretless mode. 

The Novatone swappable magnetic fingerboards that were a thing back in the early 90s were cool though.

27 minutes ago, OliverBlackman said:

I’ve been drunk many times in my life, but never Ali Express Dingwall with a Tesco logo drunk

Tesco Value, not even Tesco Finest?  

I was in a band 25-odd years ago, and the guitarist just woke up one day and decided he didn't like rock music or playing the guitar anymore. Took his guitars, amp, etc down to a pawn shop and sold it all that same day. It wasn't the sort of band where any of us would have been easily replaced, so we just called it a day. 

Not nearly as dramatic as some of these other stories, but extremely random, and we were all quite hurt. However, he's picked up the guitar again in recent years, and is in a band with our old drummer. 

On 27/02/2024 at 19:10, NickA said:

Mustabin nicked 🙂 my MK1 was £830 from our lgs in 1998.. and it's a bit bashed too.  They were out of fashion for quite a while.

I’m sure half the stuff in NHME was nicked. I bought some nice stuff from there pretty cheap back in the day.

But this was before you had the likes of Chancellor playing them - even Mick Karn was using a Klein instead of his Wal, Percy Jones had moved to Ibanez, Geddy Lee was back to his Jazzes, and so on. They were almost terminally uncool back then. 

12 hours ago, skelf said:

Filters just made sense to me the first time I picked up a Wal. Wish I had bought it there and then but £800 seemed so much to the 15 year old me in Sound Control in Glasgow. Oh how prices have changed. 

I passed over a 4-string Mk2 in Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250. That would have been one hell of an investment.  

17 minutes ago, skelf said:

Hi

The Eq01 is not the pre-amp I use in my top of the range Uber Series basses. I use the DFM in conjunction with my own Multi Coil pickups. This pre-amp has several features that the 01 does not have including the pic attack on a push/pull. While the EQ01 is an excellent pre-amp the DFM is what I call my 4th generation pre-amp have been in development for many years and started with 01. The 01 has seen several tweaks over the years as well and the later/current model is closer to the Wal than the original version.. The DFM/MC combination is however only available in my Uber Series basses.

Thanks for the clarification, Alan. That’s the other route to getting to filter-based multicoil Nirvana, buy an ACG.

Pretty sure it's a Pangton too. 

https://www.lefay.de/index.php/EN/bass_models/pangton

There are three that I can think of.

Lusithand Devices make the NFP range - they're sonically very similar to the original Wal preamp, but with a wider Q frequency sweep and no "pick attack" control. They made sure to reproduce details to the degree of matching the level of harmonic distortion the preamp generates. Second would be the East ACG EQ-01 - this is the preamp that ACG fit into their high-end basses, with their multicoil pickups. Again, a pretty close facsimile of the original Wal design, but a little more "hi-fi" and maybe slightly closer to Alembic's approach. Then there's the Underhill range - they offer modular preamp components, including filter-based tone controls. I've heard good things, but have no direct experience with them. 

Currently, if you want an aftermarket Wal-type setup, the Lusithand NFP combined with Turner multicoil pickups seems to get you closest to "that" sound. 

8 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

 

Puzzling. The only Micheldever I know is in Hants, not far from me.

My bad. Maidenbower. I lived in Winchester when I was a kid, so I guess that town name stuck around in my head.  Plus I guess it shows how memorable my time in Crawley was... 

2 hours ago, badger said:

he was clearly keen to leave!

 

I live just up the road & I don't  blame him.

Lived there for a little while about 15 years ago - Micheldever, right next to Three Bridges station. Depressing AF, as the kids say.  But, at the time the alternative was Croydon, so, in retrospect, it doesn't seem so bad! 

4 hours ago, tegs07 said:

Take a trip to places like Seattle, Nashville, Portland or Brooklyn. You might revise your opinion.

One of the most popular stations on SiriusXM (American digital satellite radio service) is called 1st Wave, and it's back-to-back synthpop/new wave/new romantic stuff. It's not classed as such though, it's all "80s alternative".  

They did mostly ignore the Britpop stuff, with the exception of Oasis, Blur and maybe a couple of tunes from Pulp. You hear them back-to-back with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc on the 90s stations (SiriusXM has a station for that too, called Lithium).

And yep, The Cure are huge in the States. I saw them about 12 years ago in Philadelphia during my first stint over here, massive arena venue, and was completely sold out. They played a nearly 3-hour set. 😮 Bob from Crawley did good. 

6 hours ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

Weirdly, I wonder whether Grime suffered from a similar issue that stopped a lot of old-school prog rock groups getting breaking through stateside - it's "too British". Granted, the artists are typically from very different demographics, but just as Gabriel-era Genesis, Soft Machine, etc might have sounded too eccentric to (most) American ears, what (admittedly little) I've heard of Stormzy or Tinie Tempah is so evocative of the run-down corners of British cities, I can imagine it sounding a bit alarming to a foreign audience.

Tinie Tempah did OK for a while in the US - he had his music used in WWE wrestling for a bit. But Stormzy, Dizzee Rascal, etc had no success whatsoever.

You're right, it's pretty dark, plus It's not "aspirational" like modern American hip-hop, which seems to mostly be about the accumulation of money, drugs, fancy cars, "cribs", b**ches and so on. A lot of old hip-hop was a lot closer to what grime is now, with lots of social commentary, but you don't hear much of that kind of thing any more. 

I've owned 4 Bongos (but am currently down to one), so I know them quite well.  

They're unmistakably Music Man basses. They have that extremely distinctive upper-mid bite that MMs are known for, and solid, wide bottom end you can stand on. The pickups and preamp are extremely powerful, with a ton of headroom and almost every kind of tone you'd ever want is in there somewhere, between the two pickups and the 4-band EQ. 

Ergonomically, they're a little weird. They don't sit all that well on the knee, but they're well balanced, reasonable in terms of weight, and have slim, comfortable necks. 

Overall, they're great basses. And that's a good price. I say go for it, you aren't likely to be disappointed. 

34 minutes ago, bartelby said:

 

D'amour playing his Ovation in early days also sounds like every Tool bass sound.

D'Amour wasn't nearly as fond of effects as Chancellor. Clangy Ricky/MM/Magnum bass sound, lots of high mids, and just a touch of reverb. 

13 hours ago, Chris2112 said:

 

I'm sure he could have had one with a graphite neck if he had wanted. It must be the case that he preferred wooden necks, although that odd semi-hollow six string he had made had a graphite neck and he never seemed to do much with it. That one ended up on sale on this forum and was around for a while before it sold. There were a few Hellborg basses made with graphite necks in later years although none with the 36v preamp as far as I know.

 

The semi-hollow Status signature bass was pretty much the template for the bass he ended up making with Warwick, with the pickup right up against the bridge, etc. I wasn't that much of a fan of it, to be honest. It had quite a harsh tone, all high treble and low bass, and not much in the middle. 

1 hour ago, matski said:

According to the Gallery's website that one is the Wal used by Nick Beggs for 'Too Shy'. I'm not convinced that that claim to fame is worth the extortionate markup.

 

That's not that much more than older non-Pro Wals go for these days, to be fair. And you get that extra bit of New Romantic cachet. A lot of Gen-X'ers who grew up with that music now have "spare" money for stuff like that!

Scott Devine paid a similarly extortionate sum for a Wal that was used in the Do They Know It's Christmas video.  

One of Maruszczyk's latest creations, a Jazzus with Turner multicoils and a Lusithand preamp. Pretty much nails the Wal tone to my ears. 

12 minutes ago, Misdee said:

Jonas' signature Status bass was designed to sound as close as possible to his Wal, apparently.

 

I think Wal basses most certainly do have a unique tone, and I have yet to hear any of the would-be imitators nail that sound. Just because a bass has a filter preamp that doesn't mean that it will sound like a Wal. It might sound good in it's own right, but Wal basses have got their own sonic identity.

 

Alembic basses, by way of contrast, use a filter preamp and have a wonderful tone of their own, but they sound nothing like a Wal. Construction ( as well as electronics) also plays a significant role in the overall tone of the instrument.

 

Wal basses have got that fat midrange that is so useful for a bass guitar. It's a beautiful thing, for sure.

 

 

I recall that his signature Status had crazy 36V electronics, with four batteries! I loved the design, with the downsized body - shame it was during Status' wooden neck phase (which they appear to have gone back to), would have loved to have seen one with a graphite neck. 

1 hour ago, NickA said:

Indeed some of that sounds like unprocessed MK2 played rather hard.

I think you're right. Looks like a Mk2 in the Suck My Kiss video. 

Another player who was a prolific user of Wals back in the day is Jonas Hellborg, before he went off doing his Status and Warwick things. There’s some footage of him on YouTube back in 2020 at NAMM playing a Mk3 through EBS gear and he sounded fantastic. 

Has Hellborg’s endorsement deal with Warwick run its course? They don’t have his bass or his signature amps on their website anymore. 

1 hour ago, chriswareham said:

 

In an interview, Justin Chancellor says he switched from a Stingray to a Wal when he joined Tool and started to record the Aenima album. The weird thing is, the bass sounds on the demos for that album recorded with Justin's predecessor Paul D'Amour sound almost identical to me tone wise - and that was all Stingray.

Some of the album is Stingray too - Forty-Six & Two is all Stingray, and I think Third Eye is too. 

It's kinda the reverse of Blood Sugar Sex Magik by RHCP - everyone at the time assumed the whole album was Stingray, but almost all of it was recorded with a Wal (with the exception of two songs where Flea played a 5-string Stingray). That's another quintessentially Wal-sounding album... 

5 hours ago, Bass Culture said:

 

Very true.   I have my own Zoot 'Wal-alike', made by MIke Walsh, which is so much more comfortable to play than the real thing.  One of the original pickups developed a problem and this has inspired Mike to start making his own multi-coils, which he's going to offer on his own range of Wal-alike basses.  Knowing the research he's done, I suspect they are going to be as close to the originals as it is possible to get (having had many conversations with him I'm now much more aware than previously of the complex and multiple specification and topographical considerations involved).  The latest version of the Lusithand pre is also voiced slightly differently too, I believe.  So - as Russ says - there's plenty of options out there for those hankering after the Wal sound without having the patience and pockets deep enough to go 'full Wal'.  My own next 'Wal-alike' will be using MIke's new pickups too, but will be passive, so it will be interesting to hear how close it gets without the filter preamp.  Still it's own variation of a Wal, of course, but from a much earlier era and iteration.

I love what I've seen of Mike's Zoot Wal-a-likes. I'd like to get my hands on one and give it a try. Lusithand's preamps are great - they're missing the "pick attack" control, but he sets the frequency sweep on the filters to extend to higher frequencies to compensate. 

If your next Zoot is going to be more like an older Wal, can Mike do a leather scratchplace?  

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Is there a "Wal sound"?

 

The three players I most closely associate with the basses - Mick Karn, Leigh Gorman and Justin Chancellor all sound very different. 

 

Can you get close to all the sounds that three use with any of the current crop of Wal-alikes?

There's a certain presence in the mids, especially the high mids, that's very distinctive, no matter who's playing one. It really brings out the "mwah" on a fretless too. You can hear it with all the above players, as well as 80s-era Geddy Lee, Nick Beggs, etc. 

There's a lot of options right now for players who want some of that Wal flavour - quite a few companies producing multi-coil pickups (Herrick, Turner, Bassculture, and apparently now Nordstrand), filter preamps (Lusithand, ACG), and ever a couple of companies that will make you a lookalike! There's a US-based company on FB called Octave Basses who make straight-up Wal copies for Justin Chancellor fans who have neither the money nor patience to get a real one! They're supposed to be pretty good though.  There's some demo videos up there of someone who has one playing Tool tunes, and it sounds spot-on. although it probably doesn't hurt that the guy in question has spent a fortune on getting all Justin Chancellor's other gear - the same amps (Demeter/GK/Mesa), the same speakers, all the same pedals, etc, so I suppose that helps.  

Not sure any of them will have the cachet of the real deal, but, if you love the sound, you should be able to get pretty close. 

I remember passing on a Wal Mk2 in the Notting Hill Music Exchange back in the mid-90s for £250 because I thought it was too heavy. I guess nobody had any idea of what they'd end up selling for!