Cathode_Follower

Playing on the edge of a cliff, as you do.. Seriously need to have a word with our location manager

Been playing a few live Dubstep/Grime gigs recently and wanted to be able to get that LFO sweep 'Wob' effect on-tap, this is the result. Adapted an NE555 sawtooth oscillator circuit and used it to control the LED in my Morley wah. At the toe position is a momentary footswitch that engages the oscillator. Range is from around 2 - 60Hz which means you can go into ring mod territory which is also pretty fun. Here's a clip of me playing along to Gunshot Riddim by Skepta. Schematic attached, although I have a suspicion I changed the value or VR1 and the accompanying resistor. The second LED is for the visible rate indicator on top of the pedal. I did quite a bit of searching to see if anyone else has tried modulating the LED in these Morleys and surprisingly found nothing. Seems like an area ripe for exploitation! 75944346_416369412625471_900076062631788544_n-4.mp4

For about 4 years now I've been taking my bass around Bristol on this homebrew bike trailer. Usually secured with bungees but on this occasion I was caught short. 9 times out of 10 there's also an amp on there in that space under the bass. I've also swapped out the wheels a few times for festivals and taken it onsite sans bike. Great for carrying obscene amounts of kit. Not so great for steep hills but I recently scavenged parts from a mobility scooter and am working on a power-assisted version.

In defence of Presto Nylons - I've been playing pizz using Jazzicato for 3 years now and they work great. Just switched to the Jazzicato Tungsten which have a bit more sustain and growl and couldn't be happier. Not a slapper myself but a slapping friend of mine bashed out a few notes on it a few days ago and it sounded good to me! I do have quite a bright sounding bass though so probably not for everyone but would definitely recommend giving them a try, and at £130 a set it's a reasonably affordable risk. Break-in time for me is about a week Relating to Rev's comment on E and A definition - I do use a steel E as I found the Jazzicato E was lacking a bit of definition and some heft when I was really digging in. Always assumed it was the bass but I suppose it makes sense that lower-tension strings would be more fallible at heavier gauges. Switching to the Jazzicato tungsten got it to 90% but I still found myself reverting to a steel wound E. As a compromise for slap/pizz doubling though I think the stock E would do fine.

Thanks for your input all! Think I will give @tinyd's suggestion a go as it's cheap as chips, seems like the first thing to try. Will report back with results from the field

I've found a good deal on a used E-string which I'd like to try out, however at over 2 metres long it's going to need some work fitting onto my 3/4.. Anyone with string knowhow able to advise whether this is a good idea or pure folly?

@tinyd Sounds good! What sort of battery life do you get? (from X number of uses per day/week)

No specific gig really, but the band I play with does what might be termed 'contemporary' jazz, so there's quite a lot of crossover with dance music crowds and just a lot of generally loud, non jazz-bar-y type situations. We played a lot of large festival stages this summer and there's always a DJ in between acts, some louder than others but often loud enough to interfere with tuning!

Hmm, I wonder if clip-on might actually be the way. I have a Snark which I bloody hate and barely ever use, but when I have it's been clipped onto the bridge, which I would guess possibly has a higher string-sound to ambient-noise ratio than under the bridge foot where my realist is. Is that where you clip yours? Taking that to its logical conclusion.. a mag pickup just for tuning would definitely do the business, hah. Might be over-gasing there though..! That sounds great for your application but I'm guessing you don't have 100dB of deep-house thumping behind you in the pit before the curtain goes up Just out of interest, I always understood that orchestras tuned to Just Intonation based on the key the piece was in. Is that something that Gstrings can accommodate? Or am I way off the mark and everyone just uses equal temperament these days?

Sure, or I can PM you his facebook and you can contact him directly if that's easier?

@ambient are you still looking? I have a friend in Bristol who is selling a perfectly serviceable 1/2 size for cheap (£350 I think)

I'm considering replacing my current tuner (Sonic Research ST-200), because while it's a super-accurate and solid piece of kit, it sometimes struggles with upright to home-in on the string being played, especially when there are high levels of ambient noise in the room (usually a DJ on a loud bassy stage just before a set). Does anyone have any recommendations for a reliable tuner that copes well with double bass?

Something that's just occurred to me regarding the Zeller hybrids - Not sure if it's across the board or if they offer both options, but mine has an Eb neck-stop rather than the more common D stop. Worth checking out if you're looking at getting one (if that's something you're concerned about. I find in practice it makes very little difference)

That's a great solution. It looks like the neck profile has been changed to compensate for the added thickness at the heel, is that right?

Interesting, not heard of that before! So they remove the fingerboard and insert a long tapered piece the entire length of the fingerboard/neck interface?

Never had a professional re-set but generally prices for any work seems to vary wildly from luthier to luthier. The cost could also vary considerably based on the style of neck joint, what glue had been used last, etc.. Since no one else has chipped in yet, my completely stab-in-the-dark ballpark would be anywhere between £300 and £700. How much would you need to lower the action by at the bridge to sort it out? Of course it depends how much material you have available to remove initially but it might make less of a difference than you're expecting.

Those Zellers are solid! Mine fell on its back onto a concrete floor last week. Headstock broke off but the neck joint was fine 😮 I couldn't believe it.

What is that bass?! I must know! Here's me playing in a chicken shop, as you do.

So after being at a bunch of festivals this summer and seeing countless bassists struggle with their tone, frantically turning the controls on whatever backline was provided and/or just having a plain muddy sound coming out of the PA, I thought I would share what I've learned over the past few years in the hope that it might help some people out. 1. Have tone-shaping for FOH Seems obvious but too many people seem to send a DI straight off of the pickup. Are you sure the FOH engineer is going to know how to EQ a double bass? Do you trust them to mould your tone to be subjectively, let alone objectively 'good'? 2. Have that tone-shaping independent of your own The last thing anyone wants is for the bass sound out-front to randomly change half-way through the set because you suddenly realised you don't have enough 250Hz for yourself on-stage. Dial-in your FOH sound in a controlled, neutral environment, say in a studio, and then use whatever means you like to stop those settings ever getting accidentally changed. I fitted a piece of perspex over my FOH graphic which you have to unscrew and remove to access the faders. Keep a record of the settings as backup. 3. Bring your own rig I use a small 1x15 combo, an HH Bass-Baby cab with a 100W Laney power-amp shoehorned in the back. I'm accustomed to the voicing and know exactly what to do to get it to sound how I want, quickly. Of course the trade-off of having a small amp is having very little low-end, so for most stages I'll bi-amp with the house bass rig, and generally roll-off everything except the lows. Any compression, 'uber-mega low', or pre-shaping etc is turned off. This essentially completely solves the 'small amp' problem that plagues us all. In 50% of cases the FOH rig will provide adequate lows but it's always good to have extra there if you need it. If you need it and you DON'T have it, my god, you're not going to have a good time! This happened to me once and now I bi-amp EVERY time. Put your amp at shoulder height - put it on a stool or on top of the house rig if you're bi-amping. You'll hear yourself a lot better and reduce feedback. Some people find this strange at first but you'll quickly get to love it! 4. Use a graphic EQ Simple and intuitive, for me it just naturally makes sense for double-bass. You can kill frequencies that are trying to feedback and shape your tone onstage to compensate for what you might already be hearing from FOH or other peoples wedges. If you're precious about phasing, distortion and things you can use whatever EQ you like for the FOH feed. Obviously for your own monitoring this isn't so important. 5. Ask for no bass in your own monitor You've got your own monitor right behind you which you have personal control over, why would you now leave that job to someone else! 6. Don't let them mic-up the bass amp! Let me repeat that - DON'T LET THEM MIC THE BASS AMP. Either of them, if you're bi-amping. There are so many reasons for this. You're naturally going to be tweaking the onstage sound throughout the set as you inch closer to tone-nirvana. What you're hearing isn't necessarily the optimal tone. What you're hearing at your ears isn't the same as what's coming out of the amp. That's why we're sending them a separate, unchanging EQ. If your FOH engineer is putting compression on the bass and you suddenly pull all the lows, this can send everything into uncontrollable feedback at the next preferential frequency. Then you've got amplifier distortion, hiss, whatever else.. Did I mention not to let them mic the bass amp? I have a note in the tech-spec instructing as such with a disclaimer that failure to observe this policy will result in the mic being unplugged seconds before the downbeat. Take no prisoners. And don't let them mic the bass amp. See the attached block-diagram for a visual aid. The preamp I use is a simple no-controls buffer for the piezo pickup. It vastly improves the sound of the Realist, however I've also previously tried it with a Shadow SH591 and I preferred the sound without it, so it's quite subjective and pickup-dependant. It's DIY, technical information can be found here - https://cafewalter.com/pzp-1/technical-info/ Of course everyone's needs are different and this doesn't cover the wonderful world of effects pedals and how to route these effectively. But hopefully this will get some people thinking. Hope it helps!

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that DB is so large compared so basically every other instrument? With pretty much any other instrument, things like your overall height or the ratio of your arm to leg length have no relation to how you interface with it. Everyone's bodies are so different it makes sense that there would be a wider range of different techniques employed with such a large physical instrument.

This ^ project is currently on hold until after the summer but still very much happening! Expect further updates in a month or two

This is kind of old now but I'm not sure why I never thought to post this here when it happened, so here we go. You never know, maybe someone on these forums has bought it in good faith! Treasured home-build, stolen from backstage at Boomtown festival last year. Ibanez hardware, open electronics at the back, was in a Yamaha gig bag. The collective I was with crowdfunded a replacement (so much love) so if you did end up buying my bass from someone perhaps we can arrange a trade..! Cheers!

Not advisable. The tubes will only suck the capacitors dry while they have the ability to draw current, which depends on the cathode heaters still being warm, and they tend to cool-off pretty sharpish after power is removed - within about 5 seconds. Even if you just straight-up unplugged the amp from the mains while leaving your power and standby switches on, you could still easily wind up with a few hundred volts sitting on the power rail. @Unknown_User - Capacitor self-discharge varies wildly depending on the design, anything from minutes to hours to maybe days. Always ALWAYS check your voltages before poking around. Multimeters are inexpensive and really if you're opening up anything electrical you should own one regardless.

So this afternoon I had the opportunity to spend some time measuring the bass up for the new sides (or ribs, depending on your lingo). Initially we thought we could shorten and re-bend the original sides and reuse them, but quickly realised that because of the upward curvature of the top, the new sides would need to flare out wider at the saddle area once the new bottom-bout shape had been cut, so the old sides would not be wide enough. On inspection of various photos, this seems to be the case for the CE too, so thankfully no reshaping of the top is required. Likewise it looks like the CE top is not tapered to a consistent thickness at the edges, such as on a regular bass, but remains thicker around the tailpiece area - Essentially they do seem to really be simply 'abbreviated basses' as DG calls them. Attached are a few mockups, showing how the bass body should look once modified, and to illustrate just how much is being removed! There is also a CE for comparison (I think it looks acceptably similar!). It's also worth noting that the lower bout on a CE is actually a compound curve, not a straightforward arc, which is something we'll have to consider when marking-up. Also, note the shorter string distance from bridge to tailpiece - interesting! That's all for the moment. The search for wood for new sides commences. Rich

Try a set of Presto Jazzicato Tungsten. I have the regular (not Tungsten) and they are absolute butter. I recommend the Tungsten on the basis that they are supposed to have a more "contemporary" sound with greater clarity while retaining a moderately low tension and a great slick feel for shifting.