Beer of the Bass

I'm alarmed that this is described as having been a "worn" toilet seat before they refinished it. Surely you'd start with a fresh, new loo seat if you were building one of these?

I have a five string I built a while ago using an OLP neck. As the B string response has never been fantastic and I have trouble getting the relief right, I've decided to put together a new neck for it. I could have approached this by working on the existing neck, but I like a project! I've got hold of a neck blank and pre-slotted fingerboard from David Dyke, both are AA grade plain flat-sawn maple. I'm going to use a double action truss rod and a pair of 6mm square carbon fibre rods to help with stiffness. I'm working on drawing up some plans at the moment, and trying to decide between copying the Stingray headstock shape or coming up with something original. My next step will be to ask around various friends and see if I can borrow a router from one of them to do the channels for the rods. Here's the bass as it is at the moment, and my materials for the new neck. More to follow...

Fretless basses do tend to get a bit trashed in music shops, as they invariably come with roundwounds and then bassists (or guitarists) who aren't used to fretless come along and bend the strings sideways guitar style, scoring up the fingerboard horribly. I've seen this happen a few times, so I can understand why many shops would prefer not to keep them in stock.

When was it ever about following rules? Some of my favourite musical moments consist of people doing things that they "shouldn't" do.

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1391691383' post='2360194'] I think I'll stick with my "does it sound good to me? yes/no" approach. [/quote] Though if you were wondering whether it would sound better to glue your instrument to an empty plastic bucket or one filled with sand, the video might help. A valuable service, that is!

I just found that rambling and incoherent. I skipped through a lot of it due to that, but he doesn't appear to measure anything or present any objective data. He just messes about with it, strums it and declares "no resonance" or "just the same". Coming from a science background, I don't recognise any science going on here - it just looks sciencey due to the graphs on screen.

[quote name='skidder652003' timestamp='1391369753' post='2356395'] HI Folks so i really fancy getting a turntable again! Like a muppet I sold my Rega P3 a few years ago for about £150 quid on ebay and have regretted it ever since. Unfortunately my budget is a round £130 what with Christmas and everything. Does anyone have experience of a turntable at around that budget used price? I really fancy a Pioneer PL-12D, anyone got one? Or any other model for that kind of price? Cheers, Steve [/quote] I have the Pioneer PL-11, which I think might be the slightly older model. I don't know if I can comment much on it's sound, as the rest of my system isn't great and I haven't listened to a lot of different decks, but it's certainly solid and functional and has never given me any bother.

Stick some flats on it? That'll kill the twangy, modern sounding aspect of it!

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1391086405' post='2353051'] They amplify nicely when I hit the bass, as you saw But they don't seem overly microphonic. More than others, yes, but as long as they don't squeal I am ok with that if they sound good. However... wax dipping... I never had to do it and I would not know how to. Have you done it? [/quote] Yes, I wound my own guitar pickups and one for my four string last year. To dip them, I made up an 80/20 mixture of paraffin wax and beeswax, heated to about 65 degrees in a tub surrounded by hot water on the hob (like a bain-marie for melting chocolate), applying occasional heat to keep the temperature steady. The pickups (without covers) sit in the melted wax until the air bubbles stop coming out of them, then you take them out, wipe them off and leave them to cool. I've still got my tub of wax if you want to give yours a shot.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1391079639' post='2352921'] I have found what others mentioned about the pickups "popping" when slapping hard. I had not noticed at home, because I only slapped a bit, and played fingerstyle all the time. I will try bringing the pickups down a bit and see what happens. I'm reluctant because it sounds so good as it is... but I'll mark the current settings so that I can go back if I want to. [/quote] Are they a bit microphonic, perhaps? If that's the issue, wax-dipping them would sort it out and it isn't hard to do.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1390865284' post='2350811'] Well, it's a Jazz... so like a Jazz I used mostly bridge pickup alone, with a couple of times both pickups on, and tone always rolled off a little bit. There is only one guitar in this band, and one trumpet, plus drums and two vocalists... so it's easy to make the bass sit well. These pickups are quite meaty. I'm not a big fan of the neck pickups on jazz basses, so I tend to disregard it a lot... but the bridge one sounds very good. You get the mids-rich nasal tone that cuts through so well, but it's also fat. These pickups will stay in the bass. [/quote] It did sound just like a Jazz, didn't it? There's no way I would have figured it for a cheaper instrument by the sound in a band setting. (If anyone is wondering, I was playing guitar last night). Also, isn't "Jack and Danny" cockney rhyming slang for something I probably can't say on Basschat? What on earth were they thinking?

I enjoy fretless and play it quite a bit at home, but in my current band fretted just seems right so I'm not gigging fretless at the moment. I've never got on with roundwounds on a fretless though, even if I can think of a number of players who make them sound good. Of the strings I've tried on a fretless bass, I like Thomastik Jazz Flats the best, as they have great mids and feel a lot like a miniature version of my Spirocore double bass strings. Pricey though!

When I got my Rev Solo II pickup, it came with a short length of plastic tube to weave through the afterlengths and dampen the tailpiece vibrations. This does make a bit of difference when playing loudly, but a rolled up cloth wedged under the tailpiece worked a little better. I haven't used an Ehrlund, but my AKG C411 (which is also a soundboard contact pickup) just about scraped by with a moderately loud drummer though with anything louder I'd go for a bridge wing pickup and live with the less natural sound.

I like the Dunlop Tortex .88mm Green picks for bass. I've tried heavier and lighter ones, but these seem to get the balance between body and "click" that I like.

I think there must be only a select few bits of the music scene where things like hospitality riders even exist in medium sized venues. I've never, ever played in a venue that had towels! This week Dave Swarbrick, who is a bit of a legend in folk circles was ranting about a mid-sized Glasgow venue that didn't even provide a backstage loo or changing space, so he had to queue with the punters. And this is a guy who has been performing at the highest level (in folk terms) for more than 40 years.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1390779741' post='2349540'] I rehearsed for a while at a place in Edinburgh where they provided the Peavey Tour 450 amps with the Cosmos control. Sometimes I'd turn around to look at it, and I liked to think that if I used it it might just take me on a trip around nearby galaxies. That and the blue led made me feel happy. I never used it 'though, as I wasn't sure I'd be back in time for dinner... [/quote] It's a good thing you never turned the knob! I can just picture you preparing for liftoff, then being underwhelmed when instead of being transported to the planet Gong on a flying teapot, you just got a sort of not very good octaver effect.

[quote name='Bassassin' timestamp='1390763233' post='2349231'] That's the second ludicrous local Gumtree bargain I've missed in the last month or two. The previous one was more upsetting though - a Canadian Balogh Odyssey guitar for £30. Just ask Flat Eric about these... [/quote] Ah yes, I was fancying that one too. I had no idea what it was, but for £30 it would have been worth buying and then researching later! These things do always go fast though...

I find that with the action below a certain point (assuming correct neck relief and a good setup), I can play a little more fluently and pull off things that I might not manage otherwise, but in practice I have a lot of relief and an action at the high side of medium at the moment. I do find that on instruments with a really low action, I struggle to lighten up my right hand enough and I have to constantly think about not playing too hard, both on electric bass and guitar. This may come from being used to playing double bass with Spirocores and a heavily strung archtop guitar. My gut feeling is that I should probably work on this through practice rather than setting up my electric bass and guitar with hefty strings and a high action, but I'm not there yet...

For forty quid with a nice ash body and a hard case, someone in Edinburgh needs to buy this: [url="http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/maya-electric-bass-guitar-fender-telecaster-bass-copy-with-hard-case/1046283537#photo-content"]http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/maya-electric-bass-guitar-fender-telecaster-bass-copy-with-hard-case/1046283537#photo-content[/url] I don't need it myself and I'm trying not to fill the house with stuff, otherwise i'd have a punt...

At a professional gig I'd be running a DI alongside my rig. Failures can happen with any brand of gear or country of origin. The only time I've played a gig where a bass amp went down, it was an Italian made Markbass.

Certainly, you're entitled to reservations about buying Chinese goods. That still doesn't give you any basis for claiming that they're made in labour camps in North Korea, when there is no evidence for that. The parent company behind Behringer and Bugera have their own plant in Guangdong Province which does not appear to be a labour camp.

[quote name='spacey' timestamp='1390736966' post='2348744'] On quality control, if makers are manufacturing in North Korea as most do now in the slave labour camps, how much pride would you have in your work if you had just been given 25 years hard labour for failing to name 20 current party officials when questioned. Not a Fking lot would be mine. [/quote] Which companies are manufacturing music gear in North Korea? I'm not aware of any so far. All of the Behringer and Bugera gear I've come across has been labelled "Made in China".

On a lesser budget, the Kent Armstrong toasters are good sounding pickups for the neck position. They're intended as guitar pickups, but Ric use the same toaster pickups on guitar and bass. WD music have them. [url="http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/replacement-toaster-pickup-front-2687-p.asp"]http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/replacement-toaster-pickup-front-2687-p.asp[/url]

The valve preamp one does look rather nice. I wonder if they were waiting for Genz to cease trading to avoid litigation? It does look like they've got LEDs behind the valves to make them look brighter though, which always looks naff IMO. Why do they do that? ECC83s don't usually glow as much as that! Although it could just be that the picture is a computer rendering...

The littler amp of the new Peaveys looks quite elegant really, with no flashy lights or knobs labelled "Kosmos", so I think they're aware that not everyone will love the one with the lights.