Beer of the Bass

[quote name='Ou7shined' timestamp='1384086829' post='2272537'] So to nail the vintage sound we just need to use weaker magnets. Seems a far more pragmatic approach than spending thousands. [/quote] A few of the pickup companies have tried this approach already, and it can indeed make for a slightly mellower "old sounding" guitar. I had a guitar for a while with Seymour Duncan Alnico II pickups. Alnico II even when new is weaker than the standard alnico V magnets, approximating an older partly demagnetised pickup.

I had a bass with a non-removable spike, but found that if I removed the whole endpin assembly I could pull out the little retaining pin that prevented me from taking the spike out.

I use one of these, primarily because it was cheaper than getting an Onyx wheel from the states. [url="http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/433070/Bass-Wheel-Shaft-Diameter-8-mm.htm"]http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/433070/Bass-Wheel-Shaft-Diameter-8-mm.htm[/url] It's good for covering some distance when walking, but I usually take it off if I'm entering a building or train as it makes the bass taller. The inflatable tyre is a good thing, as I tend to keep it quite soft to absorb shocks. Mine must have done a fair few miles by now as I use it to get around Edinburgh when busking in the summer.

I also did an Oxjam gig a few weeks ago where the promised bass amp didn't materialise! It seems to be endemic to that sort of gig. Fortunately, I was playing guitar for that one, and our bassist had his Markbass combo in the car.

I was disappointed at the lack of Syd Barret era material in the miscellany. While I like a lot of the later stuff with Gilmour, the early whimsical stuff appeals to me more for whatever reason.

A friend of mine has one of the hybrid Stentor Student basses, and I feel like it's not bad for the price. He shares a flat with some old musical friends of mine, so I've played it a fair bit. His is about five years old and has held together so far. It doesn't have the volume or fullness of my old German bass, but I wouldn't expect it to. Stentor's 3/4 size seems to be at the small end of 3/4 though - I'm about 6'1" and I can't get the spike high enough on my friend's bass.

Looking at the Talkbass thread, it looks like SGD had one hell of a business model, where the cashflow from new orders placed is used to buy materials to build the previous round of backlogged orders. That seems precarious to say the least. I don't know much about running a small manufacturing business, but surely that's not normal? It's shame in a way, as Mr Schwab comes across as a nice, helpful guy online in non-business situations (for example, in the Ampage pickup makers forum) but seems not to have managed the business side too well.

[quote name='henrywillard' timestamp='1383874111' post='2270389'] Although still not perfect, the Primavera rockabilly basses are in the same sort of price-range and I always found the build quality to be far better than the Stentor. Well worth checking out as an alternative. Hope that helps! [/quote] I had one of the blonde Primavera basses and was not mightily impressed with the build quality. Though this was around 10 years ago and I suppose they might have improved since then.

Right now my absolute favourite fretless track is this: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgzP4Rj0Ns[/media] The rest of the album is great too, if you get on with the whole space rock gnomes & pixies shtick. I have to presume that Francois Moze's approach to fretless playing was entirely original, as a French bassist in the early 70s would be unlikely to have heard Jaco Pastorious. Also (on a very different tack), if he doesn't mind being plugged, I've got to mention Kev Hopper (Spoombung on BC). He doesn't really sound like anyone else on fretless bass!

[quote name='synaesthesia' timestamp='1383548174' post='2265606'] Most digital tuners want a separate isolated power supply if you have a fuzz or some such and you are sharing the power supply; if you share the supply this will amplify whirring digital noises regardless of whether it is an expensive or cheap tuner. You can eliminate that by using a battery or another power supply. [/quote] Yes, I solved that one with an isolated power supply, but I thought it might be worth mentioning for anyone daisy chaining. Interesting to know that some of the more expensive tuners do it too.

[quote name='BassBus' timestamp='1383324991' post='2263249'] D'Addario half-rounds are good but I find them a bit sticky. I have used Status halfwounds a lot and they are less sticky as time goes on. However the sets I've had recently have had E strings that have very little tone in them compared to the other strings. D'addarios have been the same. The strings I do like are Thomastik Jazz Flats, JF344 set. Smooth as the baby's proverbial and have quite a bright tone. Cost a lot to begin with but last a long time. [/quote] I have a feeling that TI Jazz flats may be a little too flexible feeling. I had a set on a fretless a few years ago and liked them, but I tend to dig in quite hard when playing live and I've never quite managed to lighten up my right hand enough. I suspect I'd enjoy the new LaBella white tapewounds, but a five string set of those imported in to the UK would be getting quite expensive.

After trying a few different strings over the past couple of years, I'm realising that all of the strings I like are flatwound feeling but at the brighter end of flats. I like D'Addario Chromes or Ernie Ball flats for the first three months or so, then they get a little too dark for me. My current set of D'Addario Tapewounds have sounded good for around a year, but the E and A are starting to get a little too thumpy and I'd like something that feels just a touch stiffer. Roundwounds, either nickel or steel don't really do it for me as I don't like the feel and they don't have the interesting attack and decay of flats. I like a sound with a fair bit of brightness and presence at around 2-3kHz, but not too much zing above that. With that in mind, would half-rounds/groundwounds be worth a look, and do any brands stick out as being good or bad?

IIRC, my school had an old Grant Jazz copy and a generic cheapy brand P copy. They weren't great, but they worked. I always wished they would get a double bass, as I really wanted to play double bass at the time but my family could never afford one. There was also one of those wretched Carlsbro Stingray combos with the push buttons which I used to use with the school big band. The thing which used to really break my heart was the stack of interesting but unused older equipment in a corner, which included a couple of valve amps (one was a Selmer T&B ), a Logan String machine keyboard and worst of all, a Rhodes Suitcase piano, which they never took the lid off in the whole six years I was there...

Tapewounds might be nice, although I don't own an acoustic bass guitar. They're usually lower in tension than flatwounds, and have a sound which I think might complement an acoustic bass well.

Some of the surgical spirit you can buy in shops also has castor oil added, to prevent it drying the skin too much. If you were to soak strings in it, the oil would remain after the alcohol had evaporated. I suspect this is why the poster above found it deadened his strings further. All available alcohol will contain a small amount of water - when I worked in a lab we found that even the more expensive grades of methanol or isopropyl without water in them quickly took on some water from the atmosphere once the bottles had been opened. I wouldn't worry about the small proportion of water in alcohol for this application. I use isopropyl from Maplins, as I don't like the purple additive in meths (to stop you drinking it) - this hangs around after the alcohol has evaporated and leaves your strings smelling bad.

I've noticed a thing with flatwound B strings where the angle at the saddle is a little steeper than the string naturally bends to, leaving the break point indistinct and the tone a bit strange. It goes away once the strings are settled in, but this can take a while. If this is the problem, pushing the string down on to the saddle with your fingers to put a bend at the right place can help.

[quote name='waynepunkdude' timestamp='1382910022' post='2258005'] So it's OK to spend years laying into MDP but if it's a member we can't? I have no real feelings either way but it seems a little unfair. [/quote] Given that the MDP threads have all been closed, I think someone must have decided they'd gone some way past being OK.

Not so much with basses, but I've done something like this with other instruments and gear. I think it's a fairly normal part of thinking about how the instrument sounds and what you can do with it.

I dunno, I'd say he was pretty upfront about what had been done to the bass, and didn't try to pass it off as anything other than what it was. An entirely different kettle of fish to he-who-shall-not-be-named with his colourful descriptions and debatable claims of "improvements".

[quote name='6v6' timestamp='1382692483' post='2255414'] I'm going to start simple, then add some bells & whistles My plan is to start with a simple Fender-style preamp, two 12ax7's probably, gain stage, passive tone stack, gain recovery, cathode follower driver stage -> power amp I generally play with a bit of compression, so when I've got the basic sounds dialled in, I'd like to add a tube compressor, and a tube driven transformer-coupled DI out. Initially I was planning to model it all in gEDA, but I started and it's just too time-consuming. So instead I'll do what I've done on all my previous amp builds, cobble it together by nicking bits of existing amp designs, then tweaking until it sounds good [/quote] Cool. I'd be interested to know which design you base your compressor on. I'm slowly working on a valve preamp/class D module amp myself, but decided that all the schematics I'd seen for compressors were a little more complex than I wanted to incorporate.

Looks like an interesting build. What are your plans for the preamp - keeping it simple or including some bells and whistles?

PM sent! Then I can find out if I like the B before I go looking for another four...

[quote name='Bassman Rich' timestamp='1382458124' post='2252401'] [indent=1]Thanks for the input, but I can't see a 6 string guitar pup working too well for a 4 string bass, looks like I will have to get my tools out and adjust the pole pieces myself, now wheres that big hammer [/indent] [/quote] Might I suggest not doing that? The coil on old style Fenderish pickups is wound straight on the pole pieces, and while you might get away with it, you could also break the windings on the inside of the coil, killing the pickup.

[quote name='MiltyG565' timestamp='1382355416' post='2250983'] It's still musical masturbation though [/quote] Is that like musical chairs?

I have never quite got why some people find the notion of jazz offputting, but many do. I remember putting on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz album (the one with the double quartet panned left and right) in a cafe I worked in, then observing the bemused expressions of the customers. I'd had several espressos already that morning and was really getting in to the music. Oddly, the manager didn't seem to share my enthusiasm when she came back...