Beer of the 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...

There was a thread on Talkbass a while ago where a guy was posting plots of frequency content over time for some different basses. IIRC, a long scale (41-42") EUB with piezo bridge pickups contained a far higher proportion of fundamental than a 34" bass guitar with magnetic pickups. So a very long scale might be a good idea if the strongest fundamental is required. Here's the thread: [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/bass-frequency-waterfall-plots-what-they-mean-rigs-510749/"]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/bass-frequency-waterfall-plots-what-they-mean-rigs-510749/[/url]

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' timestamp='1378139378' post='2196184'] In the 80s did everyone think Carlsbros were good? 70s Carlsbros are good, wondering how it all looked from the time. [/quote] As far as I can gather (not being of that generation), I don't think the 70s valve Carlsbros had much cachet at the time. They were good solid utilitarian gear, but Carlsbro didn't do much on the advertising and artist relations front so mostly sold their amps to blokes in the Midlands playing working men's clubs. Marshall, Vox etc managed to get themselves associated with the big names and were desirable because of that, even though when you look at a 70s Carlsbro now, it's certainly not of lesser quality than Marshalls of the time.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1381840609' post='2244362'] I could just find a suitable bag, get a board (like a chopping board, as I have seen a certain BC member use!) and use that, once covered in the appropriate material... It'd probably be cheaper too, but I'd rather just buy one... [/quote] Ah, that would be my chopping board you're referring to, fresh out of the Tollcross Poundstretcher! I was using a tea tray for a while too. I keep meaning to cut myself a decent bit of plywood...

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1381828780' post='2244156'] Looks just like a Gittler. [/quote] It is! It looks like his son is trying to revive the company, using different materials.

[quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1381694874' post='2242545'] It seems odd to me that we have a forum of mostly amateurs (when it comes to bass building) slagging off someone who has been doing it as a career for quite a few years. i.e. "I can't understand how tapping a piece of wood with a hammer can help predict its tone in a guitar, so therefore it must be wrong". Are these the same armchair experts that shout their valued advice to the professional players while watching Man. U. V. Chelsea on the telly? [/quote] I can see your point here to a certain extent, as any luthier who is getting a decent amount of work rarely has time to hang around on forums. Having said that, this guys process just doesn't seem very convincing. My brother is a classical guitar builder, educated at the Guildhall in London and is lately becoming quite well respected among luthiers. I've seen some of the stuff he was studying and experimenting with during his degree, to do with the mass and resonant frequency of various parts of the instrument and its effect on the final instrument, and it all seemed so much better measured, recorded and understood that what the Fender guy is doing. Sort of like the difference between listening to a doctor and a homeopath explaining a health condition (if that's not too contentious an analogy!).

[quote name='Roland Rock' timestamp='1381605431' post='2241398'] Yes, I'd agree with all of that. I understand that wood can be denser towards the centre (and bottom) of the tree, but I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about latewood and earlywood. A quarter sawn board has a higher concentration of dense latewood compared to a tangentially sawn board, regardless of where on the tree it was cut. [/quote] i'm not quite getting your point here. Picture a square section of timber, say 2x2" with the grain parallel with one of the planes. It would effectively be quarter sawn if you looked at it one way round and flatsawn if you rotated it by 90 degrees. How would that change its density?

I think with low voltage, low current stuff like pedals, it's more total hours of existence rather than hours of use. There shouldn't be much thermal cycling going on in a pedal, but electrolytic capacitors are only dependable for 20-30 years (unless you're lucky) and pots, switches and jacks are subject to mechanical wear with use. I'd worry more about your power supply getting warm if you leave it on constantly.

Is there much of that style Gospel being played in the UK? I'm not a church-goer myself, but I've heard that we mostly get the "U2 with added God" style of contemporary Christian music around here.

It turns out the Fender short-scale bass bag may be a touch too narrow for a Jazzmaster, though it is long enough. However, I found a nice Kases leatherette bag here on the basschat classifieds which is well padded, classy looking and a good fit, so I have solved my gig bag issue. Hurrah!