Beer of the Bass

Which sort of double bass sound are you after? I found that TI flats on a fretless give a little bit of a double bass vibe, but in a modern growly Dave Holland-esque way. If it's a more old fashioned thumpy sound you're after, tapes plus a higher action might take you in the right direction. The ones I've tried (D'Addario) have some brightness, but it's quite natural sounding rather than zingy. After all, even a gut strung double bass still has some bite and attack to it.

Woohoo, I have my first pickup! My slightly ridiculous winder is a cheap Dremel copy stuck down to a bit of wood, with a PWM circuit to cut the speed down to a couple of hundred RPM and a dowel with slices of cork on it to limit the wire travel. The spool sits on the floor with the wire whipping off the top and I'm tensioning it using a scrap of leather held between my fingers. The motor has very little torque at this speed, which is nice, as if I tension the wire too much it slows down rather than snapping it. I have no counter, but then neither did Fender back in the day, apparently. This one measures 7k DC resistance, though I was aiming for around 8K. Looking around the net, Lindy Fralin uses a 7k neck pickup in some of his sets so I'm going to keep it as it is and use it for the neck. I'll try and wind the other bobbin a little fuller for the bridge. There's a couple of mm on either side of the coil, so I'm sure I can squeeze on a little extra. Here's my shonky winder, shown here with no tension on the wire, because I've just finished winding. Next up will be winding the bridge pickup, attaching leads and waxing them. This pickup winding lark is quite fun - I may have to have a go at some bass pickups some time...

A lighter set of Chromes?

I've built one too, which I don't use very often, but it does more or less what you'd expect. It's good for getting a bit of amp-ish character when running a DI. It doesn't overdrive very far (though you can tweak that through FET choice and bias adjustments), but does so in a smooth, compressed way as mentioned above. I found with mine that it's just a little too mellow sounding - I like to turn the treble up on most preamps (including old-school valve amps), or use a bright switch if I've got one - more for upper-mid bite than sparkly modern sounding stuff, but I can't really get that out of the stock flipster. Mine is the older design though - I think it's had a redesign since then.

I used to have a beautiful 1920s Kumalae Uke, which I'd found at a furniture auction. Unfortunately, I ended up selling it to a fanatical uke collector on eBay a couple of years ago (for something like £300!) when I needed to pay some bills. It was flamed Koa, and sounded really sweet. Fortunately, I've just found a funky little banjo uke in a charity shop that just needs a bridge and some strings, so I'll have a uke again shortly...

[quote name='Myke' timestamp='1375626653' post='2163566'] That's really nice How long does it take to put a coat on? [/quote] The Tru-oil just wipes on, and is re-coatable in a couple of hours in this warm weather. I like to leave it overnight before sanding or buffing though. Despite the name, it's not really an oil finish, it's more of a polymerised oil based varnish.

Having havered over whether or not to try spraying a solid colour, I decided to give the woodstain a try after all. If nothing else, it saves me from filling my kitchen with lacquer fumes, as I live in the city centre and have no outside space. I've used a spirit based stain in Forest Green from Rothko and Frost. I prepared the body by dampening it to raise the grain, then sanding to 600 grit after it dried to remove the fluffy bits, as I'd read that this helps the stain to absorb more evenly. I wiped on two coats of stain, allowed these to dry then wiped on a couple of coats of Tru-oil. I'm going to keep adding more coats of tru-oil until I can buff it to a satin sheen, but here it is at the moment. I may still re-do it if I don't like it when I'm done, but I'm quite liking the stain at the moment. With any luck, it'll come out looking a little like the finish on the Thurston Moore sig model...

Jen and the Gents are doing the official Fringe slots on the Royal Mile this year. We signed up in advance and have specific slots booked, but we're on a little stage, with electricity, which makes life a bit easier. It definitely gets more CDs out there than playing venue gigs. Did your dancing guy have a kilt, big moustache/sideburns and a hat covered in badges, by any chance? If so, that's auld Lewis, King of Scotland! He always seems to dance to Jen and the Gents when we're busking. He has it down to a fine art, he comes and larks about for about half a song, then wanders off before he's outstayed his welcome...

[quote name='Spoombung' timestamp='1375527357' post='2162500'] 4 strings. There are NO memorable bass lines on 5. [/quote] Surely that's a matter of sample size rather than any inherent issue with five strings though? There are fewer players using five strings, and they haven't been around for as long, so most of the influential stuff we all remember was done on a four string. But that doesn't mean that someone couldn't come up with a memorable line on a five string.

While the tru-oil on the neck is drying, I've been working on the pickups. Here's an assembled pickup, ready for winding. The flatwork is 3mm Tufnol, the magnets are Alnico V rods from Cermag in the UK and the eyelets are from a dolls house supplier on eBay. The flatwork is about 0.6mm thicker than standard, but as long as the coil dimensions are right it shouldn't make much difference. Next I have to figure out winding...

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1375209040' post='2158287'] I think I will disappoint you: metal. You'd have liked the cloth one better, wouldn't you? [/quote] Yeah, I'm a fan of that sort of thing! I can see how the metal grille would look better matched under your Markbass combo though.

[quote name='mcnach' timestamp='1375195502' post='2157966'] My Compact arrived and is finally with me! I was only able to try it at home at low volumes so I cannot tell what it'll be like, but it's promising... and I love the weight (or lack thereoff!) [/quote] Ooh, nice. Did you go for the cloth or metal grille?

I think it's not so much the total amount of friction that gets annoying but the alternate stick/slip thing you can get on some gloss necks, especially when there's some moisture being smeared around by your thumb. If a less glossy finish is slightly more grippy but consistent feeling, that could be easier to adjust to.

Kent Armstrong do a good toaster style pickup, I have one on my four string and like it but can't vouch for how close it sounds to the originals. WD music stock them (they're under guitar pickups).

I've started Tru-oiling the neck. This is four coats into the process, having flattened it back with extra fine steel wool after the first two coats. It's getting a nice satiny sheen already. The body is waiting on the bridge arriving (I want to do any drilling before it's painted) and me buying the paint.

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1374845227' post='2153992'] I agree, if you read my post what I'm saying is that you can get closer to flats or dull old rounds with rounds and an eq than you can get an old set of flats to sizzle [/quote] If you were playing in a covers band and needed to emulate a range of sounds with a single bass, I could see this being a workable approach. I guess I'm fairly lucky to play in originals bands where I can seek out the sound I like and use it as I see fit rather than having to cover all bases. If I can't get sizzle out of my setup, no-one misses it!

I've never understood the people who claim that bright new roundwounds can be made to sound like flats or even older rounds simply through EQ. The character is quite different, and I think it's as much in the attack and decay as the overall frequency content. I like flats or tapes with the upper mids and highs boosted slightly, they can still be bright but in a way that has grunt rather than metallic clang or zing. I can't get the same sound by using a set of new roundwounds and turning down my tone control - I've tried and it's a different thing entirely.

The third one looks like Barry White.

Here are some actual pictures of my parts. I've had to widen the neck pocket very slightly, but the resulting fit seems good. The green marks inside the cavity are from trialling some woodstain. I didn't like the colour or effect, but no-one will see the blotches when it's been assembled! I'm quite pleased with this neck for the price (I paid about £33) - it's reasonable looking flatsawn maple, the fretting looks decent and the profile is a fairly mainstream C-shape as might be found on most modern Fenders. Having a separate maple fingerboard but still using a skunk stripe seems like an odd design choice, but I guess I can't expect a faithful vintage repro neck for this price. The next steps are going to be drilling out the body to accept a tune-o-matic, then starting to apply some finish. The body came with most of the surface prep already done, so will just need a light sanding, the neck will benefit from a little finish sanding. I need to smile sweetly at a friend of mine to use his back yard and shed, as I'm in a flat and have no well ventilated space for spraying. I've also decided to try winding my own pickups. I already have the wire and some scrap tufnol sheet to make flatwork. The magnets are on their way from a UK company called Cermag and I'm going to go with the cordless-drill winding method, which seems to have worked for quite a few people. I fully expect this to be a bit of a learning experience...

Initial experimentation inside the control cavity (since I didn't have any alder scrap) suggests that a stained finish will not look good on this body. The different pieces in the three-piece body absorb the stain differently and the end grain drinks it up like crazy and ends up too dark. So I'm going to go for a solid colour finish on the body and tru-oil the neck. Out of the Molotow paints, I like the green called Carambola. I want to use this yellow tortoiseshell for the pickguard, available from a couple of eBay sellers. Taste and subtlety would be cheerfully absent from this colour scheme, but no-one else would have one like it...

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1374416088' post='2148460'] Like what? (Opens worm can) [/quote] Well, there are lots of distinctive bass sounds out there that are quite different to anything you can get out of a stock P-Bass. Try getting the burpy mids of a jazz bridge pickup, the sizzle and and zing of a Stingray, the almost hi-fi clarity of a more modern active bass, the rubbery thump of a short-scale hollowbody, the clank of a stereo-wired Rickenbacker, the quirky midrangey thing of a Wal, the range of an ERB (the list goes on...) out of your stock P bass. You might not like any of these sounds, but they exist and plenty of players love them.

[quote name='cocco' timestamp='1374368602' post='2148159'] As has been said there's nothing a P bass can't do. [/quote] Of course there are things a P-bass can't do. If those happen to be the things you're not interested in doing anyway then you're on to a winner, but I find statements like this a bit silly.

OK, after chatting about this in the Other Instruments section ([url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/208271-squier-vm-jazzmaster-tempted/"]http://basschat.co.u...master-tempted/[/url]), I reckon it would be happier in a thread of its own in Build Diaries. So far I have a guitarbuild.co.uk alder Jazzmaster body and a Dr Parts maple fingerboard Strat neck. I'll stick some pictures up in the next day or two, but the seller's pictures of the body are here: [url="http://www.auctiva.com/hostedimages/showimage3.aspx?gid=1773413&image=683426967&images=683426967,683426997,683427027&formats=0,0,0&format=0"]http://www.auctiva.c...=0,0,0&format=0[/url] I am determined that the body will be green. At present I'm trying to decide whether to spray it solid green using Molotow paints (or possibly Montana paints which I gather are similar and my local art shop stocks), or whether to attempt a green stained finish with Tru-oil. The neck came unfinished, and I think it will be a nice neck after I've tru-oiled it and dressed the frets. I also need to make a decision on the bridge. My neck has a 12" radius, and the strings will sit quite high above the body if I use the body and neck without modification, so this suggests a tune-o-matic might be good, rather than the more traditional Jazzmaster bridge. Right now I'm still at the stage of gathering parts together, but I'll try and update this with progress as it happens. I think the pickups and hardware will have to wait until next month, as I should have a little cash spare then.

I wonder if I should start a thread in Build Diaries? I've got my body and an inexpensive but quite decent Dr Parts neck. The neck has a 12" radius and the combination of neck/body geometry will put the strings quite high above the body (15mm at the bridge with the action at zero, several mm higher in practice). I could deepen the neck pocket to use the standard jazzmaster/mustang bridge, but the combination of flatter radius and high elevation are making me lean towards a tune-o-matic, maybe one of the Wilkinson roller versions. EDIT: I've started a Build Diaries thread, so any further comments are best directed there; [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/212634-jazzmaster-guitar-build/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/212634-jazzmaster-guitar-build/[/url]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1374058244' post='2144720'] It occurs to me that if lightness and stability are paramount, and the bass will have a solid colour finish, then surely the best material for the job would be plywood? Or perhaps ply faced with something that looks nice for a natural or trans finish. [/quote] The right plywood can work, I have a friend who built a good sounding guitar from high grade Marine ply, but it's not ideal for a solid colour finish as all those join lines tend to show through the finish as the wood moves with age. I suspect they're more prone to hairline cracks around the neck pocket too - all that end grain where you need it least.